Black is grey for Ari Fleischer
www.theaustralian.news.com.au By Washington correspondent Roy Eccleston March 10, 2003
GQ magazine once called him the "flack out of hell", and The New Republic magazine called him a fibber. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau draws him as a slightly sinister silhouette in his Doonesbury strip and just calls him Ari.
As George W. Bush's chief spokesman, Lawrence Ari Fleischer was always going to be a high-profile sort of guy. But the controversial manner of Bush's election, the September 11 terrorist attacks and the war on Afghanistan have given the 42-year-old spin doctor an international face.
Now, with war on Iraq looming, it is Fleischer's job to keep the press convinced that Saddam Hussein is on the way out, that the White House strategy is working as planned, that any obstacle was anticipated, and most importantly, that Bush is always right and always in control.
Sometimes that means not answering the question – perhaps on the basis it's "hypothetical". Sometimes the question has to be deflected – to the State Department, the Pentagon, or the governments of any one of 150 countries.
And sometimes, he must be able to look reporters in the face and convincingly declare black is white, or at least grey.
It's a job Fleischer does pretty well. Balding, bespectacled, his public performances are smooth, polished, a little bland. He smiles, cracks little jokes, and is neither snide nor over-familiar with reporters, in public at least. Fleischer also has that important weapon in a mouthpiece's armoury: a very good memory for detail.
Behind the scenes, says one White House reporter for a big US newspaper, he's "nice". The Economist magazine's reporters have had a different experience, calling the Bush team masters of bullying and bamboozling. Ask Fleischer what his boss had for dinner "and you will be subjected to an evasive burble; ask a question about the administration's connections with Enron (the failed energy giant) and you may suddenly find it hard to gain entry into the White House", the magazine said.
Fleischer hails from New York and a family of Jewish Democrats. But he found Ronald Reagan more appealing than Jimmy Carter, and for more than 20 years now has made his career representing Republicans.
Along the way, he gathered a reputation as being good at his job. Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at the New Republic magazine, last year wrote a long article describing the "peculiar duplicity" of Fleischer, whom he said "has a way of blindsiding you, leaving you disoriented and awestruck".
"Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom," wrote Chait. "Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether."
Professionally, though, he almost never seems at a loss for an answer – even if it is not the answer being sought. Fleischer is doggedly loyal to the President and a devotee to his boss's guiding principle of secrecy.
And he rarely backs down. Take this exchange at last Tuesday's regular daily briefing, when Fleischer seemed to offer a different line than he had put out that morning when TV cameras were not present.
Would the US be seeking a vote on a second resolution at the UN Security Council, a reporter wanted to know.
"Well," began Fleischer, "what the President has said is that he believes that a vote is desirable; it is not mandatory."
The White House correspondents smelled a rat. "But there will be a vote?" demanded one. "You're backing off," said another to a chorus of agreement. "You're backing off. Yeah, that's different than what you said this morning. And what you said last week."
Fleischer wasn't really reflecting what Bush had said, as one reporter pointed out. Bush had always said a new resolution – not a vote – was desirable but not mandatory.
"You, from that podium, both this morning and last week, said there will be a vote, regardless of what the outcome was going to be," insisted one correspondent.
Fleischer responded smoothly: "Do not interpret this as any change in position."
The next day came news that should have floored the most ardent advocate for Bush: France and Russia, both with veto rights at the Security Council, were vowing not to allow any resolution that authorised force against Iraq.
That seemed to derail the Bush-Blair bid to win UN backing for war. Absolutely not, insisted Fleischer, who took an optimistic view: "I think it's not accurate to leap to any conclusions about how these nations will actually vote."
But even as skilled a hand as Fleischer occasionally gets caught out.
The Washington Post reported how the Bush mouthpiece recently refused to stay on the record in an interview with reporters who wanted to talk about political polls. Instead, he insisted on being an unnamed "senior administration official".
Funny, that. The paper reported that last year, when an "unnamed official" suggested the administration might support a coup in Venezuela, Fleischer challenged the assertion on the basis it was anonymous. "The person obviously doesn't have enough confidence in what he said to say it on the record," Fleischer said.
His only serious missteps came after the September 11 attacks. First, Fleischer claimed Bush's delay in returning to Washington was because Air Force One was a terrorist target. Later it turned out there was never a real threat.
More troubling was his response to Bill Maher, then host of a talk show Politically Incorrect, who said Americans had been cowardly by firing long-distance cruise missiles at Afghanistan. Americans, said Fleischer from the White House podium, "need to watch what they say".
The feisty UPI correspondent Helen Thomas who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy, told The New York Times in 2001 that Fleischer was kept "on a very short leash". So far, though, it's been long enough to protect his boss's back.