All Blog Posts from Public Eye

I remember reading Neustadt, Jones and Barber in grad school, discussing the ins-and-outs of the American Presidency.

(My fave? Tulis’ The Rhetorical Presidency, closely followed by Neustadt’s Presidential Power.)

Turns out the argument over ‘what makes a good president’ is as old as the country itself. And that debate continued on this week, with ABC’s Mark Halperin writing in the Sunday New York Times that he was rethinking whether good campaigners made for good presidents, prompting CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller – in one of his irregularly scheduled dispatches – to write in to Public Eye, basically asking Halperin ‘What took you so long?’

I was surprised to read the Op-Ed piece in Sunday New York Times by Mark Halperin.

Over the years, we both covered the White House and presidential campaigns when he worked as a producer and political director at ABC News. Now, he’s editor-at-large and senior political analyst at Time Magazine. I know him to be an astute and incisive political observer.

He now writes that his long-time view of presidential campaigns as predictors of leadership in office is wrong.

“For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared the view that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed to be a great candidate and a great president,” wrote Halperin.

Frankly, I can’t believe he ever felt that way. It has always seemed self-evident that the best campaigners are not necessarily the best Presidents.

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This post has been updated. --MTF

Criticisms of the White House press corps come fast and furious in MediaLand and Blogistan. (From accusations like they’re ‘an extension of the Clinton spin machine’ to its ‘meekness’ in covering the Bush presidency.) But very rarely do they come from the White House press corps itself.

Until this week.

ABC’s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz was the subject of a Washington Post profile by Howard Kurtz on Monday, where he detailed her ventures to Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A few paragraphs in, Raddatz tossed a bit of grenade at her friends and colleagues in the White House press corps – or, at the very least, the position of White House correspondent – when she said:

"I'd probably go crazy if I had to stay every second at the White House and not go out and be a reporter," she says by phone from Pakistan. "I don't want to be a stenographer.”

From this writer’s vantage point, Raddatz seemed to be implying that covering the White House was not quite the same as what she thought it mean to “be a reporter.”

Needless to say, this wasn’t taken well by some of those she sits with in the White House briefing room.

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To quote the 20th Century philosophy triumvirate of Bell, Biv, DeVoe – “I thought it was me.”

But it turns out that this writer wasn’t alone in observing how gimmicked up some of the presidential debates have become. CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller – in one of his irregularly scheduled dispatches – decries the ‘Lightning Round’ being used by MSNBC.

It’s almost enough to make you pine for Billiam the Snowman. Almost.

And now, Mark’s musings.

Do we really need to turn our presidential debates into game shows?

I was thinking about last week’s democratic debate hosted by NBC News and was put off by the segment labeled “the lightning round.”

Each candidate was given just 30 seconds to respond to a question – and like a game show – a visual countdown clock was put on the screen.

Now, we all understand the point of this. Two-hour long political debates can become boring, and putting a stopwatch to the candidates is a way to pick up the pace and liven up the responses, but does it illuminate the issues or the candidates’ stands on them?

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CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller missed a Bush press conference earlier this month. In this dispatch he shares/vents other frustrations about the logistics of covering President Bush this past summer.

It costs CBS News a fortune to cover the President – especially when he travels. And it sure looks like it didn’t get its money’s worth this month.

Three times in recent weeks, those of us who were covering the President’s trips to Kennebunkport, Maine; Crawford, Texas; and today to Bellevue, Washington were totally out of position for the big stories of the day.

On the morning of Thursday, August 9, members of the traveling press were on the press plane en route to Maine – just as Pres. Bush was holding a formal news conference back at the White House.

We had returned to Washington three days later, but were airborne again Monday morning flying to Waco, Texas in advance of the President beginning a two-week stay at his ranch in Crawford.

So what happens, while we’re half-way to Central Texas? The president walks out to Marine One to announce the resignation of his senior advisor Karl Rove.

And again this morning, the President ends his two-week ranch stay and arrives at TSTC Airfield in Waco – to makes his first public statement on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

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CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller offers his assessment of President Bush's press conference this morning – and talks about why he wasn't there…

Talk about being out of pocket.

You probably didn’t notice, but one part of the White House Press Corps wasn’t able to attend the President’s news conference this morning.

At the time, we were aboard the White House press plane en route to Kennebunkport, Maine where Pres. Bush is now spending a long weekend.

So instead of attending the hastily announced Q-&-A session in the White House briefing room where I should have been and otherwise would have been, I watched it from 39,000 feet aboard the chartered jetBlue Airbus A320 that served as the press plane on this trip. On that aircraft, passengers can watch a number of broadcast and cable channels downlinked from the DIRECTV satellite.

But it was a frustrating experience. When the White House put out the word at about 9:00 this morning, I was sitting in the press waiting area at Andrews Air Force Base.

When I left the White House last evening, the only event on the President’s schedule for today was his departure via Marine One at 12:15PM.

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Bells! Whistles! Doohickeys! The refurbished White House press briefing room got a lot of attention at its reopening a few weeks ago. CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller muses that the two newly-installed video monitors could be used in an additional way that Tony Snow hasn't thought of yet.

The new and improved White House press briefing room gives spokesman Tony Snow some brand new audio-visual capabilities.

He is flanked on the podium by two 45-inch high-definition video monitors – on which he can project slides, graphs, quotes or pretty much whatever he wants.

Last Friday, he used the screens to illustrate his assertion that progress was being made in Iraq as a result of the surge in U.S. troops ordered by Pres. Bush.

And today, he was able to push a botton on his lectern and project a couple of old quotes from the current chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., to defend the White House claim of Executive Privilege in the congressional probe of the firings of those U.S. Attorneys.

It got me thinking that Snow could use the screens to respond to many of the questions he gets on a daily basis from reporters.

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White House Correspondent Mark Knoller has a behind-the-scenes report from the new White House Briefing Room…

In a ceremony more closely associated with supermarket openings, President Bush this morning cut a red, white and blue ribbon to inaugurate the newly renovated White House Briefing Room.

The event also marked the return to the West Wing of the White House press corps – ending an 11-month exile in a conference center across the street and down the block.

“Welcome back,” said the President – adding a little needle to his greeting, “We missed you -- sort of.”

He spoke from a brand new, high-tech podium.

Gone is the simple blue-curtain backdrop.

It now looks like something from the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise.

It’s got stage lighting, rotating panels and two 45-inch video screens on which the White House can display charts, graphs, logos or commutation announcements.

The room has new furniture, carpeting and marble slabs on the wall. It smells like a new car – though press rooms have a way of quickly taking on the aroma of its occupants.

Members of the press now sit in new theater-like seats that we’re told are an inch wider than they used to be - perhaps in the belief that reporters are too.

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The way that news outlets are covering the release of Paris Hilton has CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller calling for apologies…

A lot of people in the news media – especially in television and radio – owe you an apology.

They think so little of what you’re interested in that many of us led our newscasts overnight and this morning with the release from prison of heiress and would-be celebrity Paris Hilton.

When a story is first in a newscast, we’re saying we think it’s important. We’re saying we think it’s something you need to know about it.

Can any of us say we need to know about Paris Hilton’s release from jail after serving a few weeks for a motor vehicle infraction?

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Below, CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller takes issue with criticism of some of President Bush's sartorial choices…

Of all the things for which you can legitimately criticize Pres. Bush, should his footwear be among them?

Sure it’s fair game. And Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan took aim and fired in the “Style” section of today’s paper.

In a Page One above-the-fold appraisal, the Post published a photo of Pres. Bush dressed in a manner that even he would agree was very casual. He was waving to reporters as he left the White House recently for some bike riding on the grounds of the U.S. Secret Service Training Facility in Beltsville, Maryland.

The Post enlarged the picture of Mr. Bush’s left foot to give a better illustration of what Givhan found to be such a fashion faux-pas.

”Bush’s decision to wear black socks with his Crocs was ill-considered,” wrote Given.

Socks with Crocs? Oh, no!

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CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller informed Public Eye that this is the last week at the White House for Reuters’ Steve Holland. In the spirit of appreciation, he wanted to share his thoughts about Holland. Hear that? That’s the sound of champagne flutes being tapped. Here’s his toast:


The White House Press Corps is losing one of its best.

After 16 years covering U.S. presidents, Steve Holland of Reuters is leaving the beat.

Now, you may not recognize his name. He’s not as well known as some of the TV hotshots who cover the President. And major newspapers have their own reporters covering the White House.

But as the chief White House reporter for one of the two major wire services, Holland very much set the news agenda for the rest of us.

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