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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Bush has a special talent for avoiding tough questions and reporters who ask them. Here's what the White House press corps should do to smoke him out.
Dec 3, 2004 | George W. Bush has held far fewer solo news conferences than any president in the modern era. And when he does meet with the press, he avoids direct answers so brazenly that there is scant little value in it anyway. It's time the White House press corps did something about it.
How? In interviews, a half dozen of the best White House correspondents of the recent past have offered up some suggestions for the reporters who will be covering Bush's second term. And one place they can start is by reminding the public of a number of important, outstanding questions left unanswered about Bush's first term. Covering the White House has always been a challenge, but this administration has been particularly reluctant to answer questions. This president even seems to have an aversion to being in the same room as people who might disagree with him. Bush's news conference track record, while frankly not the most important example of these two tendencies, is one of the most overt -- and is the easiest for the press to do something about.
The president is not averse to questions, per se. It's a matter of who's asking. During the campaign, Bush took questions almost daily -- from carefully screened and adoring supporters. Their questions tended to be real tough, like this one at an "Ask President Bush" event in Niceville, Fla.: "Mr. President, I was wondering if you were a Christian?" But according to figures compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University, when it comes to solo news conferences, Bush has held only 16 during his first term -- a far cry from the 43 Bill Clinton had at this point in his first term, and the 84 by Bush's father.
It seems unlikely that Bush, in his second term, will adopt John Kerry's pledge to hold one press conference a month if elected. In fact, it's entirely possible that Bush will try to hold even fewer than he did during his first term. It's not as if there was a voter backlash for avoiding the media's questions -- so why should he subject himself to more than he absolutely has to? There was a hint of this in Bush's obligatory post-election news conference on Nov. 4, when he only half-jokingly suggested that the "will of the people" now entitled him to establish more restrictive rules with the press corps. And you'll note that since then, he's only been seen in short, carefully controlled photo ops and joint sessions with other world leaders, who serve as unwitting foils.
And for Bush, questions from the press are not so much inducements to deliberation as they are cues for carefully massaged sound bites that, often as not, the assembled reporters have already heard time and time again. Only very rarely does Bush actually engage a question and break new ground with his answer. And although it has come to the point that no one in the press corps really expects a direct answer anymore, that doesn't mean they should give up on trying to get one.
Even more of a charade these days are the daily briefings held by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose robotic adherence to repeating the predetermined messages of the day -- no matter what questions come his way -- has driven some correspondents to despair. Only narcissists and cranks could possibly feel they are getting much out of asking a question at a McClellan press briefing. Not coincidentally, the cranks are increasingly sitting at the front of the briefing room and getting called upon, in part because some big media organizations don't even bother to fill their assigned chairs anymore. What's the point?
It's true that news conferences, even of the presidential variety, have never been the most important tool for covering the White House. Deflecting tough questions and instead delivering a pre-planned message is a long presidential tradition. Like those before him, Bush goes in heavily briefed by his staff on the likely questions -- most of which are predictable -- and girded with related, but not necessarily responsive, responses. He picks the questioners, he doesn't brook interruptions, he sticks to his message.
Lou Cannon covered the Reagan White House for the Washington Post. "News conferences have always been a forum for the president to say what he wants to say, not for us to get the information that we want to get," Cannon said in an interview. "Occasionally some nugget will come out, but the news conference is really controlled by the president." But Sam Donaldson, who covered the Jimmy Carter and Reagan White Houses for ABC News, said Bush abuses the format more than any of his predecessors. "I think they have it tougher than I ever had it," he says of the modern press corps. "This president has memorized what he wants to say, which he makes fit almost any variation." For instance, Donaldson says, "If the word 'Iraq' comes up, you are going to hear what you've heard 14 or 15 times before. He's not going to really engage in answering the question."
White House news bombshells have pretty much always come from aggressive reporting and leaks, rather than from the president's own mouth. And when presidents are revealing, it's typically in one-on-one interviews, especially longer ones with interlocutors who are prepared, nimble and brave. Nevertheless, as Hearst columnist and legendary White House press corps veteran Helen Thomas puts it: "The presidential news conference is the only forum in our society in which the president can be questioned. If he doesn't answer questions, there's no accountability. He can rule by edict -- which he is very much doing these days We speak for the American people. We have a direct contact with the president of the United States and they don't."
