Weekend Wonk'd: It's Hard Out There for an Ex-Chief of Staff
Normally we'd hold off and pass this along with the rest of our Wonk'd celebrity sightings. But since Andrew Card has been in the news a lot lately, after announcing his resignation as White House chief of staff last week, we wanted to pass it along without delay:
Sighted today 4/1, 1: 45 PM or so: Andy Card and wife shopping at the Pentagon City Costco. The most notable items in their cart were a giant box of instant Quaker Oatmeal and the megapack of Charmin toilet paper. Do you suppose Bush asked him to stock up the Oval Office john before he turns the job over to Bolten?
We would have posted this over the weekend, but we had to wait to hear back from our source, after asking whether this sighting -- received on Saturday, April 1 -- might be an April Fool's joke. We received this emphatic response:
NO!!! There were two Secret Service agents hanging around the area near the packaged and frozen food aisles. My partner and I were trying to figure out who might be in the store; I had seen this guy who seemed to be better dressed than your usual Costco shopper, and when I pointed him out to my partner, he said, "Andy Card?" and it clicked in my mind that it was indeed him. He's much shorter than I expected, probably no more than 5'6" or 5'7" but rather more handsome in person than in photos. The toilet paper was on the bottom rack below the basket and took up pretty much the whole thing.
It did occur to me that you would think it was an AF joke, but this is a totally serious sighting! (And I would be able to identify more of what was in his cart, but I didn't want to get the SS guys coming down on me!)
Former White House chiefs of staff: they're just like us. They shop at Costco, and they go through massive amounts of toilet paper!
(Hey, better to use too much toilet paper than too little. Chiefs of staff have to shake a lot of hands.)