Paying in Dread for a Date With the People

[radfringe]

Paying in Dread for a Date With the People
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/19/politics/campaign/19LETT.html
By ELISABETH BUMILLER -- Published: April 19, 2004

WASHINGTON -- As Iraq continued to fall into chaos on the Thursday before Easter, the vacationing President Bush decided he would have to submit to an event he hates: a live prime-time news conference in the classical grandeur of the East Room of the White House.

---snip---

Administration officials said the goal at Tuesday's news conference was to regain control of the national political conversation and to explain to Americans the president's reasons for remaining in Iraq. Whether Mr. Bush's performance accomplished that — his supporters called him passionate and unwavering, his critics called him inarticulate and unfocused — the event revealed a lot about the amount of presidential time and planning that goes into what Mr. Bush's aides, like all White House aides, call a highly risky hour with a huge potential for mistakes.

"We prepared for a lot of questions that weren't asked," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. For example, he said, Mr. Bush had expected to be queried about the rebel anti-American Iraqi cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The anticipated question, Mr. Bartlett said, was, "Was it a mistake not to take out Sadr four months ago?" Mr. Bartlett would not say what Mr. Bush's answer would have been.

---snip---

There was body language, too, between Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Karl Rove, the president's chief political aide (who, like Adlai Stevenson with a hole in his shoe, inexplicably turned up in the East Room with holes in the ankles of his socks).

Ms. Rice and Mr. Rove chatted easily in the front row until the president arrived, at which point they watched him with worried expressions on their faces for much of the next hour.

[DeepModem Mom]

1. Bush accuses REPORTERS of "peacocking"???

"Bartlett....added that the president dislikes East Room news conferences not because he is afraid to answer questions, but because of the 'pomp and circumstance' and what Mr. Bush considers the 'peacocking' of reporters." Pot, meet effing kettle!

[izzie]

2. Why is Rice used so much, she knows about Russia.

Russia is not Iraq. Maybe Bush thinks if she knows all about Russia she must know all about Iraq. I have never got why she is telling him what to do. And us.