COMMENT
NEWSHOUNDS
by Hendrik Hertzberg
Issue of 2005-02-28
Posted 2005-02-21
"Mr. President," George W. Bush was asked at a press conference on January 26th, "do you think it's a proper use of government funds to pay commentators to promote your policies?"
"No," the President replied. "I expect my cabinet secretaries to make sure that that practice doesn't go forward," he elaborated. "Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet. I'm confident you'll be, over the course of the next four years, willing to give our different policies an objective look--won't you?" Then came the smirk, which has been making a post-election comeback. "Yes, I can see that."
The assurance,
if not the smirk, was in order, because, until "that practice" came to light, using government funds to pay commentators to promote the Administration's policies seems to have been very much on its agenda. As USA Today had revealed a couple of weeks earlier, Armstrong Williams, a syndicated columnist (until his syndicate dropped him) and frequent cable-news talking head, got two hundred and forty-one thousand dollars from the Department of Education to shill for Bush's No Child Left Behind program. On the day of Bush's press conference, the Washington Post reported that Maggie Gallagher, a somewhat less widely syndicated columnist and "marriage expert" (who isn't?), had pocketed forty-one thousand five hundred taxpayer dollars for doing various chores on behalf of Bush's sexual-abstinence and marriage-promotion programs, such as ghosting an article under the byline of an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services in Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine whose publisher, Deal W. Hudson, was the "Catholic outreach adviser" to the Bush reëlection campaign. (Later, after allegations of sexual harassment against Hudson came to light, he left the campaign and the magazine.) Finally, the day after the Gallagher disclosures, USA Today reported that yet another right-wing marriage expert slash syndicated columnist, Michael McManus, had been performing similar tasks for H.H.S., and more cheaply--he collected only ten grand. It appears that Gallagher and McManus, unlike Williams, were not explicitly required to use their columns to puff the government programs that were paying them, but it didn't hurt. Some observers were reminded of an old Fleet Street ditty:
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
But that's Britain. Here, no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
Meanwhile, back at the press conference, Bush went on to the next question, pointing to a man who was sitting some rows back, and who was wearing a laminated credential identifying him as Jeff Gannon, a reporter for a news service called Talon News. "Thank you," the man said, and popped this poser:
Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid [the Senate Democratic leader] was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work--you said you're going to reach out to these people--how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?
Softball is often the name of the game at White House press conferences, and it is not uncommon for a correspondent to serve up an intentional walk. But rarely is the pitcher so unskillful that the base on balls turns into a beanball.
The unusually blatant sycophancy of the question naturally drew attention to the questioner, and in the weeks since a curious story has emerged. Jeff Gannon, the reporter for the news service called Talon News, turns out to be "Jeff Gannon," a "reporter" for a "news service" called "Talon News." His real name is James Guckert. He is not a reporter but a propagandist and (even though his "news reports" have often featured appeals to anti-gay bigotry) apparently a part-time male escort, whose registered Internet domains include hotmilitarystud.com. Talon News is not a news service but a front for gopusa.com, a Texas Republican Web site. Because of this, the Congressional press galleries, which issue the standard Washington press passes, refused to accredit him. Even so, he was for two years a regular at the daily White House briefings, where Scott McClellan, the press secretary, frequently called upon him when the going got tough. ("Go ahead, Jeff" was McClellan's standard cry for help, as the invaluable Web site MediaMatters has documented.) The premises of "Jeff's" question to the President were false, gleaned from the alternative universe of right-wing talk radio. Or so Rush Limbaugh said on his program that afternoon. After reading "Jeff's" question aloud, Limbaugh crowed:
We made this point yesterday. I mean, Hillary is out there talking about the economy is on the verge of collapse, and Harry Reid's describing America with nobody's got health insurance, forty-five million without health insurance, wages are going down. It's horrible out there! Harry Reid never said soup lines. That's my term for the simple way to characterize the Democrats' view of America. . . . But the reporter attributed it to him, and I'm not angry about this at all, folks! I'm flattered and honored and proud!
One might imagine that all of this had the makings of an old-fashioned, months-long, television-friendly Washington scandal--not as important, obviously, as, say, the Iran-contra affair of the nineteen-eighties, but more so than, say, the flap about the dismissal of several employees of the White House travel office in 1993. One would probably be wrong. The non-Fox cable news outlets began to pick up on it last week; msnbc even assayed a special logo, "Gannongate." A better name for it, though, would be "Nothinggate," because nothing is what is likely to come of it. What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years--real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment--have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won't be because the scandals aren't there. It'll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key.
Last Thursday, Bush had another press conference, to announce the appointment of a director of national intelligence, and he made an elaborate show of familiarity with his interlocutors. A dozen of them got to ask questions, and the President called upon all but one by name. Perhaps he was simply letting the world know that from now on the reporters who are vouchsafed the privilege of asking questions at Presidential press conferences will actually be reporters. But be careful, White House correspondents. He knows who you are.