Mock the Press

"[S]aid Ron Hutcheson of McClatchy Newspapers, who has covered the entire Bush presidency but is leaving for a job in public relations, 'The truth is that the president is not making the kind of news he made in the first term or even in the start of the second term, especially now that immigration has gone down.'

"Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, disputed that assessment. 'Last time I checked,' he said, 'the White House ends up on the front page every day.'"

Regarding this morning's event, Stolberg writes: "With the White House press corps under attack from liberal bloggers as being too cozy with the Bush administration, some reporters say they feel a little bit queasy about attending. Mr. Snow said the president would not take questions, which poses a quandary for journalists uneasy about being seen with him at a purely ceremonial affair."

USA Today reports: "Some members of the Fourth Estate have protested the lack of questions and answers, especially in light of the politics surrounding the Iraq War, executive privilege and the commutation of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby's prison term."

James Gerstenzang writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Like its earlier incarnations over the last 37 years, the room is still over President Franklin D. Roosevelt's enclosed swimming pool, in an area that once also housed massage rooms and servants' quarters -- metaphors, some might say, for a relationship between chief executive and the media criticized as overly cozy."

Here's a " fact sheet" on the briefing room from the White House.

If He Could Turn Back Time

Bush's unscripted " town meeting" with an audience of friendly Cleveland business leaders was notable mostly for how little new the president had to say. Despite the changing political landscape -- with a huge majority of the American public and, now, a growing number of Republican lawmakers demanding a withdrawal of U.S. troops for Iraq -- it was mostly a sloppy collection of old talking points and heartfelt but substance-free assertions.

Fred Kaplan writes in Slate: "It was, even by his standards, an unusually rambling speech, alternately folksy and haranguing. . . .

"Unlike earlier talks of this sort, in which Bush's speechwriters at least assembled some stray facts and passed them off as evidence of progress, this speech -- which seemed entirely improvised -- was founded on nothing but faith."

Said Bush: "I wouldn't ask a mother or a dad -- I wouldn't put their son in harm's way if I didn't believe this was necessary for the security of the United States and peace of the world. And I strongly believe it. And I strongly believe we will prevail. And I strongly believe that democracy will trump totalitarianism every time. That's what I believe. And those are the belief systems on which I'm making decisions that I believe will yield the peace."

But if there was a purpose behind Bush's talk, it may have been to try to set the clock back six months.

Carolyn Lochhead writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: "While most everyone in Washington believes the surge of 30,000 troops in Iraq that began last January is nearing its end, the White House insisted Tuesday that it is only beginning.