What's George W. Bush Really Like?
It's CBS News correspondent Bill Plante's turn to answer mail sent to the White House Booth.
Are the First Lady and our President affectionate with each other in the White House?
As a correspondent you must have some interaction with the President, so tell me (us) is he a likeable guy? He comes across to me as friendly and like a really nice man so tell us the truth is he a cuddly President or more of a porcupine?
Greg Cariglia
The First Lady and the President are very close — and it shows in small ways. He'll hold her hand, glance at her, or occasionally put his arm around her.
Like most people, and most politicians, George W. Bush has many moods. On the campaign plane in 2000, he was generally relaxed and enjoyed kidding around with the reporters who covered him. Interacting with supporters in the carefully staged town meetings of the 2004 campaign, Mr. Bush was friendly, jovial and very easygoing. But he also has a prickly side, which reporters at the White House see when we ask a question he doesn't wish to answer. His public style is generally good-natured — but he leaves no doubt that he's the guy in charge.
What is the full story on flu vaccine program and the windfall that Rumsfeld is going to receive as former chairman and now owner of stock that will receive one billion dollars of that program??
Max Orndorff
The Secretary of Defense was Chairman of Gilead Sciences, a pharmaceutical company, from approximately 1993 until he was sworn in to his present job in 2001. Gilead makes, among other drugs, Tamiflu — one of the few drugs thought to be effective treating Avian Flu. I don't know how much stock Donald Rumsfeld has in Gilead — but it's gone from about $30 dollars a share to about $50 a share in the past year. I haven't seen any reporting that connects Rumsfeld to any preferential use of the drug.
It has always amazed me that when Colin Powell showed aerial photos of supposed WMD factories in Iraq to the world, why he didn't just give the location of those plants to Hans Blix and the other U.N. inspectors to check out. The inspections were still going on.
But even more amazing is that not a single newsman or reporter has asked him or the President that seemingly simple and obvious question, ever. Why? I would still like to hear the answers to both those questions.
Charle Bragg
When Secretary of State Powell made the February 5, 2003 presentation to the UN (which he later regretted), his aim was to convince the Security Council that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The administration wasn't interested in having the UN check it out. They never trusted Blix's UN inspection team to look hard enough and be tough enough to get past Iraqi deception. In fact, when UN team members did look into some of Powell's charges before inspections ended in March, 2003, they reported that items such as the "decontamination vehicles" Powell cited were in fact water trucks.
What happened to the president's health plan for the citizens of the United States?
Mary Layne
In the campaign of 2000 and again in 2004, Mr. Bush talked about tax credits for individual health insurance, small business association health plans and a prescription drug plan for Medicare, which was passed in 2003. He also promoted health savings accounts. Except for this year's proposal of the President's Tax Revision Commission to limit the amount of employee-paid healthcare, little has been done since the election. Biggest reason: there's no willingness in Congress to take on something as expensive as healthcare with everything else on their plate.
Editor's note: There was a lot of viewer mail about Chief White Correspondent John Roberts' "sloppy seconds" question about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito — 99 percent of negative. Roberts has apologized for it in the CBS blog Public Eye.