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friday

Covering the six presidents who preceded Dubya, longtime national-politics correspondent and columnist Robert Scheer made his biggest score interviewing then-candidate Jimmy Carter, who volunteered that “I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” That comment, and the fact that it appeared in Playboy, caused quite a stir in 1976, although stories about subsequent presidents have made Carter’s confession seem tame. Scheer’s latest book, Playing President, explains itself in its lengthy subtitle: My Close Encounters With Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan, and Clinton—and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush. The second Bush is the only one of the book’s six subjects whom Scheer has never met but, not surprisingly, the author’s better when he has access: The interview with a testy Bush I is far more damning than Scheer’s analysis of Bush II as “a coddled offspring of the super rich.” Scheer discusses and signs copies of Playing President at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Mark Jenkins)