According to excerpts from a Q&A with Bloomberg News published by Politico, Michael Lewis, the author of the latest glowing profile of President Barack Obama in Vanity Fair, may have revealed a little too much in explaining what served as the impetus for doing such an extensive profile with an unprecedented level of access to President Obama.
In explaining the inspiration behind his pitch to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Lewis stated that he was wanted to write a piece in the spirit of old John Hersey profiles of President Harry Truman from the New Yorker:
"The sort of thing my kids could be interested in. It taught you what it felt like to be President," he said. "And the thing opened with Hersey meeting Truman at his front door in the morning and going on a walk along the Potomac with basically one security guard in the distance behind them, coming back and going to the White House gym and sitting in saunas naked kind of thing. It was two guys hanging out together.
"I said, 'Wouldn't it be fun if I could take Obama and do the same thing? Just two guys kind of hanging out together.'"
The bottom line: We don’t know whether Lewis ever got the chance to sit naked with the president.