Free Madam President by Nicolle Wallace

against the wall to see if anything would stick, and Lucy and Richard were instructed to be themselves. What happened was pure TV magic. Lucy was irreverent and feisty, and Richard was funny and relaxed. Together, they interviewed celebrities, senators and congressmen, victims of a tornado, and other journalists. Since they’d never covered any official government beats, they leaned heavily on the network’s correspondents at the White House, the State Department, and the Defense Department and, at times, kept them on for an entire newscast. If a celebrity meltdown or weather story was dominating the news, they talked about that and ignored the network correspondents at the White House, State, and DOD. Their approach had plenty of detractors, particularly among the Washington, D.C., circles of elite journalists and pundits, but it attracted viewers from every important demographic. Richardand Lucy quickly turned their show into the hottest thing in television news. After a nine-month streak on the morning show, they’d taken their freewheeling, teleprompter-free gabfest to the evening news hour, and that program had moved from dead last to second place in only a few short months.
    Dale had taken a sizable risk by selecting Lucy and Richard for the “Day in the Life” special, but she wanted to do everything in her power to extend Charlotte’s second honeymoon with the press, and that included courting the journalists who were getting the most attention.
    The vice president had also been a strong advocate for doing the “Day in the Life” with Lucy and Richard. Maureen had a very positive impact on Charlotte when it came to her approach with the media. She was generating a lot of goodwill herself through her “open-door” policy. There were as many reporters in and out of the vice president’s office as there were in and out of the press office. Dale privately worried that the vice president’s open-door policy would eventually clash with Charlotte’s preference for keeping the media at arm’s length, but so far, it had only served to enhance reporters’ understanding of the close partnership Maureen had forged with Charlotte. As longtime politicians who’d largely sacrificed their mothering years for their careers, both women shared a bond of wistful acceptance of the trade-offs they’d made to arrive at their positions of immense power. They’d also both endured messy chapters in their personal lives that had played out publicly because of their high-profile positions and unfaithful husbands.
    Dale liked to think that Craig’s ascent to chief of staff and her promotion to press secretary contributed to the positivity that the press felt toward the administration. History suggested that Charlotte was wise to shake things up in her second term; successful second-term presidents almost always demanded staff turnover, and Charlotte was an astute student of the pitfalls of the modern American presidency.
    Dale glanced at herself one last time in the mirror, and then, with her BlackBerry screen as her flashlight, she made her way toward the front door, picked up her heavy purse, threw a black cashmere sweater across her shoulders to keep herself warm inside the over-air-conditioned West Wing, and shut the door behind her. As soon as she stepped into her building’s lobby, she noticed the van parked in front. The plan was for a CBS crew to drive in with each member of the senior staff. She tucked her hair behind her ears and went out to retrieve the crew.
    “Good morning, everyone.” Dale wasn’t good at forced cheer, especially in the morning. The crew piled into her car and positioned a camera in the front seat. When they turned the camera light on, Dale was temporarily blinded.
    “Do you usually stop for coffee?” one of the production assistants asked from the backseat, where he’d settled in amid the dry cleaning she kept forgetting to drop off and two gym bags that she’d packed and had never