All right, let's dish

Is the President of the United States sleeping with the Secretary of State?

That's not a question you hear every day, is it?

America Wants to Know doesn't usually descend into the lurid and tawdry world of trysts and moans.

But just this once.

You must have seen the front-page splash in the Globe tabloid -- what, someone else does your grocery shopping for you? -- that the president and the first lady are in marriage counseling, that the first lady is envious of the president's intimate conversations with Condoleezza Rice, that the first couple's daughters were driven from the executive mansion by their parents' fighting.

And perhaps you've noticed, as we have, that the first couple has been a little frosty at public events where political couples usually display a pantomime of affection. Not even a kiss on the cheek at the Christmas tree lighting ceremonies, for instance.

Hmmm.

Maybe you noticed that when CNN's Larry King recently asked the president and the first lady how they keep their marriage healthy, the president changed the subject to the importance of exercise and talked about bicycling.

And you might even remember the story in New York magazine that Condoleezza Rice startled a dinner party of Washington journalists when she referred to President Bush as "my husb..." before quickly correcting herself and substituting, "the president."

Hmmmm.

You can't find a news article about the Secretary of State that doesn't mention her "close relationship" with the president.

And this week we learned that the first lady was spotted by tourists at a national park in Alaska. She was on a personal vacation, a National Parks Service spokesman said.

Without the president.

Meanwhile, back in the lower forty-eight, the president began a ten-day vacation at his Crawford ranch on Thursday, accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. They will be working on the crises in the Middle East, the White House said, you know, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon. There are so many hot spots.

We would like to pause now to apologize for that joke.

Speaking of jokes, comedian Argus Hamilton notes in his upcoming Sunday column that the first lady is vacationing in Alaska while the president is spending his vacation at the ranch with Condi Rice. "Thank goodness his foreign policy is going so well," Argus says, "or this could be a real scandal."

Hmmmm. So it could.


Copyright 2006

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