r he was thinking, "This guy's nuts" or "What the hell did I get myself into?" My first question must have had him leaning toward the former: Don't Dance to the Music of Your Own Buzz "Before we get into anything else, let me ask you, who's your long- distance company?" "Well, Hughes splits its traffic between "No, no. I mean which company do you use at home or when you're traveling. You know, personally?" Now he knew I was nuts. He was about to risk his reputation by trying to turn around a $50 billion company that had been given up for dead by most serious investors, and his prospective PR guy was beginning a telemarketing pitch. John Walter What Armstrong didn't know-and what I could never forget-was that the last guy named AT&T's president and anointed as Allen's successor, R. R. Donnelly's John Walter, had been blindsided by a reporter who wanted to know who his long-distance company was. Flustered, Walter first tried to dodge the question. Pressed by report- ers, who were already skeptical that a printing company executive could run-much less save-AT&T, he said that his wife made all those decisions and he had no idea. As reporters will, many of them used that bit of noninformation to demonstrate how little preparation he had for the job-why, he didn't even know the name of his own long-distance company. Run AT&T? He apparently couldn't even spell it. And SO forth. Armstrong, on the other hand, reached into the pocket of his sports coat, pulled out his wallet, and produced an AT&T calling card. "This is who I use," he said. "Is that the answer you were looking for?" It was. And he answered the question exactly the same way the next day. Armstrong would face more substantial questions, such as who had had the idea to make Zeglis president (he had), why he had taken the job (for the challenge), and what was he going to do first (listen). But most of the questions were predictable and, for perhaps the first and last time in his life at AT&T, whatever Armstrong said was taken at face value. He was not the "heir