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player ready...by David Nitkin
‘Tis the season to duck questions.
There were topics aplenty that Bush refused to talk about today during his hastily called final news conference of the year.
Bush wouldn’t discuss in detail about the CIA erasing videotapes of terrorist interrogations that involved waterboarding.
“I know I’m going to be asked about this question a lot as times goes on, I’m just going to prepare you: Until these inquiries are complete, until the oversight’s finished, then I will be rendering no opinion from the podium,” he said.
The president didn’t speak much about his objectives for his final year in office, although several members of the White House press corps said later they would have pressed the president on that issue if they had been called on.The president took 14 questions before leaving the briefing room.
Bush hinted that he would focus next year on blocking tax increases that Congress might be considering. He said he was asking his budget director to look for ways to “for dealing with the wasteful spending” in a massive “omnibus” budget bill passed by Congress this week. But he wouldn’t give details.
“That’ll be an interesting nugget for next year,” he said.
He wouldn’t offer opinions about the current political climate, even as the Iowa caucuses loom.
Bush acknowledged that the volume of such questions would soon grow, but insisted he was up to the task of fending them off.
“I plan on having some press conferences next year, and I suspect next year the questions will be even more plentiful about getting me to be the opiner-in-chief,” he said.
The White House gave reporters about 90 minutes’ notice that the president was holding a news conference, returning to a long-standing practice that gives journalists limited time to prepare.
For the most recent previous question-and-answer session, on Dec. 4, press secretary Dana Perino raised eyebrows by giving a full days’ notice and indicating that she was trying something new. The experiment wasn’t repeated.
Fresh off victories on the budget and children’s health care, the president appeared to be in a giving mood, praising Congress for some of its work and ribbing reporters that a flatware inventory taken after last week’s White House holiday parties for the media came up short.
As reporters tried to get him to expound on the election season, Bush dodged. He drew chuckles from reporters and his staff in response recent remark by former President Bill Clinton that if elected, Hillary Clinton would send George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, and her husband, the 42nd president, on an international tour to restore goodwill tarnished by the current administration.
Asked if he thought the initiatve was necessary, Bush replied: “Well, 41 didn’t think it’s necessary. Sounds like it’s going to be a one-man trip.”
David Nitkin covers the White House for The Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Co. newspaper.