Mutual Mistrust Anyone?

Another Day of Mutual Mistrust

"Mike McCurry, who was President Bill Clinton's press secretary a decade ago, is kicking himself to this day for ever allowing the White House briefings to be televised live.

"It was a huge error on my part," Mr. McCurry recalled the other day after watching a relentless White House press corps badger Scott McClellan, the current White House press secretary, about a hunting accident in which Vice President Dick Cheney shot a friend, Harry M. Whittington, and delayed telling the news media about it. "It has turned into a theater of the absurd."

The live briefings, held almost daily, do serve a purpose for both sides. They give the White House an everyday entree into the news cycle and let officials speak directly to the public. And they give reporters the chance to hold officials accountable and on the record (and help reporters get time on camera).

By its nature, the relationship between the White House and the press has historically held an inherent tension. And many say it has been eroding since the Vietnam War and Watergate, when reporters had reason to distrust everything the White House said and made a scandalous "gate" out of every murky act.

But today, those on both sides say, the relationship has deteriorated further, exacerbated by the live briefings.

"It's constantly getting worse," said Ari Fleischer, who preceded Mr. McClellan as Mr. Bush's spokesman. Perhaps surprisingly for a Bush defender, he attributed the soured relationship in part to what he said was a secretiveness within the White House."

So, the White House remains unprepared and caught off-guard. My grandfather used to tell me not to lie because it gets too hard to remember all the lies you are spinning at any given time. Perhaps if the truth were the primary focus of these briefings, then the White House wouldn't be caught so much off-balance, er... off-guard.