Survival Course

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Not everyone agreed the President of the United States should go to Bogota.

A Pan American drug summit was scheduled for the next day in Bogota, Colombia. The embattled President of Colombia was the host. Leaders from as far north as Canada had already arrived. All that remained was for the President's arrival, which everybody did agree would be a tremendous show of support in the long war against the Colombian drug cartels.

The polls were evenly split on the matter. It was a hot topic on radio call-in shows, Sunday-morning TV information programs, and in bars. In Washington, politicians debated the subject with unusual intensity. Only the White House staff was unanimous in its support of the President's brave decision. In public.

In private, it was a slightly different matter.

"For the last time, you gotta cancel!" pleaded the President's chief of staff: "Tell them you have the flu."

"I'm going," the President said firmly in his slightly nasal voice, a voice that mixed New England consonants with a Texas twang. When excited, the President sometimes sounded like an out-of-tune steel bango. He was not excited now. He was firm.

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