An ironic gagging
Strangely enough, in a nation founded on free speech in a time where the Internet, the airwaves and the office chatter is so full of free-flowing political comment, there's one American these days who finds himself unable to speak his mind freely, politically speaking.
The president.
It's a rare situation. Not like, say, when Bill Clinton's vice president, Al Gore, was running and the chief executive's preference was clear. George W. Bush's vice president isn't running. There's no heir apparent in his own party. And anyway, the incumbent is supposed to be detached from a real competition within his own party.
This time, perhaps more important, in these days of his tanked popularity, a Bush endorsement could be a GOP candidate's kiss of death. Although, come to think of it, the president could always publicly denounce his favorite candidate and thereby perhaps perversely help him.
Bush reflected on all this in his news conference today when a reporter sought to draw him into the controversy over Barack Obama's recent statements about unilaterally attacking Pakistan.
"I suspect," the president said, "that over the course of the next months when I hold a press conference, you'll be trying to get me to engage in presidential politics, trying to get me to opine about what candidates are saying, whether they be Republicans or Democrats. And hopefully I'll be disciplined enough not to fall prey to your question, not to fall into that."
We wager the reporters will nonetheless keep trying.
--Andrew Malcolm
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Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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