That was quite a scene in the East Room of the White House the other day, when the customary decorum of a presidential news conference was disrupted by sounds of “Happy Birthday,” serenading President Bush?s 60th.
When a newspaper reporter shouted that it was his birthday too, the notorious playfulness in the man who started the war in Iraq kicked in. He invited not only that reporter but two other men in the audience acknowledging the same birth date to join him at the podium.
Standing by as a straight man in the impromptu cameo was Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He had just met with Bush and was on hand to press, among other things, his protest against a new U.S. policy requiring passports for entry into this country as part of the war on terrorism.
When it comes to clowning around, George W. Bush probably has no peer in presidential lore. He is famous for giving certain reporters and others pet nicknames, such as the moniker “Kenny Boy,” which he used to callthe now-late Kenneth Lay of Enron scandal fame before Lay ran afoul of the law.
A visitor from Mars never would have guessed that Bush and his political wise men had just launched the most public and egregious assault on American journalism since the rants of Vice President Spiro Agnew, in their attacks on The New York Times for its alleged abuse of freedom of the press.
The Times? effrontery in letting the American people in on the administration?s latest secret surveillance operation, this time into widespread financial information as a means of tracking the paper trail of suspected terrorists, was, in the words of a less jovial Bush, “disgraceful.”
His press-basher-in-chief, Vice President Dick Cheney, piled on by observing that the award of a Pulitzer Prize to The Times for a similar story on secret domestic surveillance last year was “doubly disturbing.”
None of this appears to have dented the facade of goodwill that Bush?s personal penchant for horsing around with the press has constructed to veil a deep animosity toward the institution whose responsibilities include ferreting out secrets of a buttoned-up executive branch in wartime.
Administration attack dogs like Cheney question who elected the executive editor of The New York Times to decide what is essential to the nation?s security. But others cite the First Amendment as the bulwark against assaults by government officials who don?t like anybody peeking under their tent.
Bill Keller, The Times? editor, rejects the notion that its banking surveillance story was handed to the newspaper on a silver platter. He says it resulted from months of sleuthing, including examining public documents that enabled the paper to learn the truth. And he notes long conversations with high administration officials over the risk to national security, before the decision to publish was made.
At the core, a president who launched a warand has continued to conduct it with cavalier disregard for the laws of this country and the agreed international codes of treatment of combatants and detainees stands on shaky ground to cry foul against the press.
The recent Supreme Court decision slapping him down on his plan to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay in contravention of these laws and codes has provided powerful justification for a vigilant press blowing the whistle on a president who has increasingly adopted an anything-goes modus operandi.
For much too long, the American news media as a whole shelved its traditional skepticism toward the Bush rationales for misleading and thumbing its nose at the United Nations, invading Iraq and playing on valid public outrage toward the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to sustain the unrelated war in that country.
Now that much of that sidelined skepticism is dominating press scrutiny of Bush?s radical course in foreign policy, even his playful facade toward certain reporters cannot hide his determination to enlist public opinion against the watchdog institution that seems at last to have gotten its bearings.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
