NewsWatch: White House

June 14, 2006

Needler in chief

Wednesday at Bush's Rose Garden press conference, the president teased Peter Wallsten of the LA Times about the sunglasses he was wearing for the event. It's a standard Bush jest, of sorts. He once took issue with the similar eyewear sported in the Rose Garden by Oren Dorell from USA Today. But with Wallsten, it was different:

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

Q: I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm interested in the shade look, seriously.

Q: All right, I'll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there's no sun.

Q: I guess it depends on your perspective.

THE PRESIDENT: Touche.

It was a funny moment, and everyone laughed. But the blog was shy of posting it because Wallsten is a good friend. What Bush didn't know is that the reporter has a degenerative eye disease, and the fashionable shades were more than an expression of Wallsten's natural, suave demeanor in the Rose Garden.

By early afternoon, some of the nation's bloggers were going totally scary crackers on the incident, harumphing extensively over Bush's presumed insensitivity.

But now Nedra Pickler, hottie of the AP and another Friend of this Blog (who actually has very few friends, despite extensive name-dropping here) sets the record straight and further: reports that Bush called Wallsten on his cell phone to apologize.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, who often teases members of the White House press corps, apologized Wednesday after he poked fun at a reporter for wearing sunglasses without realizing they were needed for vision loss.

The exchange occurred at a news conference in the Rose Garden.

Bush called on Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten and asked if he was going to ask his question with his "shades" on.

"For the viewers, there's no sun," Bush said to the television cameras.

But even though the sun was behind the clouds, Wallsten still needs the sunglasses because he has Stargardt's disease, a form of macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss. The condition causes Wallsten to be sensitive to glare and even on a cloudy day, can cause pain and increase the loss of sight.

Wallsten said Bush called his cell phone later in the day to apologize and tell him that he didn't know he had the disease. Wallsten said he interrupted and told the president that no apology was necessary and that he didn't feel offended since he hadn't told anyone at the White House about his condition.

"He said, `I needle you guys out of affection,'" Wallsten said. "I said, 'I understand that, but I don't want you to treat me any differently because of this.'"

Wallsten said the president said he would not treat him differently, so Wallsten encouraged him to "needle away."

"He said, `I will. Next time I'll just use a different needle,'" Wallsten said.

Wallsten said he thought that was a pretty good line. And his only complaint is that the president didn't answer his question at the news conference.

Wallsten, who is also author of a book coming out next month titled "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century," had asked about White House credibility now in the aftermath of top aide Karl Rove having been cleared in the CIA leak investigation. But Bush said he wouldn't comment with another top White House aide still facing prosecution in the case.

The blog is so jealous! A call from POTUS to say sorry? Unheard of! He never really apologized for Abu Ghraib. Wallsten totally has to buy everyone drinks now. Who gets a call from Bush on their cell phone? That is so cool.

Posted by Julie Mason at 08:59 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)

June 13, 2006

The president, the PM and THE KING

A quick notice from the White House:

The President and Mrs. Bush will accompany Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan to Memphis, Tennessee, on June 30, 2006, the day following the Prime Minister's visit to the White House. The two leaders will visit Graceland Mansion, home of the Presley Family. The President and Mrs. Bush look forward to introducing the Prime Minister to the beauty and warm hospitality of the people of the Volunteer State.

The blog is once again all agog! Will the Chron possibly send the blog to cover this astounding news event? Can a case actually be made? Probably not.

The prime minister's love of Elvis is well-documented. In 2001, he released a compilation of his favorite Elvis tunes. Apparently, they also share a birthday.

At a dinner in Australia last year, Koizumi sang along to the Presley classic, "Can't Help Falling in Love." Then, poignantly:

After the performance, Koizumi mounted the stage and thanked the musicians for playing his ''favorite song,'' and added, ''Since I became prime minister, I gave up falling in love.''

During a 2003 visit to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Koizumi allegedly crooned some Elvis songs while lounging at the pool.

Graceland! The blog suspects the prime minister will go crazy in the gift shop.

Bush said in 2004 that Koizumi said Bush reminded him of Gary Cooper.

It's amazing -- he's a great guy, by the way. Elvis Presley is one of his favorites. His favorite movie was Gary Cooper in "High Noon." One time he walked up to me and said, "You like Cooper." I said, "I'm like Cooper?" He said, "Yes." I finally figured out what he meant.

Posted by Julie Mason at 02:48 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

Subterfuge!

More behind the scenes shenanigans at the White House. All the official stuff you can see on T.V. But this morning, Julie Hirschfeld Davis of the Baltimore Sun showed up unawares for her regular, 6:50 a.m. pool duty at the White House.

Davis thought she was going to Camp David to see the president. She was half right.

POOL REPORT #4, 6/13/06
Teleconference at Camp David
In Which The Intown Pool Discovers It Is Part of an Elaborate Ruse, And Is Never Actually In The Same Room As POTUS

Or the same time zone, continent, etc. Her pool report to the rest of the press corps summarizes:

It was a few minutes after your unsuspecting pool had departed the file at Camp David in a minibus to head up to the compound, at 9:10 a.m., when Blackberries and cell phones began buzzing and chirping to herald the news that POTUS was not on the premises, or even in the country, but had instead snuck off the night before on a super-secret trip to Iraq.

Nevertheless, the bewildered pool was deposited at Camp at 9:20 a.m. and led by a Marine into the Evergreen Chapel, where we held for a little under 20 minutes guarded by two Marines holding large guns -- one in the balcony and one at the front of the chapel by the pulpit. We were then led down a paved, wooded path, where we held still longer in front of a lodge marked "Laurel," next to a fleet of golf carts emblazoned with "Camp David."

It was during this wait that one of the White House's "In Case You Missed It" e-mails flashed across our Blackberry screens telling of Bush's surprise trip to Baghdad, its subject-line taking on new meaning.

The "In Case You Missed It" White House series is a head's up email to journalists, supporters, presumably members of Congress and others, reminding recipients of the day's most positive Bush news stories - in case you missed it.

Davis and the rest of the in-town, not-in-Baghdad press pool stood by in a conference room at Camp David while Bush teleconferenced alongside Maliki and others, to a waiting contingent of White House officials on premise. Much of it was in Arabic.

Cheney gave a half-smile in the general direction of the pool as he listened to his translation and we stood watching, understanding nothing....We were escorted out at 10:40.

Which was more incomprehensible - Cheney's half-smile or the proceedings in Arabic? Davis gives no clue.

On a slightly related note, we learned yesterday that the staff at Camp David all hustle around on golf carts marked "Camp David," except for one -- which is marked "Golf Cart One."

Posted by Julie Mason at 12:31 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Bush in Baghdad

Oops, he did it again! On reflection, the blog did find it suspicious that certain members of the press corps, not given to overzealous exertion, were staying overnight in Hagerstown for day two of the Camp David summit. Camp David is only an hour outside of D.C., and frankly, it was not that great a meeting.

Now it's clear that they were being positioned by the White House for the late-night mad-dash to Baghdad. Print pool reporters Yochi Dreazen of the WSJ and Richard Wolffe of Newsweek (woot!) are on the trip and filed two massive pool reports so far:

Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett told reporters aboard Air Force One that the trip was planned over the past month by a small group of six White House he described as a "very, very close circle of people." He said that Mr. Bush had wanted to come to Iraq as soon as the final positions in Mr. Maliki's government - the ministers of Defense and Interior - were chosen. Had those posts been filled sooner, Mr. Bush would have made the trip several months earlier, Mr. Bartlett said.

Dreazen just started on the WH beat after three years covering the war in Iraq for the Wall St. Journal. He and Wolffe explained the secrecy around the trip:

Secrecy was also tight surrounding the gathering of your pool. Reporters were informed of the president's travel plans in person at a variety of Washington area restaurants, homes, and cafes little more than 24 hours before departure. A harried radio correspondent discovered his pool assignment with a couple of hours' notice (he still made the drive from the Camp David file in time.) Poolers were under strict orders to tell nobody about the travel, including spouses. Some were asked if their bureaus would notice their absence for a day or two.

Um? The blog can say with some certainty that her absence from the workplace for a day or two would at least be remarked upon. But it's a funny question from the White House. Clearly, they wouldn't notice if we didn't show up for a day or two. But we digress.

Restaurants, homes and cafes? This is so distracting.

The pool gathered outside an Arlington, Virginia hotel and was asked to surrender cell phones, blackberries etc. Some found this hard on an emotional level, but complied all the same. We then drove the back roads of Andrews directly to a parking lot outside the secure area surrounding the runway. Security personnel used hand-held wands to check us for metal objects, and a bomb-sniffing dog was led past all of our luggage. The dog also sniffed under the vans we had traveled in. We drove directly to the steps of AF1, which was parked out of sight of the terminal, close by its hangar. The usual protocols were absent: no officers checking names at the base of the stairs, no departure wave from the president [it was dark when the substitute Marine One landed.] For those who care, dinner was ravioli and the initial entertainment was a Nationals-Colorado game.

The radio pooler in question, FYI, is David Greene from NPR. A friend of the blog, he did seem distracted and a little frantic at Camp David yesterday. Come to think of it, he was also wearing a tie, which seems weird - unless you're going on Air Force One! It's all becoming clear now.

Also, apparently this means we're *not* having the 2:30 press avail with Bush in the Rose Garden?

Continuing:

Although the president's trip to Baghdad was set to last only five hours, aides said that he would keep to a busy schedule. Mr. Bartlett said the president would hold bilateral discussions with Mr. Maliki before joining the Iraqi premier and his cabinet for the video teleconference with the U.S. cabinet officials gathered at Camp David . President Bush was also scheduled to meet with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, the speaker of Iraq's parliament, and an undisclosed roster of Iraqis drawn from the country's business, cultural and educational circles.

Mr. Bartlett said the main point of the trip was to enable Mr. Bush to meet Mr. Maliki face-to-face and get a clearer sense of the Iraqi premier's priorities and the specific ways the U.S. government could help him succeed. [In a briefing last week before the Iraq trip was announced, Mr. Bartlett had said the U.S. was already reviewing ways it could help Mr. Maliki disarm the country's sectarian militias and improve its spotty electricity system.] He declined to say whether the two men planned to discuss the timing and scope of any U.S. military withdrawals from Iraq.

Posted by Julie Mason at 08:54 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

June 12, 2006

Decamped

The White House, the president, and his entourage of press have repaired to the leafy precincts of Camp David today, for the start of a two-day summit on Iraq and what the administration likes to call "The Way Forward."

Knight Ridder set it up this way:

Bush isn't the first president to take his troubles to Camp David. The heavily guarded 143-acre compound, about 70 miles from the White House, is where presidents go to clear their heads, revive their spirits and think through vexing problems.

The administration has trucked in some outside experts, and a bunch of Cabinet members. Tomorrow, they will teleconference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Cabinet, from Baghdad.

The blog has never been to Camp David, and the closest most in the press get today is a camp site outside of the compound, where we are set up in a gymnasium that smells pleasantly of pine.

Yeah, this looks like the place. Ah, nature.

It's got kind of a Blair Witch-type vibe, but CNN is here.

Posted by Julie Mason at 09:34 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)