Dinner with the President

President sits down for dinner at Austin fundraiser.

Dinner fund-raiser in West Lake Hills, Texas, a wealthy suburb in the hills west of Austin.
No news.

The home belongs to venture capitalist Blaine Wesner and wife Alexa Wesner. Lots of mesquite trees. Unusual and strikingly beautiful design: the top floor is a rectangle that seems to float on another rectangle of glass windows. The dinner was held on the window floor – several tables with clear Lucite chairs that made a ton of noise as they scraped the marble floor.

The president stood with his back to one of the glass walls, so the guests were facing the view: in the foreground, an infinity pool. In the background, seven or eight miles away, downtown Austin. He spoke for about 15 minutes without notes.

“It goes without saying that we all think you acquitted yourself beyond admirably,” the hostess Alexa Wesner, a major Democratic donor, said in her introduction. “We still need a lot from you – your leadership, your tough-mindedness and probably most importantly your moral compass.”

Wesner is very pregnant and joked in her introduction that Obama needed to stay in office for the sake of her two kids “and our daugther-to-be, probably next week” – hence Obama’s joke that “I do have a doctor with me at all times.”

No particular news from Obama, though pool was escorted out when he started a Q&A.
We arrived about 7, intro started 13 minutes later. Obama spoke for 15 minutes.

Impressive thunder about 20 minutes after the pool left the dinner. We hustled to vans – down a very long driveway – in a futile attempt to avoid a soaking.
The drought that has led to all these wildfires has been pretty bad. Gov. Rick Perry had urged Texans to pray for rain.
This is the first rain here in MONTHS, reports my sister-in-law in Austin.