But behind the curtain, Bush thinks a lot of us are snarky, East Coast elites teeming with cynicism. On Tuesday, en route to St. Louis, the president summoned the press pool-the small group of reporters selected to represent the larger horde each day-to the front of Air Force One. He wanted to make a statement on Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI agent suspected of spying. After he finished reading his remarks from notecards, the reporters tried to ask Bush for more information. But the plane was about to land, and as they were physically ushered out of the cabin, Bush joked: “We timed it so you wouldn’t be able to ask questions.”
The press corps isn’t laughing. Lately, tensions have been mounting between the fourth estate and the Bush camp over the question of access. Bush does take a couple of questions on a pretty regular basis at photo ops. But he has yet to give a formal press conference. (During his first administration, Bill Clinton gave his initial press briefing at the end of January.) Mimicking a strategy they used during the campaign, the Bushies have chosen to leapfrog the national press corps. Bush has only granted interviews to one TV network-the Spanish-language Univision-and to a roundtable of newspaper reporters from well outside the beltway. White House officials, who spoke on the record under Clinton, have been insisting on speaking on background: in other words, we can’t quote them directly. That makes it especially difficult for reporters whose organizations print only on-the-record quotes.
Over the weekend came the worst breach of media relations to date: the press pool got shut out of a public event last Saturday. Here’s what happened, according to Copley’s George Condon, the reporter assigned to cover the event for the print media: “Due to a breach in long-standing White House pool practices, this report carries color from the outside of the President’s visit to the Crawford Community Center but no report from the inside,” wrote Condon, a veteran of the White House beat. “In a break with White House precedent extending back at least four presidents and almost three decades, the White House barred even your print pooler from accompanying the president inside an event open to the public.”
Now, it’s not as if these press-pool opportunities always provide great access or insight. Press pools do not sit in on cabinet meetings or get to eavesdrop on Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld talking shop about Iraq. Yesterday’s pool report from the president’s trip to Sullivant Elementary School, included this exchange between Bush and a kindergarten student: “Hey buddy, what’s your name?” Bush asked a little boy, who replied, “Patrick.” The president then pointed to the fuzzy cover on a microphone extended on a boom and said, “it’s called a caterpillar.” He asked some children if they knew the book “The Hungry Caterpillar.”
That interaction made few, if any, newspapers or nightly news reports. But it is the unscripted moments and the small details that often come out in these brief sessions that help us build an image of Bush and his presidency. And there is the principle that, however pompous this sounds, the press is supposed to be the eyes and ears of the people. The Bush camp shouldn’t get to pick and choose when and where the press pool is allowed to go.
What recourse do we have? Complaining loudly. Last Thursday, after National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice refused to speak on the record about the president’s trip to Mexico, the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) filed a letter of complaint with the White House. But a piece of paper on fancy letterhead isn’t nearly as effective as the AP’s intrepid Ron Fournier sitting in the front row of the briefing room and bringing up the complaints again and again and again. Fournier asked Rice five different ways why she wouldn’t speak for attribution. The AP decided to run a story about it, including a copy of the WHCA complaint. That was very principled, but in practice, it made Fournier’s life more difficult. Last Friday, when the United States bombed Iraq, and we were all scrambling for information-even on background-about the bombing, one White House aide responded to Fournier’s request by saying tartly, “I didn’t think the AP liked background information.”
By yesterday, the tone was more accommodating. Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer and WHCA president Arlene Dillon of CBS had what she calls a “very productive conversation.” Fleischer assured her that Saturday’s press-pool shutout wouldn’t happen again and that background briefings would be held sparingly. “I wouldn’t call it tumult,” Fleischer says of the last few days. “It’s the normal give and take between the press corps and the press secretary to iron out the rules of the new administration.” Fleischer jokes that some reporters won’t be satisfied until a “President Cam” is available.
Of course, the Bush administration has a right to establish its own house rules. The last time a Bush was president, the national security advisor didn’t speak on the record either. The press corps is having a hard time being weaned of Sandy Berger, Clinton’s NSA, who liked to be quoted. In fact, veteran reporters are having Clinton withdrawal on a lot of levels. He and aides had the gift of gab and gab and gab. “There is always a shakeout period,” explains former WHCA president Susan Page of USA Today. But Page, who has covered the White House since 1981, points out that the larger access problems still remain. Photo-op access is no substitute for a formal news conference or more sit-down interviews: “It is qualitatively different,” Page says. “You can end the questioning whenever you want. It’s totally under your control. And you only get questions on the topic of the day.” That is, of course, just the way the Bushies like it.
