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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jim-thompson who wrote (384087)	4/2/2003 10:17:52 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

White House struggles to put Bush above TV Roland Watson/The Times, London WASHINGTON, April 1. — White House is struggling to portray President Bush as a war leader while trying to insulate him from battlefield setbacks and avoid the pitfalls of his predecessors. After nearly two weeks of war, officials give conflicting messages on the smallest details of Mr Bush’s daily routine, such as how much television coverage he is watching. The apparently mundane question of his viewing habits is fraught with potential public relations traps, and has seen White House officials presenting differing accounts as they try to avoid mistakes of former wartime Presidents. The first President Bush, for instance, appeared ill-informed when he sat glued to the television during the opening days of the 1991 Gulf War. Mr Lyndon Johnson was famously pictured in front of three television screens as he watched simultaneous evening network news bulletins from Vietnam. As a result, White House officials said that the commander-in-chief had not watched the vivid television pictures of the “shock and awe” campaign over Baghdad ten days ago. The aim was to portray Mr Bush as a man sufficiently plugged into the US military campaign and that he didn’t need a television to tell him what was going on. But the image of a leader going about his domestic presidential duties while the US military campaign was played out on live television stretched credibility too far. It backfired when officials admitted that he had indeed been watching. The White House was further on the back foot after a close friend of the President recounted how Mr Bush had laughed at reports that he was not watching the war on TV. “He is just totally immersed,” Mr Roland Betts said after spending the weekend with Mr Bush at Camp David. Mr Bush had frequently looked to the television for updates on Iraq, calling Ms Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, when he saw things that concerned him, Mr Betts told The New York Times. That account earned Mr Betts an early Monday morning telephone call from Mr Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, after it threatened to undermine the White House’s previous characterisation. Mr Fleischer said on Monday that Mr Bush does tune in “from time to time”, but that is not how he gets his source of news”. The managing of Mr Bush’s image during war is acutely sensitive for his staff. They have tried to present Mr Bush as a communicator-in-chief who still has his eye on the domestic agenda, but whose commitment remains to the war and preventing terrorist attacks on America. But the balance is tricky. Maintaining too much distance from the action in Iraq makes him look aloof and uncaring, remote from the rest of the viewing public, said Mr Steven Hayward, an expert on the presidency at the American Enterprise Institute. But portraying him as too close to the details makes him look obsessive and dictatorial.