Kind of a funny story about the Woodward white house thing
A True Gene Sperling Story

One day, when we couldn’t get the column on the page at his preferred length, he put up a big fight, and he said, “You’ll rue the day you cut this column.”

I recognize that this happened decades ago, and you’re probably wondering why I remember it at all. The reason is, it was the first time I had ever heard anyone ever use the expression “rue the day” in speech and it stayed with me.

I tell this story only to make the point that I did not feel threatened by Gene’s statement, which was arguably stronger than the one he made to Woodward. Of course, he didn’t have the White House behind him when he was a columnist at The Daily Pennsylvanian. On the other hand, we needed him as a columnist fairly desperately, so he did have us over a barrel.

And no, I don’t rue the day I cut 700 words out of Gene Sperling’s column.