There’s wild consternation in Washington, as Presidential Press Corps Doyenne Helen Thomas was snubbed at last week’s press conference. Indeed, some folks seem to see this as yet further proof of Dubya’s pettiness and attempts to duck hard questions.
Well, let’s see. Thomas is not exactly a model of impartial journalism, for starters. Nor has she given Dubya much reason to offer her respect, having received none himself.
For four decades the White House correspondent for United Press International, Mrs. Thomas, 82, has in recent months harangued Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, asking how President Bush can slaughter innocent Iraqis in a quest for oil.
Now syndicated by Hearst Newspapers, Mrs. Thomas has also denounced Mr. Bush outside the confines of the White House briefing room. “This is the worst president ever,” Mrs. Thomas told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., in January. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”
And so it’s a surprise that he chose not to let her “speak” for the press corp, and didn’t choose to let her get air time for her views? After all, whose press conference was this?
Tradition is a fine thing, but it’s not like Ms Thomas’ “position” was graven in stone. And while it’s dangerous for the President to seem like he’s ducking tough questions (though given the questions he did take, that hardly seems to have been the case), he’s not under any particular obligation to give anyone among the reporters to have a soap box to speak from.
Hmmm…
I thought that the questions seemed pretty “Pre-approved” and “Softball”.
But, I guess it just depends on your point of view…
“President Bush, you’ve turned world opinion against us. Why?”
“President Bush, the last time the US tried this was in Viet Nam. How can you convince people this will be any different?”
If by softball you mean that nobody accused him of knowing in advance about 9/11, or about going after Iraq because of the oil, then, yeah, maybe it was softball.
No…
Softball as in they way that things were phased. It was a dream QnA session for him. People could have changed the way that they asked the questions…But then they would have been sidelined like Helen Thomas.
The Viet Nam question was irrelevant, since the war had nothing to do with Regime change, but to preserve a series of corrupt and oppressive puppet dictatorships.
And we already know that Bush doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks, or that this war could bring down the Governments of Spain, Australia, UK, and Italy. Or if there is no war resolution by the UNSC that these same governments are in violation of the UN/Geneva convention/World Court treaties they signed…making them war criminals.
Well, that is a classic problem in presidential news conferences. You don’t want to come across as an Administration patsy (for a number of reasons), but you don’t want to either alienate your host, or make people think that you’re more interested in making a statement instead of asking a question.
Yes, the Viet Nam question was irrelevant — but it served to conjure up (false) connections between that conflict and this. Not something easily addressed, nor something that I think a “dream” Q&A session would have raised.
As an example of soap boxes, and the sorts of things Ms Thomas says, try this bit from the 26 February press briefing at the White House:
Then why are you going to bomb them? I mean, how do you bomb people back to democracy? This is a question of conquest. They didn’t ask to be liberated by the United States. This is our self-imposed political solution for them.
That’s some “question” there. I don’t see any reason why Thomas should have been given a similar opportunity on national TV. She has a syndicated column in which to do so.