Bush's Media Barbecue: No Grilling President Treats Press To Off-the-Record Bash By Dana Milbank Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 29, 2003; Page C01 CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 28 -- In the time-honored political tradition of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, President Bush invited the White House press corps out to his ranch Wednesday night for a poolside barbecue. For reporters who have spent the last month sleeping in cricket-infested Waco hotels and watching cable news in a middle school gymnasium that houses the news media's operations, it was a chance to see another side of central Texas: the rolling prairies, roving cattle herds and, not least, the large swimming pool on the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Sipping their Shiner Bocks at sunset (Bush drank nonalcoholic Buckler), many of the journalists were forced to acknowledge that Prairie Chapel Ranch is not such an awful place after all. Though the combined audience of the assembled news outlets is in the tens if not hundreds of millions, the words uttered by the president and Laura Bush cannot be conveyed to the public -- the White House required that the conversations be off the record. It was the first such gathering of the full press corps at Bush's ranch and the second of its kind in Bush's presidency. In early evening, some 50 journalists and camera crews, along with a dozen aides and as many Secret Service agents, piled into a half-dozen white vans for the drive to the heavily fortified Bush ranch and its relatively modest limestone compound. (Reporters were not allowed in the main house but connived their way into the guest house by saying they needed to use the toilets.) The president and the first lady -- he in jeans and she in khakis -- formed a receiving line at the pool, which the president dubbed the "Whining Pool" because he built it to keep his daughters from kvetching. In a gesture that vastly raised the journalists' assessment of Bush, the teetotaling president arranged for them to be served beer from coolers and Australian (read: not French) red wine. Barney, the Scottish terrier, elected to drink water from the pool. Spot, the other presidential dog, took a brief dip in the pool. The reporters, though invited to bring their swimsuits, elected not to take a dip. The president led his guests on a tour of the ranch, as he has done before with his favorite heads of state. The scribes, slowed by a month of chicken-fried steaks, struggled onto the beds of several waiting pickup trucks. Bush took the wheel of the first truck and led the journalists, many of whom wouldn't know a cottonmouth from cotton candy, on a dusty, four-mile tour, weaving past canyons, pastures and an equal number of cattle and Secret Service outposts. Back at the Whining Pool, the press corps did what it does best: load up on fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, jalapeno biscuits and peach cobbler. Bush, with his choice of a half-dozen tables, sat down with the camera crews. Though what they discussed cannot be divulged, the talk after Bush left focused on bass fishing and the Big 12 conference. A scrum of journalists followed the president from truck to chicken to cobbler. One tried, unsuccessfully, to pepper Bush with foreign policy questions. Another pleaded for more such private moments, moaning, "I miss you!" Still others wanted to know what the first lady thought of being called a "lump" by her husband. The answer? Off the record. The sun had set, the cobbler was gone and Barney, tired of the whole thing, began barking ferociously at the guests. The president retreated to his compound, the press to the crickets in their hotel rooms.
I'm trying to recall a President who has avoided answering questions from the press as much as this guy and I can't. It's remarkable. And he's not taken to task for it in any way, shape or fashion worth mentioning because the poor smucks still think they might get "something, anything" from GWB at some point in the future. It's time for the Press Corp to stop hoping and start giving Bush loud and very publicized hell about it... non stop until the public sits up, takes notice and takes up the cry for access to their President by the 4th Estate.
Well, I don't blame him for not talking to them. They daily castigate him on every issue and put a negative spin on anything the admin does, from Iraq to tax cuts. When have you ever seen a positive story (like him or dislike him) from the NY Times, LA Times, AJC, Boston Globe, Washington Compost, all left-leaning big papers? The simple answer is you haven't and you won't. I don't have a problem with a watchdog press (since that is my occupation), but when you have an activist press firmly on one side of the political spectrum, that is ridiculous. He shouldn't answer any of their questions, he is not constitutionally mandated to do so at all. When a group is out to destroy you, why even bother talking to them or even paying attention to them?
Yes, the press is out to get Bush like no president before him has been gotten. I mean, president Clinton, never, ever, ever had to deal with a hostile press that chased down every scorned woman in arkansas with a story to tell and who nneded a dollar....It's not like Newsweek had a fulltime reporter, Michael Isikoff, solely to track down past sex scandals, which were of vital import to...uh, well.... BTW, BS, you need to get your facts straight, the LA Times is renowned for being a right wing newspaper. Now, its one thing for you to b**** and moan about the "liberal" media from certain newspapers whose editorial pages lean one way, but that is just plain wrong.
the presidential media are lap dogs anchors should be calling the president out on this, and they don't Jon Stewart is the only anchor with the nads to do it lap dogs
The media are just spoiled from all the open-mic press conferences Bush has had so far. He has answered way too many questions from the media already.
the title should be referring to a different position ... the media are not standing up to Bush, but bending over for him
