Some days, for political, diplomatic or security reasons, a White House press secretary can comment not one bit on the topic of the day.
Today was such a day, when President Bush's spokeswoman, Dana Perino, came up against questions about reports that U.S. commandos conducted raids in Syria that left at least eight people dead.
Here's how the questioning went -- and the non-answer answers from the White House briefing room podium:
Question: What is the likelihood of more raids into Syria like the one we saw this weekend?
Perino: The United States government has not commented on reports about that and I'm not able to here, either.
Q: So we've talked about Pakistan, the raids into Pakistan, whether by ground or by air. And there's been some acknowledgment by U.S. officials that those are happening. We're now seeing this sort of thing spread to other countries. Can you not -- you can't shed any light on why, when, where, how, whether we're going to...
Perino: I can't comment on it at all, no.
Q: Have you heard anything about whether the target was successful, that it hit the target?
Perino: I'm not going to comment in any way on this; I'm not able to comment on that.
Q: You're not even able to say that there has been some decision taken by the administration that 'If you guys can't clean up your act, we will clean it up for you'?
Perino: I'm not going to comment on the reports about this, no, I'm not. Anybody else?
Q: Can you comment on Syria's protest?
Perino: I'm not going to comment on it at all. This could be a really short briefing.
Q: Has anybody from the White House spoken to anybody from Syria?
Perino: I don't know. I don't know.
Q: Let me ask you this one: You have another government making claims. At some point, you either have to confirm or deny the claims they're making, no?
Perino: Jim, all I can tell you is that I am not able to comment on reports about this reported incident, and I'm not going to do so. You can come up here and try to beat it out of me, but I will not be commenting on this in any way, shape or form today. Or tomorrow.
Q: What about another agency, nobody -- if it comes, it's going to come from here, and so it's not going to -- nothing is going to come out of this?
Perino: I don't believe anybody is commenting on this at all.
Q: Dana, why can't you comment? Is it a reason for national security, or is it political? I mean, why --
Perino: To give you an answer to that would be commenting in some way on it, and I'm not going to do it.
Q: But, I mean, Dana, you can't give us anything? I mean, this is a major issue --
Perino: Nothing.
Q: This is a major issue --
Perino: I understand the reports are serious, but it's not something I'm going to comment on in any way.
And with that, the questioning moved elsewhere.
— James Gerstenzang
Photo: Mourners in the Syrian village where U.S. commandos reportedly staged a raid. Credit: Hussein Malla / Associated Press
The speech drew little attention in the midst of the presidential campaign news and the continued turmoil in the stock markets.
But with Americans struggling to pay bills and concerned that their jobs will disappear along with their retirement savings, President Bush is holding strong to his belief that whatever economic problems the United States is facing at the end of his term, the nation must put aside money for foreign assistance.
It's a tough battle, and it comes up against what pollsters regularly discover: Americans consistently vastly overstate the amount of foreign aid the United States dispenses and, in particular, the percentage of the federal budget that it represents.
Speaking at a White House conference on international development last week, Bush put it this way:
During times of economic crisis, some may be tempted to turn inward--focusing on our problems here at home, while ignoring our interests around the world. This would be a serious mistake. America is committed--and America must stay committed--to international development for reasons that remain true regardless of the ebb and flow of the markets.
The Washington Post took note of Bush's speech. It reported that the United Nations had figured that even before the market went south, higher food prices meant that 925 million people faced chronic hunger.
Spain, the world's eighth largest economy, will not be attending the summit on the world financial crisis the White House is convening in Washington on Nov. 15.
Saudi Arabia's coming. Ditto Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and the European Union. Oh yes and the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, the president of the World Bank, the United Nations secretary-general, and the chairman of the Financial Stability Forum have also been invited to participate.
White House spokesman Tony Fratto insisted there was no deliberate intention to exclude Spain, which has a Socialist prime minister. He explained that the G20 was formed by the world's economic giants, the G-7, plus some emerging economies back during the market crisis there in the 1990s. Instead, the White House invited Madrid to convey its thoughts through the European Union.
Spain, pressing for inclusion, is not amused. The IBEX Spanish stock market is hitting record lows, food costs have risen by 60% over the last 18 months, and tourism, a mainstay of the economy, is down, says the government.
All of which led Spain's minister for industry, Miguel Sebastian, the other day to blame President Bush for the world economic crisis.
"It's evident that the crisis started in the United States," he said Wednesday. "There are only 13 days of Bush left, and they will [come to an end] quickly." (Sebastian of course meant 13 days to the election. There are months left of the administration.)
Democrat Barack Obama, during his first debate with Republican John McCain, noted the Arizona senator's stated resistance to meeting with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist who was elected in 2004 and reelected this year.
During the debate at Ole Miss, an incredulous Obama said, "He [John McCain] even said the other day that he would not meet potentially with the prime minister of Spain, because he -- you know, he wasn't sure whether they were aligned with us. I mean, Spain? Spain is a NATO ally."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images of Nissan workers in Barcelona protesting job cuts on Oct. 23, 2008
Democrat Barack Obama today blamed George W. Bush's foreign policy for ensuring that whoever is next elected president, he will be vulnerable to being tested by a foreign enemy. At a news conference in Richmond, Va., he said:
For the last eight years we've had a bad policy -- a bad set of policies that have resulted in two unresolved wars, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda communicating regularly and training folks to potentially attack America, and an economy that has been in a free fall. ... The president's going to be tested. And the question is, will the next president meet that test by moving America is a new direction, by sending a clear signal to the rest of the world that we are no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology.
Three days ago, Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, said the 47-year-old presidential candidate would be tested within the first six months of his administration, much as John Kennedy was tested by the Soviets in the Cuban missile crisis. John McCain's campaign jumped on the comment.
"Thank you for reminding us the way the world is," quipped McCain's sidekick, South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, thanking Biden for reminding voters that "there's never been a candidate for president of the United States more tested than John McCain." Even the first-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, weighed in, saying the White House is no place for "on-the-job training."
Obama, conceding that Biden "sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes," said whoever wins on Nov. 4 is going to be tested because he will be "inheriting a whole host of really big problems." Noting that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff made similar comments recently, Obama added that "a period of transition in a new administration is always one in which we have to be vigilant, we have to be careful, we have to be mindful that as we pass the baton in this democracy, that others don't take advantage of it."
Obama made his comments after meeting with his national security advisors. Biden was not at his side, but joined by conference call.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Staff Sgt. Shane Glowcheski of Rapid City, S.D., stands with a member of the Iraqi army, part of President Bush's surge strategy to quell sectarian violence in Iraq. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times
He gets along so well with Johnson-Sirleaf -- and respects her efforts to pull up her impoverished, politically-shredded country so much -- that he was uncharacteristically (and unsmirkingly) patient while the "Iron Lady" of Africa delivered a lengthy, effusive introduction to a speech he delivered Tuesday in downtown Washington on international development.
Among those cheering Bush was Irish rocker Bob Geldof, who with Bono has devoted huge amounts of time to wrestling with global poverty issues and, with Bono, has struck up a curious friendship with Bush.
In his final years in office, the president, too, has put a special emphasis on tackling the continent's myriad health and hunger problems. The result: He has gained praise from quarters where he often finds only criticism.
And as Countdown to Crawford noted this summer, with Iraq still unsettled and Afghanistan increasingly dangerous, Africa could emerge as one of his foreign policy successes.
Bush visited with Johnson-Sirleaf last February in Monrovia. On that steamy day, he drove along a freshly paved downtown boulevard that days before had been impassable except very slowly and in the sturdiest of four-wheel drive vehicles.
The city turned out for Bush, whose visit was limited to daylight hours for security reasons. He rewarded guests at a presidential luncheon with encouragement for the democratic path on which Liberia has embarked -- and this impromptu dance performance.
Colin L. Powell, the former mud soldier, hurled his political grenade in defense of Barack Obama, but the collateral damage hit the Bush White House.
To be sure, he was opting for Obama, but the undercurrent of his message was a strong rejection of the direction the Republican Party -- and the nation -- have taken under President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. We won't even get into his quiet dis of Sarah Palin.
And 24 hours after President Bush's former secretary of State said he would vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, he has been given a cold shoulder, so to speak, from the Bushies.
"He's not heard anything from the White House types," said a close friend who spoke with Powell before and after his appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
On the other hand, he's heard from just about everyone else, this Powell friend said, and response has been "overwhelmingly positive."
The friend added:
He feels very good about what he said yesterday. He's very comfortable with it.
The White House non-reaction, so far, is not too surprising when you consider what Powell was saying in this mildly worded but devastating sentence from Sunday's TV performance: "I have some concerns about the direction that the party has taken in recent years."
Or the rejection of the impact of the recent Bush years when he said that the next president would have to "fix the reputation that we've left with the rest of the world."
And when did the U.S. standing turn sour? As Countdown to Crawford reported Saturday, the polls abroad are pretty striking in the rejection of U.S. policy under Bush.
Come to think of it, considering the efforts of the White House team to maneuver around Powell when he was in office, their response to the distance he is putting between himself and the president may not be that strange. The picture of Bush, Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2002 notwithstanding, they really weren't that, well, close.
Characteristically, Powell on Sunday used very forceful, deliberate -- but polite and toned-down -- language, choosing a course that would leave little room for anyone to pick it apart and suggest he was in any way hedging his bets.
But we know, from personal experience, that although adept at using nuanced language, he can make his point strongly, with no room for doubt, when he so chooses.
The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush 41 and Bill Clinton has been a friend of John McCain for a quarter-century, but he decided that friendship could not be the determining factor.
Rather, he wanted to nudge the Republican Party away from its current course -- one that he sees as having turned rightward particularly during the second Bush-Cheney term, which of course would be the period when he had already left the administration.
But in the end, the Powell friend, bursting out in a broad chuckle as he played off McCain's campaign theme of "Country First," said of Powell's decision: "He put America first."
The wives or husbands of dozens of U.S. government officials and diplomats attending the dinner, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi, were identified as a 'spouse.'
But the list identified Poe as the 'guest' of Mary Cheney, just as it identified all other attendees who were accompanied by friends rather than married spouses.
Now that Connecticut has joined Massachusetts and California in legalizing same-sex marriage, the question of how married or partnered gay couples should be described in formal affairs such as White House dinners is likely to resurface.
It's a difficult question for the White House.
As Countdown to Crawford noted last week when the Connecticut decision came down, "for more than four years, the Bush White House has run against any changes in the law that would allow gay Americans -- even his vice president's daughter -- to marry."
Speaking of the speaker, who was seated next to Berlusconi, the Columbus Day dinner proved that politics makes for interesting dinner companions.
Only hours earlier, Pelosi had set the Democrats on an economic path diverging from that favored by the White House. She called for a new stimulus package to the tune of $150 billion, setting up a likely end-of-term clash with Bush and congressional Republicans.
But the dinner itself suggested international accord: Maine lobster fondue, artichoke and reggiano cheese ravioli, lamb with crispy eggplant and Swiss chard, chocolate napoleons and Russian River cuvee.
The entertainment? The cast of "Jersey Boys."
Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons -- the real Jersey Boys from Newark (which, as anyone from Newark knows, is pronounced Nerk)-- yucked it up with the president afterward on stage.
-- James Gerstenzang
Top photo: Heather Poe and Mary Cheney. Credit: Damon Winter / Los Angeles Times.
Bottom photo: Nancy Pelosi and Silvio Berlusconi. Credit: Aude Guerrucci / EPA / Pool
George W. Bush and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi are tight, the kind of friends who cover each other's backs.
When Bush went to war in Iraq in 2003, Berlusconi was one of the few members of the "Old Europe" establishment to support him, sending 3,000 Italian troops to join the fight. The Italian prime minister also backed the president's call for a freedom agenda overseas, encouraging pro-U.S. rallies when the rest of Europe was inflamed with antiwar protests in the streets.
In return, Bush, not one given to close intimate gatherings, invited Berlusconi to spend time with him both at Camp David and at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. During their time in office together, both knew electoral pain. Berlusconi was booted out by the voters two years ago, and Bush lost Congress to Democrats.
But Berlusconi, a 71-year-old media tycoon, won reelection in April and a jubilant Bush welcomed him to the White House today, on Columbus Day.
In his remarks, President Bush thanked Berlusconi for his leadership, for sending troops to help in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Balkans.
But Berlusconi could barely contain himself in praising the United States.
Thanking Americans for sending U.S. troops to Europe not only to "save Europe from Communism, Nazism many years ago," he also praised the United States for helping Europe "achieve welfare, wealth and well-being."
They were next to us all through the Cold War years. Every time a wound opened in the world, the United States sent its troops, paying a very high price, in terms of human lives, to guarantee freedom of not only the United States, but the rest of the world, as well.
...We must bow in front of the sacrifices, and the sacrifices of so many lives, and we have to state and say that never, ever -- the U.S. troops continued to stay in countries where they had intervened to help people save their lives. So they never stayed there to occupy out of interest. And this has to be remembered by all Europeans.
As for Bush, Berlusconi was, if anything, more effusive.
I would like to close my statement by telling President Bush and expressing my appreciation, my friendship, my congratulations and my love and esteem. I've been working with him very well. There has never been a moment when I saw in him interests which are not general interest. I never saw biased interest. There has never been a moment when I saw in him something different from a very sincere and pure feelings and sentiment.
He is a person -- he is a man of vision. He is an idealist. And also he has the courage of implementing what he believes is right, what he thinks needs to be done to pursue the ideals which he considers to be right for himself, his people, and the world. The United States has taken over the responsibility of taking care of the world.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for being here. And believe me, believe me that my feelings are shared by the great majority of Italians and European citizens, as well.
Welcome words for a beleaguered president. Bush, whose popularity ratings are in the 23% range, down near Richard Nixon's lows, was beaming.
Every year, presidents put out proclamations for the major holidays. There's one for Thanksgiving. Ramadan, Christmas and Passover get them too.
And they also issue proclamations for lesser holidays.
For those who may have missed it, today is Leif Erikson Day, as presidents have been decreeing since 1964, when Congress passed a joint resolution marking Oct. 9 as the explorer's special day of celebration.
Praising "Nordic Americans" is not as silly as the Jimmy Carter's description of the same holiday. Eager not to offend any women who might hail from the North Germanic countries, the Carter White House referred to Erikson not as a Viking or a Norseman but as a "Norse person."
As for Bush, he called for a party:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 9, 2008, as Leif Erikson Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs to honor our rich Nordic-American heritage.
We'll start with the obvious: There is only one president, and it is George W. Bush. Until noon on Jan. 20, 2009, he will hold the full range of legal powers of the nation's chief executive.
But one need only look a few feet from the Oval Office this afternoon for evidence that almost four months from the inauguration of his successor, his political authority is being diluted.
To be sure, the president is busy with the duties of his office. Just consider his schedule today:
By early afternoon, he had already met with the president of Lebanon...
and the president of the Palestinian Authority...
He met with the leadership of the Orthodox Union, a 110-year-old Jewish group...
He signed one of the major bills to come out of the final days of the current congressional session --amendments to the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, which was one of the major domestic policy achievements of his father, President George H. W. Bush (far left in the photo below)...
And later in the day he is meeting with the prime minister of India.
And right now, to push forward the tentative agreement on his proposal to bail out Wall Street to the tune of $700 billion -- and, he argues, to improve the financial picture on Main Street -- he is meeting with House and Senate Democratic and Republican leaders.
And two others are joining the conference in the Cabinet Room, next door to the Oval Office: Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain.
Had the economic crisis occurred perhaps three months ago, there is little chance they'd have found seats at the polished oblong table.
But their presence today is a recognition of the ebbing of Bush's political clout -- and the fact that if they are on board, whatever agreement emerges will have a far better chance of passage.
The presidential campaign, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said at her daily news briefing today, "was starting to seep into the debate."
"The thought was that bringing these two candidates together would actually help finalize the framework that we were closing in on, and we think that that's all for the better."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photos: President Bush with President Michel Suleiman of Lebanon and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Credit: Matthew Cavanaugh / EPA. President Bush with leaders of the Orthodox Union and signing the amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
