Saturday, August 28, 2004

What's the story with George Bush and newspapers?

I'm a bit confused. According to this New York Times article on George Bush's involvement with his re-election campaign:

On weekdays, aides say, the campaign essentially begins in the White House residence, where Mr. Bush rises at 5 a.m. to read the newspapers and check on the political news, before calling Mr. Rove to compare notes on what took place overnight and what will take place later.


Yet according to an interview with Fox News anchor Brit Hume that took place in September 2003, Bush doesn't read newspapers on a daily basis, instead asking White House chief of staff Andy Card "what's in the newspapers worth worrying about."

A later interview with Diane Sawyer confirmed that Bush typically doesn't read newspapers. Bush admitted not reading the important stories, since he gets "[his] news from people who don't editorialize. They give [him] the actual news, and it makes it easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts."

So the question is... does George Bush read newspapers or not? Now, maybe things have changed in the year or so since the interview with Hume. Maybe Bush reads newspapers now.

But why the switch? The NYTimes article gives the impression that Bush reads the newspaper just to keep up with news about the campaign. Couldn't his advisors do an adequate job of that? Or maybe it's that Bush is more concerned with getting re-elected than governing effectively; perhaps he'd much rather read up on the effects of the latest Swift Boat ad than, you know, something that actually mattered.

Just a thought.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home