Sunday, November 30, 2008

Sunday AM (pouring rain). I had backed out of the Redskins- NY Giants game with Gene Elrod because my daughters were home for Thanksgiving weekend. Got a call from Jay Lefkowitz who is writing a brief history of PEPFAR for a trade journal (forgot which one). He wanted to do a historical fact check with me about the timing of meetings that we had with Josh Bolton, Gary Edson, Kristen Silverberg in the WH. His version of events was strikingly close to my historical memory. During the conversation he asked about the NIH Director job and we reminisced about the Bush years. Interesting fact that he dropped. He related that he was having a conversation with Bush during the time of the NIH Director decision and Bush said, “why not just appoint Tony Fauci”. Jay agreed. Jay now casually mentioned that Karl Rove was against my candidacy. He did not say why. I could be that he was against the “dual” appointment or perhaps he was influenced by Sen. Brownback’s concern about my stance on fetal tissue and stem cell research. I guess that I will never know.