When Chimpy the Prez was a GOP political asset, he was all over the damned place; now that he's an albatross, he's basically in hiding

I've been trying since yesterday to write something about the new White House tactic of keeping the president basically hidden from view except under surgically hygienic conditions of their own choosing--meaning essentially fund-raising meetings in donors' homes, where they don't have to admit the press.

Yeterday on the radio Rachel Maddow called attention to a Washington Post account of this development, which was conveniently buried in Saturday's paper. The White House brain trust understands that cash-starved media outlets aren't going to spend the money it now costs to send people to cover . . . well, nothing at all. (And is it coincidence that the amount those media outlets are charged to have their people on press planes has skyrocketed? "Hey, why don't we really make some money off the fuckers?" you can imagine some bright young White House scumbag suggesting.) So now that's pretty much the only kind of function our Tiny Tinpot Emperor is let out of his White House hiding place for.

Fortunately, the Post's Dana Milbank has devoted his column today to the imperial isolation from the press in which our Extremely Tiny Emperor has been hermetically sealed:

A Growing Separation of Press and State
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The White House press corps spent its first day in exile yesterday, banished from the White House compound for the first time since the John Adams presidency while the West Wing briefing room undergoes a renovation.

As if to deepen the isolation, press secretary Tony Snow, stepping over some plywood and into the new digs on Jackson Place NW for his daily briefing, adopted the Borscht Belt comics' practice of answering questions with questions.

Does President Bush think the cease-fire in Israel and Lebanon will undermine support for Hezbollah?

"Well, we're going to find out, aren't we?" Snow replied.

"Did the president call for the respect of sovereignty by both sides?"

"Respect of sovereignty?" Snow parried.

Does Bush support the Republican candidate for Senate in Connecticut, Alan Schlesinger?

"Why do you ask?" Snow counterquestioned. "Is there something about the candidate that I should know about that would lead to judgments?"

So we should not assume the president will automatically support Republican nominees?

"Why don't you wait and see what happens?" proposed Snow, citing "peculiar characteristics" in Connecticut.

Snow's performance, in addition to making life even more miserable for candidate Schlesinger (6 percent support in a new poll that finds Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Democratic nominee Ned Lamont neck-and-neck), fits neatly in a renewed Bush administration effort to keep the media at a safe distance.

Bush has traveled out of the Washington area at least seven times this year without a press plane, including four times in the past month to fundraisers closed to the press. This development, devised by a secretive White House and enabled by cash-strapped media outlets, has helped Bush to stage a series of father-protector photo ops with few of those pesky questions that reporters tend to ask.

Last Thursday, while the press corps was in Texas, Bush was in Wisconsin talking about Britain's foiling of a terrorist plot to bomb U.S.-bound planes. Yesterday, Bush held two photo ops at the Pentagon and another one at the State Department before taking questions in the day's fourth appearance. Today brings two more photo ops, at the National Counterterrorism Center.

It's not yet clear whether all this has burnished Bush's image. A Newsweek poll taken after Britain broke up the airplane plot found a sharp gain for Bush on his handling of homeland security. But his overall support was a grim 38 percent.

Whatever the political benefit, Bush's photo ops don't do much for the discourse. At the no-questions session at the Pentagon, Bush served up a series of platitudes, disclosing that "we've got a fantastic military," that "we're a blessed nation," that "we're constantly thinking about how to secure the homeland" and that "I'm confident in our capacity to leave behind a better world."

But when he took questions later in the day at the State Department, Bush was sharp and energetic. "Hezbollah started the crisis, and Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis," he said bluntly when asked who won the month-long Middle East fighting. He admitted that Hezbollah "has got a fantastic propaganda machine," vowed that U.N. troops would "seal off the Syrian border" and described how Israel could defend itself without violating the cease-fire.

In his briefing, Snow argued for the merits of the photo op. "We do not invite in amen choruses," he said.

That may be true. Bush had lunch at the Pentagon with academics, one of whom has criticized Bush's "proto-authoritarian policies" and another of whom has referred to "Washington's tortured involvement in Iraq." But it's hard to know for sure whether anybody said amen; reporters weren't invited.

"Isn't this cozy?" Snow remarked after he crossed Pennsylvania Avenue, passed the balky metal detector and climbed to the third-floor briefing room. The place was a bit cramped, but there were some modest improvements: Fox News scored a front-row seat and got to ask the second question, and the backdrop curtains had lightened a shade to a royal blue. And Snow, pitying the outcast reporters, offered to linger for five minutes after the session for "anybody who wants a piece of me."

It was small consolation for the correspondents, who were, historians say, operating from the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue for the first time ever. "You can't even see the White House from the new press center," chief Associated Press correspondent Terry Hunt grumbled.

True, a rotating group of 18 correspondents and camera crews gets to stay in a trailer near the White House. But they have to share a single toilet as they worry that they will not be allowed to return after the promised nine months.

One resident of the trailer park, the Chicago Tribune's Mark Silva, reported back to his colleagues on Sunday: "We passed the gutted press briefing room, the chairs gone, and paused to wonder about you-know-what."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Related thought: Man, doesn't Tony Snow make you just pine for the good old days of Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan?