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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Last August, in Crawford, Texas, George W. Bush gave a barbecue for the press corps. Bush has let it be known that he's not much of a television-news watcher or a newspaper reader, apart from the sports section; and during a conversation with reporters he explained, perhaps without intending to, why his White House often seems indifferent to the press. "How do you then know what the public thinks?" a reporter asked, according to Bush aides and reporters who heard the exchange. And Bush replied, "You're making a huge assumption--that you represent what the public thinks."
At the White House, I recently heard much the same thing--it sounded like a declaration of press irrelevance--from Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff, who said of the press, "They don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election. . . . I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."
Bush's relations with the press are, at once, distant, friendly, and prickly. Many reporters like Bush personally; he gives some of them nicknames (he calls David Gregory, of NBC, "Stretch," and Bill Sammon, of the Washington Times, "Super Stretch"); and, especially during the 2000 campaign, reporters felt comfortable around the jocular candidate. Yet Bush, like many conservatives, also believes that the press is dominated by left-leaning men and women, and that their biases affect their reporting. And, more than any President in recent memory, Bush is uneasy in the spotlight--especially in front of television cameras. When he lacks a prepared script, that discomfort creates a kind of tension that has nothing to do with ideology or personal rapport.
But what the White House insists is most troublesome about the press is its perceived hunger for headlines, which leads, in turn, to carelessness. Mark McKinnon, the director of advertising for Bush's 2000 Presidential campaign and now for his reelection, says, "I've never subscribed to the bias argument about the press. I think the press is tough on everybody. The nature of the news business is that conflict is news."
I heard similar interpretations throughout the White House. Karl Rove, the President's closest political adviser, says of Bush, "He has a cagey respect for them"--the press. "He understands their job is to do a job. And that's not necessarily to report the news. It's to get a headline or get a story that will make people pay attention to their magazine, newspaper, or television more."
According to Rove, who works out of a modest second-floor office at an antique wood desk piled high with papers, Bush sees the press as "elitist" and thinks that the social and economic backgrounds of most reporters have nothing in common with those of most Americans. Bush refers to the major newsweeklies--Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World Report--as "the slicks." Reporters, for their part, see the White House as a fortress. In December of 2002, Bob Deans, who was then the president of the White House Correspondents Association, sent a two-page letter to Andrew Card. He summed up the recent news--Bush had announced a plan to protect the public from smallpox; the Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott, was embroiled in a racial controversy--yet noted that Bush had "not taken a single question" from the White House press in two weeks and had held "substantially fewer press conferences, interviews," and other media events than either Bill Clinton or George H. W. Bush in their first two years. Deans never received a reply.
Bush's view of the press is also personal, and was no doubt shaped by the experience of his father, who sometimes invited reporters to chat or to toss horseshoes, often over the objections of his wife. A former close aide remembers that Barbara Bush, who is similar in temperament to her son, would never speak off the record to reporters, because she believed they would betray her confidence. "She didn't trust these people," the former aide recalls.
When the senior Bush prepared to announce his candidacy, in 1987, he gave unusually close access to Margaret Warner, at the time a correspondent for Newsweek. Warner prepared a generally sympathetic profile, but the piece also took into account what she described as Bush's "potentially crippling handicap"--a perception that he wasn't tough enough for the job. This notion was captured on the cover by these words: "Fighting the 'Wimp Factor.' "
Warner, who is today an anchor on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," defends the profile, but she believes that Newsweek editors tarted it up by inserting the word "wimp" throughout. "I thought to put that word on the cover--and have it hit the stands the day he announced for President--was a cruel, gratuitous thing to do," she says, sounding like any defensive reporter who blames an editor. Warner remembers that the Bush family was "hurt and irate"--and that they let her know it.
George W. Bush, like his mother, is known for holding grudges. "Being there and experiencing how something like that plays out and happens can only make you more guarded," Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, says.
Bartlett, a Texan and former chapter president of the Future Farmers of America, took the job when his predecessor, Karen Hughes, returned to Texas to spend more time with her family. Bartlett had worked for Karl Rove's political-consulting firm and then for Rove's principal client, George W. Bush; he worked with Bush during his two terms as governor of Texas, and then with Hughes. (Bartlett is also a golf partner of the President, and a fellow sports enthusiast.) Today, Bartlett, who is thirty-two, oversees five divisions: press, media affairs (for the out-of-town press), global communications (for the international press), speechwriting, and communications. He runs a staff of fifty-two--thirteen more than worked for President Clinton. Bartlett told me that, more than once, he's heard Bush say of the press, " 'Their business is sometimes to be provocative,' or 'What's the lead going to be?' As opposed to, 'Let's have a conversation.' " Bartlett went on, "So he does like formats and reporters who can get out of the moment and look at the big picture."
Bush has not totally dodged the press. He gave a one-hour interview, in September, to Brit Hume, of Fox News, and cooperated with NBC's Tom Brokaw, CBS's Scott Pelley, and ABC's Diane Sawyer for lengthy interviews. He has talked to the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal but has not given an in-depth interview to the New York Times since becoming President. Nor has he done so with the television anchors Peter Jennings, of ABC, or Dan Rather, of CBS. "I recently did a story on a senior figure in the Bush White House and was told in advance, 'It better be good,' " Jennings recalls. "Which I thought was rather naked. It wasn't a threat, but it didn't sound like a joke. There is a feeling among some members of the press corps that you are either favored by the Administration or not, and that will have something to do with your access." Jennings added that he has interviewed every President since Richard Nixon.
Every modern President has complained about "unfair" and "cynical" reporters and has tried to circumvent the press "filter," just as White House correspondents routinely complain that their access is restricted, that the Administration is hostile or deceptive. Even President Kennedy, who liked journalists and was masterly in his manipulation of them, complained to the Times about David Halberstam's early reporting of the Vietnam conflict, and, angry over coverage of his Administration, cancelled the White House subscription to the Herald Tribune.
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