Bush-league script enraging press

posted by admin on Sunday March 09, @06:50AM

Mar. 9, 2003. 01:00 AM
The West Wing is in a flap.

Or at least the White House press corps is.

Judging by its rumblings and grumblings since that Valium-drip presidential news conference last Thursday, feathers are ruffled and may start flying.

Yes, the gang that has spent the past few years pecking at the meal that dribbles from the mouth of chief spokesperson Ari Fleischer is mad as hell over how that mind-numbing newser, only the second primetime Q&A; President George W. Bush has ever held, was conducted.

Like a well-choreographed ballet of sleepwalkers.

Bush, who seemed, in the words of The Washington Post's Tom Shales, "ever so slightly medicated," came across so rehearsed he was almost robotic.

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As presidential hagiographer Bob Woodward (Bush At War) would tell CNN's Larry King after the performance, Bush "was slow talking" and the news conference was "almost like a wake."

"And this process of calling on people and then having long speeches somewhat from the reporters and multiple questions," continued Woodward, "I think didn't kind of get to some of the key points."

"This," added Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, "is not a spontaneous press conference, the kind we're normally used to from presidents over the years."

No kidding.

Not only is flying solo at news conferences a rare event for Bush — at this point in his presidency, his dad had held 58 to Junior's eight — but he would have none of the usual Mr. President! yelling or hand-waving pick me! pick me! action from reporters.

That was exactly what the White House wanted: The whole thing was "scripted," as Bush allowed in one of the few slips he made that night.

Looking down yet again at what was a list of reporters whose questions he planned to take, he said, "This is a scripted..." catching himself as the press gang burst into laughter.

In the end, neither Bush nor the journalists whose questions he deigned to answer — or non-answer — ever got anywhere.

And never mind the tough questions that never got asked.

Indeed, the whole show, aside from being staged to capture Survivor addicts and capitalize on one of the biggest TV audiences of the week, was truly stage-managed in advance.

As White House communications chief Dan Bartlett told The Washington Post, this administration holds news conferences more sparingly than other types of presidential communication opportunities, because "if you have a message you're trying to deliver, a news conference can go in a different direction."

Especially given Bush's Bushisms.

"In this case, we know what the questions are going to be, and those are the ones we want to answer," Bartlett admitted. "We think the public will see the thought and care and attention he's given to a lot of the different questions that are being asked about the diplomatic side and the military side and the potential post-Iraq issue. These are all legitimate questions that he has answers for and wants to talk about."

Now let me hasten to add one thing: This is much the same attitude displayed by the very regime Bush wants to topple. For example, last month Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz refused to take a question from an Israeli journalist, even though he answered the same question when it was posed by another reporter.

"It was not in my agenda to answer questions by the Israeli media," he told a news conference in Rome. "Sorry."

Bush pulled a similar stunt when he ignored a long-running White House tradition of taking questions from syndicated columnist Helen Thomas who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy.

But then, she's the journalist who had the temerity to say that Bush was "the worst president ever." Yet snubbing her was so shocking that even the conservative Washington Times, said to be Bush's paper of choice, noted it.

"What's the message? If you cross the president or Ari, you too will get banned?" White House journalist Russell Mokhiber, who edits Corporate Crime Reporter, asked me Friday.

That day, at yet another Fleischer skating party, the journalistic pack got all snarly and snappish. When asked by right-wing radio talk show host Lester Kinsolving how and why Bush cherry-picked his questioners, Fleischer 'fessed that he was the one who made up the list, and that columnists such as Thomas were not included.

Pressed again by another reporter, Fleischer replied: "The President just thinks it is actually a more orderly news conference, rather than to have the usual cacophony of everybody screaming, where the person who gets called on is the person who has the loudest voice."

Well, if what Mokhiber told me turns out to be true, the yelling has barely begun.

"I sense that they're starting to fight back," he told me, calling the news conference "unprecedented and "revolting."

Let's hope revulsion turns into rebellion.

The world depends on it.

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