2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: In 1980, did Ted Kennedy endorse Jimmy Carter? [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)too, heard him. The speechwriter heard him. The person who typed up the speechwriter's stuff read the paragraphs he didn't use in the SOTU. You don't think he--or back then, more likely, she--told her friends that they'd better start putting money aside because the boss wasn't going for a 2nd term, or trying to transfer to another department, especially if they were a political appointee?
It's a small town. People talk. A LOT. The joint runs on rumor and innuendo, and it's the main pastime to gossip about stuff. You spend so much time hurrying up and waiting, there's not much else to do--and back in the days before wifi everywhere and "tablets" and "cell phones," people did a LOT of that. If you were a social smoker, you could pick up more scuttlebutt than you could shake a stick at.
Look, I knew Denny Hastert had a problem back in the nineties. I knew that his wife always stayed at the Willard when she blew into town for "wives" stuff. What was the point of mentioning it when you couldn't out the source? I knew why Monica Lewinsky was working for Ken Bacon, though he never came out and told me in so many words (but someone else helpfully did). I knew that Linda Tripp was resentful that she was organizing DV tours instead of working in the White House "where she belonged."
And again, I was nobody special. People talk--all the time. The town runs on it.