CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 28 -- In the time-honored political tradition of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, President Bush invited the White House press corps out to his ranch Wednesday night for a poolside barbecue.
For reporters who have spent the last month sleeping in cricket-infested Waco hotels and watching cable news in a middle school gymnasium that houses the news media's operations, it was a chance to see another side of central Texas: the rolling prairies, roving cattle herds and, not least, the large swimming pool on the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Sipping their Shiner Bocks at sunset (Bush drank nonalcoholic Buckler), many of the journalists were forced to acknowledge that Prairie Chapel Ranch is not such an awful place after all.
President Bush with Barney at the ranch earlier this month. The Scottish terrier kept a watchful eye on reporters during Wednesday night's barbecue.
(Rick Wilking -- Reuters)
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Though the combined audience of the assembled news outlets is in the tens if not hundreds of millions, the words uttered by the president and Laura Bush cannot be conveyed to the public -- the White House required that the conversations be off the record. It was the first such gathering of the full press corps at Bush's ranch and the second of its kind in Bush's presidency.
In early evening, some 50 journalists and camera crews, along with a dozen aides and as many Secret Service agents, piled into a half-dozen white vans for the drive to the heavily fortified Bush ranch and its relatively modest limestone compound. (Reporters were not allowed in the main house but connived their way into the guest house by saying they needed to use the toilets.)
The president and the first lady -- he in jeans and she in khakis -- formed a receiving line at the pool, which the president dubbed the "Whining Pool" because he built it to keep his daughters from kvetching. In a gesture that vastly raised the journalists' assessment of Bush, the teetotaling president arranged for them to be served beer from coolers and Australian (read: not French) red wine. Barney, the Scottish terrier, elected to drink water from the pool. Spot, the other presidential dog, took a brief dip in the pool. The reporters, though invited to bring their swimsuits, elected not to take a dip.
The president led his guests on a tour of the ranch, as he has done before with his favorite heads of state. The scribes, slowed by a month of chicken-fried steaks, struggled onto the beds of several waiting pickup trucks. Bush took the wheel of the first truck and led the journalists, many of whom wouldn't know a cottonmouth from cotton candy, on a dusty, four-mile tour, weaving past canyons, pastures and an equal number of cattle and Secret Service outposts.
Back at the Whining Pool, the press corps did what it does best: load up on fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, jalapeno biscuits and peach cobbler. Bush, with his choice of a half-dozen tables, sat down with the camera crews. Though what they discussed cannot be divulged, the talk after Bush left focused on bass fishing and the Big 12 conference.
A scrum of journalists followed the president from truck to chicken to cobbler. One tried, unsuccessfully, to pepper Bush with foreign policy questions. Another pleaded for more such private moments, moaning, "I miss you!" Still others wanted to know what the first lady thought of being called a "lump" by her husband. The answer? Off the record.
The sun had set, the cobbler was gone and Barney, tired of the whole thing, began barking ferociously at the guests. The president retreated to his compound, the press to the crickets in their hotel rooms.
