Media Quarters Get a Lift; Bush Quarters Don't Need One

P resident Bush and first lady Laura Bush are scheduled to welcome the White House press corps back to its newly refurbished digs in the West Wing on Wednesday morning. For the past 11 months, reporters have been working out of temporary quarters in the White House conference center, just west of Lafayette Square. It was the first time the presidential press corps had been stationed outside of the West Wing since 1902.

In the meantime, workers have been completing $8 million in renovations on the once ratty (in more ways than one), cramped and often overheated briefing room. Located in a part of the White House complex that through the years has housed a laundry, servant quarters, massage rooms and a pool built for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the current briefing room was christened by President Richard M. Nixon in 1970.

The refurbished James S. Brady Press Briefing Room will have 49 leather chairs (which, incidentally, are slightly wider than the old ones). Asbestos has been removed, and presumably, so have the rodents that once prowled in the shadows.

Light-emitting diodes will eliminate the need for hot television lights. There is also a new air-conditioning system that packs more than double the cooling power of the previous one and seat-side Internet, telephone and electrical connections. About 570 miles of cable was installed to make possible the endless flow of live shots, audio and video feeds and news bulletins from the White House. The old wooden floor that once covered the pool has been replaced with a poured concrete floor.

The new podium from which the press secretary and other officials brief reporters is framed by two white columns and is flanked by twin 45-inch flat screens that will illustrate the White House's spin on events. Workers were busy putting the finishing touches on the place in the days leading up to the reopening.

Leave it to reporters to find a potential downside in the spanking-new space. Some of us have voiced concern that the place is so nice that Bush might do all his news conferences there rather than in the East Room or the Rose Garden, as has been the case. But Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin says not to worry. The room, he says, will be used as it always has: for the daily briefings from the press secretary and occasional sessions with the press by other White House officials.

African Health Effort's Funding Woes

By all rights, this should have been a big moment for the president's compassion agenda. But like so much during his second term, things are not going exactly as planned. The first lady recently returned from a four-nation tour of Africa designed to highlight the administration's ramped-up effort to battle AIDS and malaria on the world's poorest continent.

Malaria annually kills 1 million people -- many of them children -- in Africa, and 48 million people suffer from HIV or AIDS, which already has killed 32 million. Bush has called on Congress to double funding for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and has targeted $1.2 billion to battle malaria.

Timed to the first lady's third solo visit to Africa was an announcement by the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC), a government foreign aid agency, of huge grants for the African nations of Lesotho and Mozambique. The two grants total $869 million and would build health-care infrastructure and improve roads, water and sanitation.

But a House Appropriations subcommittee moved to chop the MCC's budget request from $3 billion to $1.8 billion, citing a large amount of unspent money from years when MCC grants were few. The panel, meanwhile, shifted some money to battle AIDS while moving to lift administration restrictions on funding foreign aid groups that distribute contraceptives -- something previously opposed by Bush and many of the religious conservatives who favor his foreign aid largess.

"At the committee's recommended funding level, the work of our partner countries to develop programs that will lift people out of poverty will be constrained," said John Danilovich, chief executive of the MCC. He added that he hopes the subcommittee's work is "only the first step" in the funding process.

Father -- and Son -- {heart} Maine

This just in: President Bush loves Kennebunkport. No, really. So says his father, anyway.

As reporters waited for Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin to address them after a meeting at the family compound in Maine last week, George H.W. Bush ambled over in his salmon pants and blue windbreaker, monogrammed "41 & Mrs. Bush," to chat.

And he wanted to shoot down once and for all speculation that his Texas ranching son doesn't like the oceanfront, stone-and-shingle New England retreat built by the family in 1903. Asked if the president would come back to visit soon, the elder Bush said, "I hope so, but it's complicated. He loves it here, always has."

It's clear, at least, that 41 loves it there. He and Barbara Bush spend five months a year at the estate, cranking his Fidelity III speedboat up as high as 70 mph (possible, he said, with only three people and a half-tank of gas, to get the weight right) and tooling around the grounds in one of three Segways owned by the former first couple. "It's heaven for me," the former president, 83, said. Asked about his recovery from hip replacement surgery, he confessed, "I neglected my therapy for about two months . . . but now it's fine."

Wehner Takes His Thinking Elsewhere

Peter H. Wehner, who ran what many colleagues called a virtual think tank inside the White House, is now landing at the real thing on the outside. Wehner, the White House director of strategic initiatives, will become in August a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

Famous for the essays, news stories, columns and journal articles he would send to his extensive e-mail list of opinion-makers around town, Wehner at his new home plans to launch a project examining the future of conservatism. "Conservatism is going through a reassessment right now," he said. "A lot of conservatives are demoralized." While he said he believes conservatism remains a strong force in American society, he will explore how it could adapt to the changing political environment.

Bush's Birthday Bash

President Bush's 61st birthday was last Friday, a milestone he celebrated on July 4 with a private gathering at the White House residence. His parents and daughters Jenna and Barbara were part of the festivities. The first lady also invited several professional golfers in town for the AT&T National tournament at Congressional Country Club. Fred Funk, Davis Love III and Phil Mickelson took in the fireworks from a White House balcony. Funk, whose father-in-law is former congressman Bill Archer (R-Tex.), presented Bush with a golf bag embroidered with the presidential seal and his name.

The first lady also sent an e-mail to GOP donors asking for $61 contributions to the Republican National Committee in her husband's honor. RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the solicitation prompted "an overwhelming response," although no numbers were available.