Sam Donaldson Set to Retire Next Week From ABC News

And he hears an echo of JFK: "For my generation, we felt the same excitement: a young president, a change from the old guard, a handsome president with an attractive wife."

The El Paso native came to Washington at the start of the Kennedy administration as a reporter and weekend anchor for Channel 9, then called WTOP. He joined ABC in 1967 when it was a "fifth-class" news operation, as Donaldson puts it, greatly outmatched by CBS and NBC.

Donaldson became a fixture on "This Week" when David Brinkley launched the program in 1981, drawing criticism that he was reporting the news during the week and slinging opinions on Sunday. This, of course, was before the days when hundreds of journalists started moonlighting as TV pundits. He and Roberts took over "This Week" in 1996 for a six-year run.

Donaldson has a knack for getting into scrapes. He was embarrassed in 1994 when "PrimeTime" reported on a congressional junket to Florida sponsored by the American Insurance Association -- months after Donaldson had accepted a $30,000 speaking fee from an insurance coalition that included the group.

The following year, Donaldson found himself the target of an ambush interview by an "Inside Edition" correspondent, who assailed him for accepting $97,000 in federal mohair subsidies for his New Mexico ranch. The payments were perfectly legal. "I'm a hot target. People either like me or they don't," he said then.

Now Donaldson, and his wife, Jan, plan to spend more time on the cattle ranch once owned by his father.

Donaldson has had health issues; he survived stage 3 melanoma in 1995, and two years ago had his aortic valve replaced. But while his ABC workload has decreased, he still has a certain irrepressible quality. Not long ago, Roberts says, he ran up a down escalator in a Connecticut Avenue building. Why, exactly? "Because he can."

Gibson says Donaldson's retirement "really is a loss of the bedrock" for ABC. "I just love the guy." But Donaldson, fearing a fuss over his decision, asked the network not to issue a news release. For the moment, he sounds content to ride the career escalator to a lower floor.

"I'm sure I went through a phase that people knew me, I was on television, the head waiters tried to sneak me to the front of the line," Donaldson says. "But I don't need that. I'm happy with my life."

Coziness Is in Vogue

The Vogue cover story on Michelle Obama, by editor at large André Leon Talley, is nothing if not laudatory: "With her long, lean, athletic frame, she moves as if she could have danced with Alvin Ailey in another life. Curled up in the corner of a huge taupe velvet sofa, wearing knee-high boots as she nestles into the cushions, she almost seems like any other mom recently relocated to a city because of her husband's new job."

The Talley article mentions briefly that Obama showed up "at a fundraiser I co-hosted last year." That would be a $1,000-a-head fundraiser -- "An Evening With Michelle Obama" -- also hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour and designer Calvin Klein.

Wouldn't the story have had more credibility if written by someone who hadn't helped the Obama campaign raise money? Vogue Managing Editor Laurie Jones says Talley "has enjoyed a personal relationship with Mrs. Obama" since meeting her at an Oprah Winfrey party in 2005 and acknowledged working as a campaign volunteer. "André wrote a uniquely personal piece," she says, that "was possible only because of his access to the family."

Obama Adulation Watch

"The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. . . . Many women -- not too surprisingly -- were dreaming about sex with the president. . . . I understood perfectly where these cozy dreams of easy familiarity came from. It was that sense so many people share of having a very immediate connection to Barack Obama." -- New York Times blogger Judith Warner, whose dream involved Obama hogging the bathroom.