Word: fleischer
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...When Ari Fleischer was press secretary for the Bush administration, he had a measurable effect on the behavior of the White House press corps. Not just on what we wrote-that was his job of course. But you could see it in the actions of the correspondents after a briefing: Lots of kicking of trash cans or spontaneous verbal eruptions to no one in particular. The Bush team promised to crimp the flow of information from the White House and Fleischer executed that policy masterfully...
...December 2002, I had a spell of the Ari Agitation. We were returning on Air Force One from St. Petersburg, Russia. I was trying to get Fleischer to explain how the President's hope that Saddam Hussein would peaceably disarm was consistent with his earlier view that the Iraqi leader should be removed from office. Fleischer insisted that Bush's policy was "regime change," a term the Administration used to muddle the less diplomatic but real goal of removing Saddam from office. It was a familiar dodge, but a little clarity from the plainspoken Texan's administration about going...
...Couldn't the press secretary help us reconcile the President's public comments? Fleischer would not acknowledge what the President had said, but repeatedly retreated to the safety and meaninglessness of the "regime change" language. We talked in circles in the aisle of the press cabin. He didn't budge. I soon felt like hurling myself through any opening I could find in the fuselage...
...When I sat down to read Taking Heat, Fleischer's memoir of his White House years, I should have brought a cold compress. Fleischer spends much of the book knocking the press, as you might expect. Such criticism isn't the problem; he makes some good points and as a partisan booster of the President he is entitled, like all before him, to swing back at the press corps...
...rest of the book is a glowing portrait of the President. Perhaps all we should expect from the man who served with such distinction in one of the hardest public jobs in politics. But Fleischer witnessed sweeping history. Surely there is something to be gleaned from being so close to the center of such drama. We don't need secrets, just insight. No luck. Even the behind-the-scenes moments he recounts have an off the rack quality: Bush is strong, resolute and likes making decisions...