"A Grandmother to Kill For"

The Obamas' live-in babysitter gets her first-100-days report in the White House and, fittingly enough, Sally Quinn, the sharpest-tongued reporter of Mrs. Robinson's generation, delivers the verdict: “the perfect grandmother you’d kill for: cozy, nice, sweet, friendly, dear.”

“It seemed to me," Quinn says after meeting her at a lunch hosted by Teresa Heinz Kerry, "that she’s perfectly comfortable in her new life."

The Obamas may have been hoping for a full-time sitter, but it hasn't quite worked out that way.

"We're shuttling kids back and forth to play dates, just like usual," the First Lady says, "although now my mom does a little more of the shuttling than I do. I'm glad to have her here." But there's a but: "She has a very full social life, so much so that sometimes we have to plan our schedule around her schedule."

Mrs. Robinson, who at first resisted the move ("kicking and screaming," according to her son), has traded in her Chicago routine of friends, family and weekly yoga class for a taste of the Washington social whirl and seems to be savoring it.

Way to go, grandma.

Exit Cheney, Enter Fred Thompson?

Sally Quinn, who knows a thing or two about movie scenarios, is pitching a neat idea for a political thriller in today’s Washington Post: Change the White House casting by replacing Dick Cheney with Fred Thompson.

“Cheney,” she writes, “is scheduled this summer for surgery to replace his pacemaker, which needs new batteries. So if the president is willing, and Republicans are able, they have a convenient reason to replace him: doctor's orders.”

As an actor, Thompson is accustomed to stepping in, as he did in “Law and Order,” and making himself a regular fixture on the show. When he auditions for the starring role next year, Thompson would have a head start.

Best of all, following Cheney’s chew-the-scenery performance, anything Thompson does would be considered under-acting. He couldn’t miss.