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One consequence of the president holding so few news conferences is that the ones he does hold generate an inordinate amount of attention. More than a week after the latest prime-time press gaggle, Atrios reprints an interesting exchange involving the Public Editor’s office of The New York Times. Responding to a reader who had asked about the claim — made recently by author Ron Suskind — that reporters submit their questions in advance of presidential press conferences — a representative for Times Public Editor Dan Okrent could confirm only that, “I’m fairly certain that two reporters at the press conference asked unscripted questions.” The representative couldn’t say whether the question asked by Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller was one of those two — which is fairly odd, since Bumiller herself wrote in her Monday column that reporters don’t submit questions in advance. The Public Editor’s representative suggested that the reader “write to the president if you are unhappy with this system.”
Josh Marshall, citing two friends from the White House press corps, confirms “categorically” that submitting questions in advance just doesn’t happen. (Campaign Desk itself has talked to three White House reporters — Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, John Dickerson of Time, and Bill Sammon of The Washington Times — in attendance last Tuesday who also say they don’t submit questions to the White House in advance, and they know of no one else who does. Our email inquiry to Suskind, sent yesterday, has so far proved fruitless.) But Atrios, for one, isn’t convinced. “I have no doubt,” he writes, “that some of the journalists do not submit questions and do not believe the questions are submitted. However, that isn’t the same thing as saying no journalists submit questions.”
As for Marshall, remembering last Tuesday puts him in the mood to take a shot at Sammon, the Washington Times reporter (and Water Cooler interviewee). Sammon was one of the president’s “must-calls” — a group described by Marshall as “ringer journalists who they know will toss the president a lifeline with some gimme question.” Sammon’s question — “You have been accused of letting the 9-11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough. First, could you respond to that general criticism? And, secondly, in the wake of these two conflicts, what is the appropriate threat level to justify action in perhaps other situations going forward?” — was “ridiculous”, according to Marshall, and he suggests another in the same vein that Sammon might have asked: “Mr. President, many commentators claim John Kerry is a ridiculous liberal who can’t stand up to the bad guys. Can you comment?”
Turning to more recent developments, Mickey Kaus reads Jim VandeHei’s piece in today’s Washington Post on John Kerry’s emerging strategy, and wonders, “If Kerry wants and needs to run a centrist campaign, is his us-against-them populist strategist Bob Shrum capable of pulling it off?” Kaus surveys the evidence — chiefly Al Gore’s Shrum-inspired populism in 2000 — and finds it discouraging. “Still,” he reasons, “It’s not as if Shrum isn’t smart enough to learn from his past mistakes.”
On the other side of the blog-aisle, David Adesnik of Oxblog is impressed that two conservative publications, The Weekly Standard and The National Review, each “devote their editorials to bashing” Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld. But Adesnik takes issue with the exclusive focus on Rummy: “If the Secretary of Defense has been screwing that badly [sic] for that long isn’t it time to hold the President responsible?” Now there’s an image — somebody call Wonkette!
And now for something completely different: Andrew Sullivan, returning to his roots, highlights “a fascinating moment in British politics,” in which Tony Blair has opted to put the new proposed EU constitution to a referendum, at a date TBA. Eight other countries plan on holding similar votes, and the stakes are high: Adopting the proposed constitution “would mark the essential end of the European nation-state as we have understood it,” according to Sullivan. But a “no” vote from Britain would make the constitution “as dead as the infamous parrot.”
–Zachary Roth
Update, 5/6, 10:16 am: New York Times Ombudsman Daniel Okrent has emailed Campaign Desk to say that, shortly after the note about the presidential press conference went out from his office, he superseded it with another. The second note confirmed that the Times has not submitted, and does not submit, questions in advance.
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