In the summer of 1995, Newt Gingrich planned a trip to New Hampshire to go "moose watching." As Gingrich was at the height of his power in Washington, this trip was widely seen as a precursor of a potential campaign for President and so attracted a great deal of press attention.

At a photo op in the White House, President Clinton - who was also scheduled to go to New Hampshire to be the graduation speaker at Dartmouth - was asked if he and Newt would meet.

Clinton, who was pretty hefty at the time, suggested that he and the Speaker - who was also a pretty big boy in those days - could meet at a doughnut shop.

Gingrich heard about this and immediately accepted the invitation to meet. A look at the President's schedule showed he was doing an afternoon event at the senior citizen's center in Claremont, New Hampshire.

That event, in reality, was put on the schedule because the White House needed something between the end of the graduation ceremony in the afternoon and a fund raiser in Boston that evening.

Tony Blankley, who was the Speaker's press secretary, attempted to contact Larry King to see if he would fly up to be the moderator of this meeting between Clinton and King.

I was dispatched to Claremont to visit with the Clinton advance team and work out the details.

I arrived at the senior citizens' center and said that we would like to hold the meeting at the local school gymnasium which was significantly larger than the back patio of the center. I suggested we might have Larry King attend. I said we would pay for the staging, the sound, and the lighting.

The advance man suggested it would not be fair to the residents of the center to move the event away from their site. I said we would pay for the busses to take them to the gymnasium and would provide special seating and, if the White House wanted, would provide a special time for them to meet the Speaker and the President.

We parted that evening promising to meet at nine the next morning.

The next morning I went to the center and the advance man asked everyone to leave the office so it was just the two of us.

He said, in effect, "OK, here's the deal. We do the event here, as scheduled. It will be just the President and the Speaker talking to the residents. The President will run the event, asking for questions and each can answer each question. No busses, no Larry King, no staging. Take it or leave it."

I said we'd take it.

He gave me a long, long, long look and then asked if he could have the room that he had to call the White House.

The White House never expected us to take that deal. They wanted us to get into lengthy negotiations so that they could say they wanted to negotiate in good faith, but the Gingrich people wanted too much and time had run out so there would be no joint appearance.

They never expected us to fold right off the bat, but we had assumed they would want us to get into a long discussion which would allow the clock to run out.

The day of the event was uneventful, other than the handshake during which Clinton and Gingrich promised to appoint a commission to study campaign finance reform.

The commission was never appointed.