Word: fleischer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unpleasant, and give them enough English to make the president look good. There is a tacit commerce in this: reporters and the press secretary agree on a set of facts and then quibble over their interpretation. In the process, the administration gets a hearing and the reporters get information. Fleischer did some spinning of the traditional sort, but his 28 months behind the podium are notable because he rewrote the rules of the exchange by virtually eliminating it. He shriveled the practice of imparting useful information and often strolled right by uncomfortable facts, always with a smile. In this...
...Fleischer, who announced last week that he would resign in July, must be judged a success for such fealty to his boss' wishes. Democrats express grudging admiration for the Bush team's remarkable ability to control the flow of information. "There is a fairly large group of Democrats who think there's a great lesson in this," says Joe Lockhart, who held Fleischer's job under President Clinton. But can the Fleischer Method be mimicked? Here are three topics that will test the truth-stretching skills of Ari's successor...
...conceal quantities, vast quantities, of highly lethal material and [the] weapons to deliver it," Colin Powell intoned during his presentation at the United Nations in February. After two months of looking, U.S. forces have yet to turn up any quantity of WMD, vast or otherwise, which explains why Fleischer and his counterparts at the State and Defense departments rarely mention Saddam's illegal weapons unless asked by reporters. In another recalibration last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that no one in the administration had ever said that there were nuclear weapons in Iraq, though Vice President Cheney had claimed...
...Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden's right hand man, issued a new threat against the U.S., reminding Americans that al-Qaeda's two top dogs are still out there. So has the tide turned or not? "The President said that al-Qaeda has been diminished, but has not been destroyed," Fleischer explained...
...Whatever challenges confront the new press secretary - who is likely to be Fleischer's deputy, Scott McClellan - they will all be framed in the context of the approaching 2004 election. Always nervous that the president's official duties will seem politically motivated, the White House wants to conceal any outward appearance of striving for victory while working robustly behind the scenes to do just that. No one will have to maintain this balance more than the new resident behind the podium. In 2000, Bush's team tried to keep the press at bay, much as it does in the White...