Overexposed
During Clinton's presidency, we would fly to as many as four states in a day. And traveling abroad with him was a protracted experiment in sleep deprivation. We worked all day and traveled most of the night, checking into our hotels in the wee hours of the morning, then checking out a few hours later to do it all again. Upon awaking in Florence one morning, I stared out my hotel window wondering why this most lovely city appeared so dismal. Rusting white Ladas jammed the streets; pedestrians appeared dour and poorly dressed. The reason, I learned upon snatching a book of matches off the dresser, was that I was not in Italy but Bulgaria.
And yet these grand tours are the saving grace of White House duty. Through the blur of airports and crowds and foreign countries I can see the career I always wanted. Better photo ops, sure. Though for me, as with so many photojournalists, it's about the going--the helicopter ride over the Holy Land, the visit to The Hague, the Kremlin, the Bundestag, the river cruise with President Bush through St. Petersburg, the facades still sunlit near midnight.
And there was that time in Rabat, Morocco, when President Clinton marched in a funeral procession for King Hassan. Mourners were everywhere, hanging from street signs, standing on lampposts, and leaning out windows, wailing as if someone had murdered their children. It was utter chaos, and the president seemed vulnerable. The Secret Service agents shed their robotic expressions for ones approaching panic, their arms pushing violently at everything that moved, including me. And all the while President Clinton pressed on, just the top of his white head visible, bobbing up and down like a Q-tip. It was a finer memory than picture, this spectacle--and that was just fine with me.
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