Behind Closed Doors: A Glimpse of Gibbs

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From my profile of Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, in the next issue of TIME magazine:

Hours after the lowest point of his boss’s first two weeks in office, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ended the first chapter of the Obama presidency and launched the second. At the end of his morning staff meeting — where his team had gathered to discuss the handling of issues from the first fortnight, including Tom Daschle’s unexpected failure to join the Cabinet because of tax-compliance problems — Gibbs reminded members of his team what they had come to Washington to do.

“One other thing,” Gibbs said as the room went quiet. “When the President said ‘I screwed up’ last night, that officially ended our experiment with sipping from the waters of the Potomac,” he continued, referring to the Obama team’s determination not to be sucked into old Washington ways. “I, for one, don’t want to look back four years from now and think, We should have done this differently.”

Read the whole story here or buy a copy of TIME at the newsstand, and read it in the bath, on a mountaintop, while waiting for the bus, with a big, full-page picture of Gibbs.