President Bush bid adieu to the old press briefing room in the White House on Wednesday — and ended up in a friendly shouting match with veteran reporter Sam Donaldson.
Bush made the surprise appearance at the conclusion of White House Press Secretary Tony Snow’s final press briefing in the decrepit room, which will be closed for a renovation that will take up to a year. Journalists will move to temporary quarters outside the White House while the room and an adjacent press work area are gutted and rebuilt.
Snow was joined on the dais by President Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, for whom the room is named.
Brady, who was shot during an assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, is confined to a wheelchair.
Brady was one of a half-dozen former press secretaries who showed up in the sweltering chamber that has occasionally been the site of memorable moments in American history. Also on hand were Marlin Fitzwater (who served under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush), Jody Powell (Carter), Ron Nessen (Ford), and Joe Lockhart and Dee Dee Myers (Clinton).
“I know you’ve been complaining about the digs for a while,” Bush began, before joking about the room’s feeble air conditioning system. He was not aware that a woman at the back of the packed room had become faint from the heat and was lying on the floor.
Donaldson, known for shouting pointed questions at Reagan, demanded that Bush comment on actor Mel Gibson’s drunken, anti-Semitic rant. But Bush, as Reagan had, pretended not to hear Donaldson, whom he joked was a “has-been.”
“Better to have been a has-been than a never-was,” replied the newsman, who joked he was young enough to be the son of Helen Thomas, doyenne of the White House press corps.
Donaldson, who has not worked in the White House for years, made it clear he did not appreciate the president’s dodge. “Is this how it works here now?” he muttered to fellow journalists afterward.
