You were invited to the White House for an off-the-record dinner during Obama's first year in office, along with some other presidential historians.
Last April, at an off-the-record dinner at the Brookings Institution, Larry Summers was confronted by a number of economists who believed that the financial crisis would not end unless the government took over stricken banks.
"Our mistake was to suggest that we would hold and participate in an off-the-record dinner with journalists and power-brokers paid for by a sponsor," she wrote.
The Post decided Thursday to cancel plans to charge lobbyists and trade groups $25,000 or more to sponsor private, off-the-record dinner parties at the home of its publisher, Katharine Weymouth, events that would have brought together lobbyists, business leaders, Post journalists and officials from the Obama administration and Congress.
Though there is no sense in which a recent on-the-record dinner with a reporter can be considered an occasion to glimpse the "private" Al Gore, he was the good company his friends swear that he is, laughing over some of his favorite stupid country lyrics, making fun of himself for pandering to Roman Catholics, even gossiping a little.
Her staff also sought out the president's Homeland Security adviser, Tom Ridge, and set up an off-the-record dinner at which he debriefed General Dunlavey, the Guantánamo commander, who was a friend of Mr. Ridge's from his days as a lawyer in Erie, Pa.
Also in need of attention are a radio station, commercials and all, instead of recorded dinner music and alcove tables far too small for four people.
Soon enough, however, Martin is caught up again in the comic rhythms of a show that seems less like jazz than recorded dinner music.
DONALD TUSK, Poland's prime minister, is hanging on to power despite the damage inflicted by a spate of illegally recorded dinner conversations between ministers and other top officials, which have been splashed in newspapers around the world.
Anyway, the problem is not that some executive who thought he was at an "off-the-record" dinner said something so regrettably stupid.
