We started in Beaver, Pa., where the president donned peacock-blue rimmed safety goggles and surveyed machine tools at an electrical-switch plant. The Bergers-a “tax family,” props really-were on hand to tell how Bush’s tax cut would help them. “I’ll give you a loaded question,” Bush said to David Berger, who works at the factory. “Do you want some tax relief?” He sure did. Then we packed up and were off to Council Bluffs, Iowa. It felt like January 2000 all over again. When we flew into Iowa more than a year ago for the caucuses, Bush dubbed his campaign plane “Great Expectations.” When we flew out of New Hampshire-where Bush got trounced in the primaries-he wandered back on the plane and declared sheepishly: “Welcome to Expectations.”
In truth, the Bush plane-now Air Force One-should be christened “Low Expectations.” As a candidate, and now as president, Bush has benefited enormously from other people’s low expectations of him. And that’s just how his administration likes it. Aides don’t get upset anymore at jokes about Bush’s malapropisms. They laugh along or just shrug when he misspeaks, as if to say, “That’s our Dubya.” (The latest snicker: When Bush told the Beaver crowd on Wednesday that the size of his tax cut was “just right,” one reporter joked that Bush was quoting from the last book he read-“Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”)
Bushies have downplayed every major public foray the president has made-from his first foreign trip to his first press conference. Even Tuesday night’s speech was billed as a modest “budget message.” So far, the strategy has worked well. The lead New York Times editorial Wednesday morning called the address “poised, focused and warmly received.” Bush’s protracted glad-handing and his tallying of the nation’s needs sure felt like a State of the Union. By underselling it-and making the teleprompter his friend-he scored. “I passed the initial review,” Bush told reporters at the Beaver plant with a smile. “My wife thinks I did alright.”
And Bush’s first press conference was a timing coup. Karl Rove, Bush’s top strategist, has read just about everything there is on how previous presidents (especially John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan) did things and when. He had been thinking that 30 days into Bush’s presidency was a good time for a first press conference. The press corps had been applying pressure, too. And then there was the added bonus of coming on the heels of Hillary Clinton’s press conference to address whether her brother, Hugh, got paid for pardons.
“I don’t know if they did it on purpose, but I sure hope they did. That was brilliant,” says Reagan imagemaker Michael Deaver, explaining that it allowed Bush to draw a sharp contrast between himself and the scandal-prone Clintons. By giving reporters only an hour’s notice before the conference, they didn’t have time to refine pointed questions. Some didn’t even make it on time to the press conference, which was held in the grubby press briefing room rather than the more stately East Room. “He wants them to be informal,” says press secretary Ari Fleischer.
Bush’s informality, of course, is studied. On Bush’s first foreign trip-an eight-hour stay in Mexico-the two-amigos feel was hardly impromptu. In fact, it was one of the first tests of the fledgling administration’s international diplomacy skills. Mexican President Vicente Fox wanted to slip into cowboy boots and jeans. Bush aides were wary. Bush’s father, one recalled, had once been invited to an “informal” meeting with Mexican dignitaries. He’d showed up in casual wear only to find his counterparts had suited up. And this Bush administration was already miffed that Mexican newspapers had prematurely spread some other news on their front pages: “Bush To Ride Maximiliana”-one of Fox’s prized mares. Horseback riding together was Fox’s idea of macho bonding, but Bush is more urban cowboy than ranchero. Plus, it was a bad photo op. At Fox’s Rancho San Cristobal, Bush made the tough diplomatic call. He opted to wear cowboy boots with his suit, and strip down to shirtsleeves. Then he walked over to one of Fox’s horses, El Rey, and pet him. Call it casual choreography.
Tuesday night, Bush practiced his speech four times with the teleprompter. And he prepped for his press conference in three sessions. A small cadre of aides, including Fleischer, and his top communication strategist, Karen Hughes, sat around the Oval Office and peppered him with questions they thought would come up. Sometimes, in answering, he’d practice calling his press secretary by a reporter’s name. But sometimes he would just stew on the question and not answer. Bush is famous for not liking to be “handled.” During the campaign, as now, he rejected hiring an image consultant (though Deaver has been an occasional informal adviser). “He hates that stuff,” says one campaign aide. When the aide suggested that Bush try to smirk less, he says, “Bush just looked at me and smirked.”
Bill Clinton, by contrast, was hyperaware of his image. Before press conferences, which reporters were notified of at least a day in advance-his aides would block out the entire morning from 9 to noon to practice. The night before, he’d be presented with a thick issues book. But substance wasn’t his problem. Anger-management was. The aides, including Vice President Gore, would take turns coming up with the most obnoxious questions they could. “It would be just like you and your friends in the media to ask a question like that!” Clinton would bark at press secretary Mike McCurry. Says McCurry now: “We’d try to get him to blow up at us.”
The only barb exchanged between Bush and the press corps Wednesday was in jest. When Bush spotted “Stretch”-Bloomberg’s Richard Keil-at the electrical plant, he quipped: “I made you famous by calling you Stretch.” Keil responded: “My parents said I’ve been called a lot worse.” Without missing a beat Bush retorted: “Particularly by them.” Score two for Bush.
