Little too cozy?
Toolbox
Published: March 30, 2007
There was abundant and amusing coverage yesterday of President Bush laughing it up with journalists at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington Wednesday night.
"A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone," the president joked. "Ah, those were the good ol' days."
Then he added: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys (eight federal prosecutors) go … you know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers."
Bush also explained Vice President Dick Cheney's absence: "He's had a rough few weeks. To be honest, his feelings were kind of hurt. He said he was going on vacation to Afghanistan where people like him."
The president was referring to the bomb that exploded close to the building where Cheney met Afghan officials last month.
Americans shouldn't begrudge their president – even this particularly inept president – an evening of jolly good fun. However, two aspects of this particular revelry should raise serious questions about the timing and the propriety of events of this kind.
The first, obviously, is that the United States is in an especially difficult and dangerous situation, thanks largely to President Bush's misguided mission in Iraq and his administration's disdain for the Constitutional protections that have served the American people so well for more than 200 years. And of course, the fact that he seems so thoroughly oblivious to the message the voters sent him in the November elections may make his jokes somewhat more difficult to swallow.
The second aspect, not nearly so obvious and perhaps less offensive to many, is that there's something unseemly – dare we say inappropriate? – about our nation's top political leaders getting together for this kind of shared fun with the very people whose principal responsibility it is to provide serious, analytical news coverage of this (or any other) administration.
There was great controversy last year when comedian Stephen Colbert's stinging satire (that is, after all, his specialty) directed at President Bush and the Washington press corps itself upset not only important political guests but some of the journalists themselves who didn't like being pilloried, even in fun, at their own banquet for what many Americans perceive to have been their less-than-stellar performance in the days before the war in Iraq.
This year, in an apparent bid to avoid a similar controversy, the White House Correspondents Association hired Rich Little instead, confident that his brand of humor – he specializes in bland impersonations of celebrities – won't offend anyone. And there's nothing wrong with that, although it does suggest a certain degree of sensitivity on the organization's part.
But it is fair to ask if it isn't time for the White House press corps to consider modifying – or even ending – its curious custom of partying, elbow to elbow, with Washington's most powerful political leaders. And what about the roomful of celebrities – few of whom seem to have any significant connection to the journalists' mission – who are invited to join them? In recent years, it almost as if there's serious competition to see which network or newspaper can invite the most newsworthy non-journalists to grace their table.
At one level, it appears to be harmless fun. But when more and more Americans seem predisposed to question the objectivity and fairness of the press corps, such socializing between journalists and politicians may be silently undermining the public's confidence in one of the principal bulwarks of our democracy.
42