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
In a suggestion that the moving vans may already be loading up in the State Department driveway, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called off her trip this weekend to a U.S.-designed event in Dubai called Forum for the Future.
The event is an annual gathering of foreign ministers from large industrial powers and Arab countries, and is tied to the administration’s effort to promote democracy in region.
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.
For eight years, Stephen J. Hadley has observed President Bush up close.
As the president's national security advisor throughout the second term, and on many occasions before that as the deputy national security advisor, Hadley has traveled the world with the president, has cleared brush with him in Crawford, and briefed him daily on developments around the world.
He was there for discussions leading up to the surge in Iraq. Afghanistan? 9/11? North Korea? Iran? Hugo Chavez? Human rights and the Beijing Olympics? Russia? Georgia? All were in his portfolio.
If the word "crisis" was attached to it -- save, perhaps, for the stock market and Katrina -- it is only a slight exaggeration to say there's a good chance the debate went through Hadley's office at the northwest corner of the White House West Wing.
The vantage point for tracking the president could hardly be better.
Bush, Hadley said today, is "remarkably unaffected by eight years as president in terms of who he is, what he stands for, what he thinks of himself."
He spoke with a small group of reporters in the Roosevelt Room, across a small corridor from the Oval Office.
He was responding to a question about whether in its second term the administration had adopted a more pragmatic and less ideological approach to both foreign policy and economic matters, compared with the first term.
"Situations change," Hadley said, referring specifically to the Middle East, which he said was "a very different place" these days compared with 2001. Therefore, he said, the way the administration approaches it has naturally undergone change.
Of course no presidential aide wants to say the boss has eased back on his core principles. Nor would one want to say that the boss had not grown and adapted over eight years.
Hadley put it this way: "We've tried to be flexible. We've tried to learn."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Stephen J. Hadley, left rear next to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the White House Roosevelt Room, 2006. Credit: Eric Draper / The White House
President Bush will spend the first days of next week in New York City, attending the opening session of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The speech on Tuesday--his eighth to the world body--will provide an opportunity for him to address the role of multinational organizations in evolving world diplomacy.
He's managing to squeeze in a Republican fundraising stop in New Jersey on his way to the city--and another one, in Florida, on the way back to Washington. New York to Washington, via Florida? That's politics.
On the sidelines, there will be a meeting with the new president of Pakistan and then, later in the week in Washington, he will meet separately with the president of the Palestinian Authority and the president of Lebanon.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
If it is the second half of September, it must be Kuwait. And Panama. And Colombia.
The annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly is about to begin in New York, and that means a steady stream of foreign leaders coming through Washington. And most of those coming to town stop at least briefly at the White House.
President Bush met today with the president of Panama. The prime minister of Kuwait is on Friday's schedule, and President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia is getting the unique honor of a Saturday morning visit in the Oval Office -- as well as an invitation to a "social dinner" in the State Dining Room that night.
Tonight, the dinner guests include ambassadors from Islamic nations for the traditional Iftaar dinner marking the end of the day's Ramadan fasting.
Thursday is a travel day: a tour of the Huntsville Waste-to-Energy Facility, in Alabama, and Republican fundraisers in Huntsville, Ala., and Jupiter, Fla.
And don't forget the Boston Celtics. That's Rajon Rondo with the NBA championship trophy. The NBA champions are coming in for a photo with the president. They get the East Room for their event. It has high ceilings.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
With Gen. David H. Petraeus at his side in the Oval Office, President Bush said he saw in the attack today at the U.S. embassy in Yemen a reminder that danger still lurks.
Petraeus, who just one day earlier took part in a command handover as he completed his assignment leading the U.S. forces in Iraq, is taking over as head of U.S. Central Command, responsible for U.S. military operations across the Middle East.
The attack was a reminder too of the importance of Petraeus' new job, Bush said.
"We are at war with extremists who will murder innocent people to achieve their ideological objectives," the president said.
Their goal, he added, is to kill, "to try to cause the United States to lose our nerve and to withdraw from regions of the world. And our message is, is that we want to help governments survive the extremists."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press
It has been more than half a century -- 55 years, to be exact -- since a U.S. secretary of state has visited Libya.
But with an evening meal in a Bedouin tent today, Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi welcomed Condoleezza Rice -- whom he called last year "my darling black African woman." Presumably, he wouldn't have been quite so gushing toward John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state who visited in 1953.
In an interview with the Arabic TV network Al Jazeera, CNN notes, he called her "Leeza," and said: "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders."
The dinner signaled that the United States and Libya had moved beyond nearly three decades of animosity to put the U.S.-Libyan relationship on a normal, if not entirely friendly, footing.
The session ended a five-year rehabilitation in which Libya gave up its weapons of mass destruction and then settled claims against it for past terrorist acts, including the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am aircraft over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.
The Los Angeles Times' Paul Richter, traveling with Rice, reports that the Bush administration considers Libya’s reform one of its top foreign policy achievements, and a model for other adversary states, such as Iran. Earlier today, in Portugal, Rice called the meeting “a historic moment.”
Yet officials on both sides say they aspire to a neutral relationship rather than a warm one, and in recent days there have been reminders of the mistrust that still hangs over the relationship like a dusty Saharan haze.
If anyone thought the mercurial Kadafi was getting mushy, note that on Libyan television in an address to the nation on Monday, he said it was “not necessary for us to be friends with America." He classified the two countries as “neither friends nor enemies.”
And his son and possible heir, Seif Islam, told the BBC in an interview broadcast Sunday that while Libya had acknowledged responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, it accepted blame only to get rid of international sanctions against the country.
“We played with words ... it doesn’t mean we did it in fact,” he said of the bombing.
It must have been something like going back to school after the final vacation, with senior year drawing to a close.
President Bush and Laura Bush flew back to Washington today after a late-summer break at their home in Crawford, Texas.
Tony Fratto, a deputy White House press secretary, put it this way for reporters aboard Air Force One this afternoon:
We're on our way back to Washington, D.C., I guess the last visit to Crawford for August, for last August, last hot August in Crawford for the president and all of you. So we're on our way back to Washington.
It was back to business -- at least for a short while.
The president was planning to have dinner with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, just back from three weeks of intensive travel (Georgia two weeks ago, Europe and Iraq last week, and the Middle East this week).
"You can expect them to have extensive discussions about where things are going with respect to Russia and Georgia," Fratto said.
And, oh yes, he said, the president had been doing some work at the ranch: Bush took a phone call Tuesday night from President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia.
As for Crawford, that one-light crossroads town seven miles from Bush's Prairie Chapel Ranch, the president's departure will likely make no difference -- nor will his departure from the presidency.
For the 7 1/2 years of the Bush administration, Zalmay Khalilzad has been the golden boy of U.S. foreign policy.
He began life in the Bush White House as a special assistant to the president for South Asia, Near East and North African Affairs--in other words, chief of the hot spots--on the National Security Council. In short order he moved into three of the most important ambassadorial jobs: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, the United Nations.
He was the guy to whom Bush turned when he needed someone he trusted in an extremely sensitive job.
Now, he's gone from the guy on the hot seat to bubbling in hot water.
The New York Times is reporting today that he is "facing angry questions" from his colleagues at the top of the administration over unauthorized contacts with the Pakistani political leader, Asif Ali Zardari, who is a contender to succeed Pervez Musharraf as Pakistan's president.
It turns out, according to the Times, that Khalilzad had been speaking several times a week with Zardari, the widower of the assassinated opposition leader and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. And he had planned the meet with Zardari next week while on vacation in Dubai, the paper reported, quoting administration officials.
Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, put an end to that plan after discovering through Zardari himself that the United States' U.N. ambassador was providing "advice and help." An angry e-mail from Boucher to Khalilzad ensued.
Such contacts would suggest an extreme violation of diplomatic protocol and U.S. policy; the administration has remained officially neutral in the contest to succeed Musharraf, and in any case diplomats are discouraged from such interference in any country's internal politics--the history of CIA involvement in instances around the world notwithstanding.
With the United States walking an extremely narrow line as it seeks to encourage a new Pakistani administration to fight the Taliban along the Afghan-Pakistan border--but not appear overly friendly with whomever takes over in Islamabad, for fear of complicating the security task--any signs of a U.S. official's meddling in Pakistani political affairs can only complicate the mission.
The Times notes an intriguing back story:
The conduct by Mr. Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzi as president of Afghanistan.
The official State Department biography of Khalilzad makes no reference to his Afghan heritage.
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.
