White House Report: Was the Press Conference a Canned Dog & Pony Show?

Tuesday's prime time presidential press conference from the White House marked a new low point in American journalism. The White House press corps and the major television networks stooped further to perform as compliant lap dogs to the president than perhaps ever before.

First, it was unheard of before Tuesday that, on the pretext of holding a press conference aired live on all the major networks, the president would be allowed to exploit the opportunity to deliver a 14-minute campaign speech. This is unprecedented. At best, in the past, presidents have occasionally made brief statement on urgent matters before opening the conference to the press.

Never (and I have attended many of these conferences going back to the Reagan era) has the press corps, including the networks, been so disrespected as to be forced to sit in silent compliance at what was supposed to be a press conference while the president expounded at length prepared remarks in what we all know is already the heat of a campaign.

But that's not all. This one went one further as revealed by two unintended, potentially scandalous slips of the tongue by the president, himself, that suggest a foul and unethical collusion occurred between the press corps and the White House.

• First, the president let slip that there was some kind of agreement worked out in advance to call on certain journalists. When one journalist tried to jump in with a question, the president ignored him and pointed to another, commenting, "Hold on for a minute. I've got some `must calls.' I'm sorry."

• Second, check out the following exchange late in the press conference according to a full and unedited transcript of the conference published in the Financial Times of London:

"Q. Mr. President, in the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?

"The President. I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. (Laughter). John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. You know, I just – I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet."

In between "I just" and "I'm sure" was a long, tortured silence, almost a meltdown, a stunning and revealing moment. The president grimaced and twisted while trying to think, unsuccessfully, of something to say. He then launched a lengthy, disjointed and rambling regurgitated defense of his actions, concluding,

"I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't – you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

(This exchange was not included in the carefully-edited Washington Post transcript of the conference).

The president came right out and said the reason he was unprepared for the question was that he did not have it in writing ahead of time.

This strongly suggests that, since he was so ill equipped to respond to it and by such a stark contrast to how well prepared he was for all the other questions, that, indeed, it was the practice that all the journalists' questions were submitted in writing in advance.

Put that together with the "must calls" the president referred to earlier in the press conference, and a very ugly picture emerges. It suggests that journalists were required to submit their questions in writing in advance, so that, during the conference, the president would know ahead of time which journalist was going to ask what question.

Moreover, the written questions undoubtedly had to be submitted far enough in advance as to give the president and his advisors sufficient time to careful craft responses to each.

By knowing the questions and rehearsing the answers all in advance in this way, the president exploited the press corps as witting and compliant accomplices in what was, effectively, a prime time campaign event. The press corps was a mere foil for the ability of the president to address a national prime time audience first with a lengthy speech and then with a sequence of prepared and canned responses to pre-digested questions.

If the strong circumstantial evidence provided by the president's own remarks Tuesday in fact mirrors the truth in this way, then there was no real spontaneity or honesty, for that matter, in what was in fact a pathetic dog-and-pony show. Any journalist with a conscience who was a party to such a farce should burn his or her press pass and get an honest job.

To contact this author, e-mail nfbenton@fcnp.com or click the author's name.