Fifty-Seven Ways to Say
One of the weirdest and most
pernicious side effects of Flytrap has been the relocation of the White House
to an alternative universe, a place where up is down and down is up and
everything is the opposite of what it should be.
In the Flytrap universe,
there is a White House counsel (Charles Ruff) who can't counsel, a presidential
confidant (Bruce Lindsey) whom the president can't confide in, a presidential
wife who acts like a lawyer, a president who acts like a criminal defendant,
and a former intern who has more power than any of them.
The most
public manifestation of the bizarro White House is Mike McCurry. He has become
a spinner who can't spin, a presidential press secretary who can't talk to the
press or the president about the only issue they care about.
Here, as evidence, are the notes I managed to scrawl during
yesterday's White House press briefing. (The speaker is McCurry unless
otherwise indicated, and the subject is Flytrap.)
The president has answered
all questions.
It's clear there is
nothing more to say.
I am not going to add
anything.
I don't have anything to
add. [twice]
You played a semantic game
yesterday. I am not playing that game today.
You played a semantic
game.
That has been asked and
answered.
I just said I was not
prepared with any information.
The same questions were
asked yesterday.
The answer is the same
answer. It is the same answer the president gave July 31.
We don't know.
I obviously don't have any
information.
I don't have any
information.
I just don't have an
answer.
I don't have an answer to
that.
That was asked and
answered.
That was asked and I don't
have the answer.
I don't have any
answers.
The lawyers have not
passed on any answers to us. We have passed on the questions, and they have
said they would take them under advisement.
I am not making any news
today. I made that clear.
I don't have any
information.
I don't know.
We don't have anything to
talk about. (To which tart Helen Thomas responds: "We do have something to
talk about, but you're not talking about it.")
Sam, we have been through
that.
I have not said
anything.
I have not talked to him
about this.
I have not talked to the
president about it.
I have
made it clear I have nothing to say on that subject today.
Quizzing McCurry is like playing tennis against
a mattress. In half an hour of questions, reporters manage to glean
nothing--not a single picayune detail--except the obvious fact that Clinton's
lawyers have barred any public discussion. Among the subjects McCurry has no
answers about: whether the president will address the nation Aug. 17, whether
any of the logistics of his testimony will be revealed, whether he will answer
all questions from Starr, whether Starr is coming to the White House, whether
McCurry has talked to Clinton's lawyers, whether McCurry has talked to the
president, whether "completely and truthfully" means the same thing it did at
yesterday's press briefing, whether Harry Thomason is prepping the president,
whether Thomason is staying at the White House.
(Throughout McCurry's litany of refusal, Sam Donaldson seethes, periodically
interrupting with shouts of "Why are you denigrating us?" and "It's not a
game!")
Ican't decide whom I feel sorrier for, the reporters
without stories or the McCurry without answers. The assembled reporters have to
ask questions, but they know he can't answer them. McCurry has nothing. For
fear of subpoenas and legal bills, the press secretary simply can't talk to the
president about Flytrap. He is in the impossible position of interpreting and
reinterpreting exactly the same two public statements Clinton has made on the
subject of Flytrap ("that woman" in January and "completely and truthfully" in
July). He is otherwise a blank. The result: a farce, a mockery of discourse, an
embarrassment to the press secretary and the press corps.
(McCurry
may be obliged by ignorance to stiff-arm reporters, but that doesn't mean the
White House is inattentive to the media. As the New York Times and
Washington Post report this morning, Clinton advisers are busy testing
how the press and public would respond to a limited mea culpa .) (For
more on the utter cynicism of this latest White House PR ploy, see FRAME GAME: White
Flag.)
When everyone eventually tires of this thrust
and parry. McCurry adjourns the briefing and disappears into the West Wing.
Deputy Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, who will succeed McCurry as press
secretary next month, remains behind. (Lockhart, I had noticed, spent the
entire briefing doodling red squares on his pad.)
Lockhart has learned well
from his departing boss. I eavesdrop as Donaldson and Thomas corner the deputy
press secretary. I can just hear Lockhart's soft, patient voice. "We get asked
the same questions every day. You know as well as I do why we can't answer. ...
Of course I haven't spoken to him. If I had discussed it with him I would be
running up $50,000 a day in legal fees and be in front of that grand jury."
As I
leave a few minutes later I still hear Lockhart, now pinned by another group of
reporters: "I don't know. ... I don't know."
"Flytrap Today": The complete chronicles.
More Flytrap
...
