Politics:
Mr. President, Your Paprikash Is Ready

What's Bill Clinton got against sleeping under the stars?
The inside-the-Beltway scuttlebutt on our reluctant Camper-in-Chief.
By Brad Wetzler

Sadly for him, history will remember Dick Morris as the sap who held a telephone receiver to a prostitute's ear. But a reading of Behind the Oval Office, Morris's recent hardback tell-all, suggests that this consummate Washington insider deserves at least a footnote for something less, well, lascivious. For one glorious night, Dick Morris put the camp back into campaigning.

It happened in August 1995, when Morris sent the First Family off into the Wyoming woods--over the objections of Bill Clinton, who apparently let it be known he'd much prefer golfing. The highly publicized foray, Morris believed, could woo swing voters, who White House research had determined tended to be campophiles. Alas, according to Morris, Clinton's vacation was a disaster. Not only did the president's numbers fail to surge, but upon returning to Washington, it was clear that his mood had been soured by the whole affair. "He was bitter about the way his public life had intruded on his private time," Morris writes. "I heard more than sarcasm in his complaints; I heard pain."

Upon reading this revelation, we were overcome by curiosity. Just what went wrong out there? Had our commander-in-chief undergone a Kurtzian meltdown? Could a good ol' boy from rural Arkansas really hate camping that much? To find out, we hit the phones.

"Heavens no," said a deputy White House press secretary, when asked whether it was something primordial, like a bad vision quest, that had tripped up the president. "He had a very good time." That didn't jibe with Morris's account, so we tried the vice-president's office, the kind of progressive place where you'd expect to find an avid camper willing to discuss intricacies of catholes and s'mores. Surprisingly, the veep's flack was infinitely surlier. "Try the First Lady's office," he said. "They handle special events and stuff like that."

But first we decided to try a barrage of E-mails to Bruce Babbitt's address, asking whether the Interior Secretary, who manages much of the hard ground on which American campers sleep, was available to chat. Back came the following cryptic response: "If we can address the message, we will do so. If we can't, it will be passed on to a responsible party who can."

With that disappointment, we moved on to our best and last hope: the First Lady's office. And though Hillary herself was indisposed, an aide did agree to talk. At first, she too seemed to be pushing the party line--yet another participant in what seemed more and more like some sort of shadowy cover-up. "The president still talks about camping," she said. "He loved it so much." But then, just as we were about to give up, came the breakthrough we'd been awaiting. Hillary's gal agreed to dish--but only on the condition that she be granted anonymity. "I was there," she said in hushed, almost whispered tones. "And I'll tell you, he didn't carry his own pack."