TEI and Bill's excellent adventure (or the almost completely true account of President Clinton's visit to the Region IX Conference).

• Author: McCormally, Timothy J.

Given the way it began, it's astounding that it ended as well as it did. My wife and I arrived at the Hotel del Coronado in Southern California on Saturday night, May 15, so I could attend the annual conference sponsored by Tax Executives Institute's Region IX. Truth be told, the trip was originally intended to be a rather relaxing one. When I first made plans to attend, I had been assigned no official duties, which was a little bit different from what usually happens. As the General Counsel for TEI, I am frequently asked to address the Institute's regional conferences and, with respect to national programs, I often am assigned a full complement of logistical duties. Not this time, however: my jobs were to soak up a little sun and a lot of knowledge, and to recharge my batteries for the battles to come in Washington. My daughters and I arranged for Judy to accompany me (sans children) as a belated Mother's Day present. Things were looking good.

Then a couple of weeks before the trip, Paul Cherecwich called me. Paul works for Thiokol Corporation in Ogden, Utah, and as Region IX's Vice President was the field commander for the regional conference. His call was somewhat plaintive: his luncheon speaker for May 17 had canceled out on him (not surprising, I said, he was a Bush Administration appointee), and Paul wanted me to substitute. Paul made a point of telling me that he had already discussed his offer with my boss (Mike Murphy, TEI's Executive Director), and he thought it was a great idea. So I did the only thing I could: I accepted Paul's offer.

The trip to San Diego was relatively uneventful. A screwup with our airline tickets kept Judy and me from sitting with each other, but I figured that was a sign that I should work on the speech I promised Paul. The United 757 was cramped (aren't they always?), and my creative juices seemed in lower supply than normal. Nothing catastrophic occurred, but neither did I make much progress on my speech. Once in the San Diego airport, we found our luggage, caught a cab, made the pleasant trip across the Coronado Bay Bridge, and arrived at "the Del" at about 8:30 Saturday evening (11:30 Washington time).

The doorman was very friendly, and as he was taking our bags, he inquired whether we would be staying at the hotel through Monday. Responding yes, we were told that we were in for a treat because President Clinton would be at the hotel on Monday. (He was going to be in San Diego for a town meeting in an effort to spur support for his economic plan.) Now, coming from Washington, we generally try to feign indifference in the face of the Washington power structure, but I have to admit, the impending Presidential visit added a spark to our visit. Judy kidded me whether the President would pop his head into the regional TEl meeting: "After all," she teased, "you are a tax organization and it is his tax program you're going to be talking about.' I laughed and responded, "If he knew what we were saying about some of his ideas, he'd surely send the Secret Service dogs in first to make sure it's safe.'

With these comments, we found ourselves at the registration desk, and I put the President's visit out of my mind. I gave the desk clerk my reservation confirmation form, and watched him punch my name into his computer. He paused for a moment and then excused himself to go into the back room. Judy and I could pick up bits and pieces of the conversation (something about "where' to put us), but thought nothing of it when he came out, told us that we would be in room 3302, and called over to the bellstand for someone to take us to our room.

To say the least, our room was not roomy. In fact, "roomy" was the last thing I thought of when I walked into the room. How small was it? It was so small that... Well, just take my' word for it, it was small. The bathroom door virtually touched the bed (it literally had to be all the way open or all the way closed for you to squeeze by on that side of the room), and there were only about 10 inches of clearance between the dresser and the end of the bed. We had a view out our window of... nothing. (Okay, okay, if you strained your neck, you could see another window.)

After the bellman left, I looked at Judy. I asked whether she wanted to change rooms. We were both tired. We were both hungry. We had both been conditioned--as an employee and former employee of a membership association--not to complain about our rooms, because if we complained successfully and "bumped" one of our members-our bosses there could be hell to pay. Anyway, all those things conspired together to make us say, "Forget it. We won't be in the room that much anyway, so we'll stay where we are."

So we went to bed, got up the next morning, negotiated the great expanse of our room, and went out for the day. The hotel was starting to bustle. Not only with other TEI members arriving for the regional conference, but with scores of hotel employees and security personnel starting to prepare for the President's visit. The friends we encountered shared with us the descriptions of their hotel rooms--all of them seemed satisfied and practically all seemed to have snared rooms twice or even three times the size of Judy's and mine. Ah well, I thought, the luck of the draw.

Then, while dressing for dinner on Sunday evening, I heard a television report that the President's party would be taking two hundred rooms at the Del Coronado. The report turned out to be greatly exaggerated, but the light bulb finally went off above my head: We have a crappy room because Bill Clinton--and the millions of people in his entourage-will have good ones! Judy was (rightfully) not too impressed by my lightning speed reasoning--not because it was flawed but because she reached the same conclusion within moments of arriving at the hotel. At the opening reception for the regional...