Ari Fleischer, the New President's Mouthpiece
Ari Fleischer, the Bush administration's human trumpet, is considered a savvy old pro at the middling age of 40. He has a degree in political science and he got his political education flacking for Republican candidates in his home state of New York, the Congressional Republican Party and several of its candidates, as a staffer on Capitol Hill and in two presidential campaigns last year.
And now the new kid on the block is about to get another kind of education that will determine whether he deserves his resume upgrade to White House press secretary. The reluctant Fleischer will learn that there's a world of difference between the planeload of reporters who cover campaigns and the 8000 or so who are accredited in the nation's capital and to the White House itself.
The difference is more than size. It's a mind-set. In the boozy camaraderie of campaign planes and the 18-hour days of slogging, dog-tired, through wheat fields and mudflats, there's a bonding of sorts that more than makes up for the competitive edge of on-the-road reporting. But in Washington, it's journalism with a difference. High-level reporting is more of a social romp through the literary teacups: a mannerly trade of well-dropped leaks, private briefings, power breakfasts and invitations to the proper salons and White House dinners. And the ubiquitous Fleischer, as White House spokesman, will do well to discern the difference quickly. It's one thing to issue campaign statements. It's another to deliver the presidential message and devise the White House communications strategy that speaks not only to reporters but to the nation as well.
Fleisher's new world is not the contrived, cocksure set of The West Wing. White House reporters are a bitchy brood, coddled to a fault, wined and dined with heads of state, and given the best accommodations on which to rest their coifed heads and lecture fees of up to $20,000 a pop. And they're also among the best and the brightest journalists on the planet.
Moreover, from the White House Fleischer will have to coordinate and control the sprawling communications network of agency and department press secretaries who are scattered across Washington and the world. By all accounts, he has so far turned in a congenial but cautious performance as a campaign spokesman who can dance around the rim of the dish. Translation: he's unsure of himself and is more comfortable saying nothing than something, a stylistic approach that won't fly in the briefing room where one-liners zing by like shrapnel. Often, press secretary and reporter act like two dogs, circling and sniffing, trying to decide whether to make love or war.
Fleischer was the Bush campaign's out-front spokesman and press dartboard, second only to the campaign's hard-edged communications director Karen Hughes, who'll also be his boss at the White House. Fleischer joined Bush after the collapse of Elizabeth Dole's campaign, for which he was also primary mouthpiece.
During the Bush campaign, and especially during the 35 days of Florida's death by a thousand cuts, Fleischer was regularly outgunned, outfaxed and even outfoxed by Al Gore's spin machine, although in the end the gang-of-five Supreme Court handed Fleischer the winning end of the lollipop.
But the daily press briefings on foreign and domestic policy in the White House fishbowl are tricky affairs that have claimed more than one loose-lipped or ill-prepared press secretary. And one shortcoming on Fleischer's resume is that he has no background or experience as a working journalist. The deal is that Fleischer is part of the honeymoon package: how long the love-fest lasts determines how long he survives the firing line.
The wunderkind George Stephanopoulos, for example, was an early victim of the daily briefings in the Clinton White House, although he survived backstage with the amorphous title of counselor to the president. And remember, too, that it was Stephanopoulos who enraged reporters by sealing off a section of the White House that had previously been accessible to the press. Dee Dee Myers, similarly, was decapitated as a Clinton press secretary. And Mike McCurry, survivor of the Monica Lewinsky era, was probably the smoothest of the recent think-on-your-feet spokesmen until he passed the lectern to the since-departed Joe Lockhart.
Most press secretaries are very much reflections of their bosses in style, manner and the delivery of information. Fleischer's boss is a casual-to-a-fault, outgoing, consensus-minded conservative who demonstrated his easygoing resilience by surviving the lacerations of the press during a brutal year of campaigning and a wrist-slasher of a finale.
Since the election, Bush is revealing his tender side over the Peeping-Tom press: he has worked mightily to avoid the pack of reporters who travel in his footprints, presumably on the theory that underexposure is often preferable to overexposure. Above all, Bush demands loyalty and tight-lipped service from those around him. And Fleischer, with equal measures of artful dodging, has been busy honing his skills at obfuscation.
After an election, many major news organizations shift their campaign reporters over to the White House beat, the theory being that the campaign reporters know the new president's every nuance of style and substance after a year of exposure. So, Fleischer and many of the reporters who'll be covering the White House will already have tested each other, although not in the hothouse atmosphere of the White House briefing room. And many reporters on the White House beat could nearly double Fleischer in experience if not age.
In an era of fax attacks, e-mail, cellphones, satellite feeds, the entropic wail of talk radio and talking heads, there are no iron laws governing encounters with the press, only a few general principles of engagement: