Johanna Neuman and James Gerstenzang are heading to new ventures, spurred by the closing of the Los Angeles Times' Washington Bureau and the creation of a bureau -- smaller than the Times office at the beginning of the year -- serving all news outlets owned by the Tribune Co.
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The New York Post's Page Six, home to gossip about wanna-be celebrities and their cousins, the actually famous, disclosed today that First Lady Laura Bush is negotiating with publishers who are bidding on her memoirs. As one literary agent told the Post, "The publishers are coming to the White House to meet with her and discuss the book."
President Bush, by contrast, is said to be waiting before pitching his memoirs. With an approval rating at historic lows, the president apparently thinks he should wait five years before approaching publishers. One agent, Mort Janklow, asked how long Bush should wait, quipped, "30 or 40 years might be good." In the meantime, the more popular first lady -- a former teacher, librarian and a published author -- may serve up a more palatable version of the Bush 43 White House, say literary agents.
The Blairs pioneered this strategy and it is a great way of testing the waters. Mrs. Bush is clearly a lot more popular than her husband at the moment and this is a way of serving up a story in a way that is palatable to the public. Longer term, I am sure we will also see a book from her husband and this of course allows for two bites of the cherry. Commercially, it makes great sense. Also, of course, the public tend to mellow in their attitude to even the most hated political leaders over time.
No word yet on the size of the advance, but you can start counting those zeroes. Bill Clinton made $30 million from sales of his "My Life" and his "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World." Former First Lady, now New York senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, got $8 million for "Living History."
Bill Clinton got a $15-million advance to write his memoir, "My Life." And he was a president who'd been impeached for an embarrassing dalliance in the Oval Office.
For one thing, he's not known as an introspective guy given to self-criticism, seen as key to sales.
"I think any success will depend to a very large extent on [the content of] the book," said Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs, which published former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan's tough take on the White House.
For another, foreign rights would be unlikely.
"President Bush is perceived as a unilateral cowboy who didn't respect other nations," said Jonathan Karp, whose Hachette Book Group published "Hard Call," Republican John McCain's latest book. "So there's a shortfall overseas."
Mostly, because his reputation, like Harry S. Truman's, may require a few decades to appreciate. Truman, the haberdasher from Independence, Mo., who became president on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's death in 1945, left office in 1953 as unpopular as Bush is now. His own memoir, a two-volume affair published in the 1950s, is little remembered. It was only in the 1990s, when David McCullough wrote his bestselling "Truman," that the pugnacious accidental president became an admired figure.
"Only in hindsight will history show whether Bush is deemed to be a good president who sacrificed his presidency for what he believed in or whether history judges him to be a failed president," said Marji Ross, president of the conservative Regnery Publishing, which, given its conservative audience, is in the market for books critical of President-elect Barack Obama.
Still, says Karp, if Bush is interested in penning his own version of history, he should consider it.
"Maybe only 30% of the public is still behind him," said Karp. "But 30% of 300 million people is not a small number."
Ever wonder if Crawford, Texas, is really as dusty as it sounds? Ever wonder how the locals felt over eight years about suddenly becoming a presidential retreat, witnessing a national media invasion and surviving a summer of war protests?
Well your time has come.
After three years of filmmaking, director David Modigliani has unleashed his feature-length film, "Crawford," online. Scheduled to play at 34 film festivals this year, the movie is drawing awards and rave reviews for its suggestion that the town is not always its image. Said reviewer Ray Young:
Crawford is a smart and absorbing documentary about the changes within the small Texas town George W. Bush moved to while running for President in 2000. No one since Richard Nixon has divided the American people as sharply, and Bush extended his bulldozing effect to neighbors he never knew in a remote corner far beyond his station. Director David Modigliani, here making his feature debut, captures roughly six years’ worth of the heat and heartbreak in Crawford in the president’s chaotic wake.
You can watch the movie on hulu.com, an online video service. Or, you can take a peek at the trailer here.
Today on NPR's "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me," host Peter Sagal and his panel of funny journalists (and one actual comedian) talked about President Bush's role in the Wall Street crisis.
Their riffs were not flattering, and perhaps not even fair (Bush seemed proactive last week.) But they were funny.
Sagal, who hosts the weekly news quiz show, began with this:
We feel the need to remind people from time to time but the current president of the United States is George W. Bush. He used to own the Texas Rangers.
With the economy pulling a Hindenburg, Mr. Bush made a statement saying he was worried too, he was worried enough to cancel a fundraiser and that he was staying in Washington to meet with his advisors.
And that was about it from the president. So he got some criticism after that brief statement after three days of inaction that he wasn’t doing enough. So the president flew Air Force One in a circle around Lower Manhattan and looked out the window with a pained look on his face...Then he announced FEMA would be providing penthouses to affected bankers.
To which Paula Poundstone replied, "Now that the dollar has so little value you could put him on it."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images, of Bush with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and SEC Chairman Christopher Cox
The stock market is in free-fall. U.S. financial institutions are in crisis. The president is meeting with his economic advisors. And newspapers are full of stories about the effects of the government's $85-billion bailout of insurer AIG.
But if you read the Morning Update, a daily news roundup from the White House communications shop, there's no mention this morning of any financial crisis. The president's trip to Texas for a briefing on Hurricane Ike gets a mention. Ditto his meeting today with Army Gen. David Petraeus, new trade talks with China, CIA Director Michael Hayden's latest warnings on Al Qaeda and an economist's argument that international trade had "saved the day" by generating 2 million new jobs.
As Countdown to Crawford previously reported, this is not the first time the official White House newsletter has completely ignored the most historic meltdown on Wall Street since the Great Depression.
Perhaps, as we asked earlier, the White House is trying to distance itself from the crisis that happened on its watch.
(An earlier version of this post erroneously linked to a private news roundup, which did mention the crisis. Thanks to one of our readers for pointing this out. The full White House Update from today is printed below.)
For the last few weeks, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain has been taking almost daily shots at the Bush administration. Presumably the goal is to distance the Arizona senator -- at least in the minds of independent voters -- from President Bush, whose popularity rating rarely edges above 27%.
Today's jab was subtle. Asked at a town hall about Iraq, McCain talked about his vision of Iraq someday stabilizing into a democratic, if flawed, government. Then he added, "Right now I'm not sure we should criticize other governments."
It's those kind of comments that are driving conservatives crazy. On his Fox News show last night, conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly asked whether McCain is throwing Bush under the bus and questioned the strategy's wisdom.
"Some conservatives still like the president and are skeptical about McCain, and that's not the way to win them over," O'Reilly said.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak announced his immediate retirement today, telling the Chicago Sun-Times that his prognosis from a brain tumor is "dire."
"The details are being worked out with the doctors this week, but the tentative plan is for radiation and chemotherapy," Novak told the newspaper.
Novak, 77, was cited last month for hitting a homeless pedestrian while driving in downtown Washington in his black Corvette. Chased down a block away by a bicylcist, Novak said he had no idea he had hit the man.
He was also the first journalist to reveal the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. Novak's column on Plame in 2003 unleashed a federal investigation that brought down I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and seriously damaged the reputation of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and White House political maestro Karl Rove for leaking her name to other journalists. The sanctioned leak was an attempt to discredit Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, a public critic of the war in Iraq.
For more than 50 years, Novak has been part of the fabric of Washington journalism and politics. He teamed up with Rowland Evans in 1963 to write a column that was first distributed by Publishers Newspaper Syndicate on May 15, 1963, and after Evans retired, he kept going solo. He was co-host of CNN's Crossfire for 25 years before leaving in 2005 -- after storming off the set -- to work as a commentator on Fox News.
When he first was diagnosed with a brain tumor last week, Novak issued a statement saying he would be "suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period."
Rush Limbaugh was going along today, doing his radio show as usual, when producers started waving their arms frantically trying to get his attention. It seemed POTUS was on the line from Kennebunkport, Me. He and his father (Bush 41) and his brother Jeb (former governor of Florida) were calling to congratulate the conservative broadcaster on his 20 years on the air.
You can listen to the broadcast in its entirety at KTRH-AM in Texas. Or you can read the whole thing here. We imagine the reason the tape has not yet popped up on YouTube is that is was singularly lacking in the biting, mean-spirited, politically pointed invective for which Limbaugh is known and loved by millions.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: William Thomas Cain / Getty Images
Here's the transcript.
RUSH: What are...? (interruption) Interrupting for what?
THE PRESIDENT: Hello!
RUSH: Oh, jeez. The president?
THE PRESIDENT: Rush Limbaugh?
RUSH: Yes, sir, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: President George W. Bush calling to congratulate you on 20 years of important and excellent broadcasting.
RUSH: Well, thank you, sir. You've stunned me! (laughing) I'm shocked. But thank you so much.
THE PRESIDENT: That's hard to do.
RUSH: (laughing) I know, it is.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm here with a room full of admirers. There are two others that would like to speak to you and congratulate you, people who consider you ...
Scott McClellan, the former Bush press secretary whose kiss-and-tell book banished him from any friendly GOP circles, is embroiled in a snit with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly for suggesting that the conservative broadcaster was a shill for the White House.
The furor started last week when McClellan appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews." Asked if the White House distributed "talking points" to friendly Fox journalists such as O'Reilly, McClellan said sure.
MATTHEWS: Did people say call Sean, call Bill, call whoever? Did you do that as a regular thing?
McCLELLAN: Certainly. Certainly. It wasn’t necessarily something I was doing, but it was something that we at the White House, yes, were doing.
Then O'Reilly had him on his radio show yesterday, angling for an apology, insisting that he, the great ratings king of the Fox News network, did not need talking points from the Bush White House.
O’REILLY: Matthews played you. ... He played you! You should be mad at him!
McCLELLAN: So you don’t owe me an apology for calling me a liar?
O’REILLY: You are a liar! You said I received talking points and I didn’t!
McCLELLAN: No I didn’t! I was not confirming that. I’m telling you right now —
O’REILLY: Oh you’re parsing the damn thing! Come on, be honest! ... He baited you! He baited you! ... You’re crazy! You’re partners with [NBC] in selling your book!
McClellan, who claims in his book that he was misled by White House officials, conceded that he "messed up" by replying affirmatively to Matthews' question without rebutting the specific names Chris mentioned.
"I was specifically not trying to single anyone out, including you," said McClellan. "There were people, not you, but there were people."
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.
Syndicated columnist Robert Novak announced his immediate retirement today, telling the 
