When the president of the United States comes to Africa and wants to see an animal, it is not all that easy.
Even taking a simple boat ride while on safari is, in reality, far from simple. When President Clinton climbed aboard a boat Monday in Chobe National Game Park in Botswana in search of hippos, crocodiles and other wildlife, he was accompanied by several gunboats fore and aft, containing Secret Service agents, frogmen and military personnel behind mounted guns.
All this underscores the first order of business when the president travels: his security. The Secret Service, the military and people we are not even supposed to know about all have to go along, not to mention about 70 presidential staff members.
It is quite a schlep.
So when the Clintons decided to take a day of rest and relaxation in Kasane, Botswana, they were the only ones who got the rest and relaxation. Everybody else worked like crazy.
Even the reporters who were allowed to accompany them. Under the rules of the game, the president is almost never left alone when he leaves the White House. There must always be a pool of reporters who go with him. These reporters share their information with all the other reporters who can’t go along.
Not that a president can merely go and see an animal and leave well enough alone. He has to hold a mini-news conference to talk about it, which produced the following pool report:
The president: “It’s amazing. It’s been an amazing day.”
Question: “Any wart hogs? We saw some.”
The first lady: “We saw hippos.”
The president: “We saw a lot of hippos.”
The first lady: “Crocodiles.”
Question: “Did you check out the stars last night?”
The president: “It was amazing, wasn’t it? The stars were amazing.”
The first lady: “We saw the lions too.”
Question: “Oh, you didn’t see the lions?”
The first lady: “We did, Sam (Donaldson), we did.”
Question: “You saw a lion?”
The first lady: “Yes, we saw a mother lion and four cubs.”
The president: “Oh, yes, they were up underneath a tree.”
And so it went, on and on, animal after animal, page after page.
As it turned out, the Clintons saw water buffalo, baboons, impalas, birds, elephants, kudus and a lot of other stuff.
The First Tourists were delighted; the press was informed, though, that the president is suffering from a cold.
But just to prove that the day was not all fun and frolic, White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who was on the safari, told reporters that National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger, who also was on the safari, briefed Clinton on world events, including the situation in Russia.
That was the morning safari. The afternoon safari, which was a boat ride, produced another pool report, in which the Clintons saw a crocodile.
At the end of the boat ride, McCurry announced that the day had been “perfect.”
Not quite. A president cannot go off and leave 200 reporters back at their hotel with nothing to do.
So a variety of safaris were arranged for them, including one to the Tau Game Lodge, just across the Botswanan border in Nietverdient, South Africa.
There, reporters climbed aboard Jeeps and in a driving rainstorm set out to see gnus, birds, a termite mound and leopard droppings before being forced to turn back because of the bad weather.
The game preserve also contains a herd of elephants from Mozambique that are known for their bad tempers because of how badly they were treated by soldiers during violence in that country.
Some of these elephants were shot, and some where injured by land mines. This has made them permanently upset.
“Some will chase the cars until they catch up with you,” a guide told reporters. “An elephant never forgets how it is treated.”
There was some speculation as to why the White House might want to place the national press corps in the path of angry elephants. The most popular answer: The White House never forgets how it is treated either.
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