Texas Monthly Talks
Dan Bartlett
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That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.
Dispel the myth that there’s an underground tunnel between the Fox News studios and the White House.
Um, no, quite the contrary. I’ll tell you, I probably got more complaints from various Fox News programs about not getting the type of access they deserved. Now, there are exceptions to that. Vice President Cheney’s done a lot with them. But I think they were treated pretty equally across the board. If you look at the major newscasters, there were some, like [Dan] Rather, that we didn’t do. You’d be hard-pressed to say that we didn’t accommodate the others.
You acknowledge that the perception is out there that the playing field was tilted a little bit in their direction.
There’s no question that’s the perception. In reality, I don’t think there’s as much behind it.
What do you think we in the media haven’t understood about this president?
I can’t tell you how many times reporters who didn’t really know the president came in and had a personal session with him and said, “Wow, he’s smarter than I thought.” The temptation to buy into the conventional wisdom left the wrong impression about who this guy is personally.
Have the media been too tough on him?
I think White House correspondents have been tagged, unfairly, with not being tough enough on the administration and President Bush in the run-up to the war. If you go back and look, they asked all the right questions. The problem is, they’re acting now like they have to be five times more critical, and I think they’ve gone overboard.
You think they’re overcompensating.
Yes, I do. This issue of “Bush lied, people died”? It’s been the mantra for the last four years: “If only the right questions had been asked back then, we would have found out that he was lying to us.” That’s false—it’s patently false. There’s a difference between lying and being wrong. We were wrong. As were a lot of people and a lot of countries. We were wrong about the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. That’s far different from saying that we purposely manipulated or intentionally lied to the American people.
Do you think the press corps is responsible for putting that word out—that the president was lying?
I don’t think they’re purposely doing it. Look, I get asked the question all the time: How do you deal with them when they’re all liberal? I’ve found that most of them are not ideologically driven. Do I think that a lot of them don’t agree with the president? No doubt about it. But impact, above all else, is what matters. All they’re worried about is, can I have the front-page byline? Can I lead the evening newscast? And unfortunately, that requires them to not do in-depth studies about President Bush’s health care plan or No Child Left Behind. It’s who’s up, who’s down: Cheney hates Condi, Condi hates Cheney.
So now we know what the media have done wrong. What did you do wrong? What would you like to have back?
You don’t get do-overs—that’s the thing about working there. We found that if you became too worried about the decision you had just made, you were not going to be in a very good position to make the next one. They’re big decisions and they’re hard decisions, and there’s a lot of perfect hindsight now about things we would have done differently, for example, had we known the [problems with the] intelligence on the war. There are comments the president made that he would love to take back. “Bring ’em on” is one that he regrets.
He regrets or you regret?
He does and I do. Me personally, [I regret] the “Mission Accomplished” banner. I wish I could have back the decision to sign off on that. I think the intent behind it to this day holds true. “Mission Accomplished” was the motto of the aircraft carrier that had just spent ten months in a war zone both in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we wanted to celebrate what they had done. But it left a wrong impression symbolically with the American people that our work was done in Iraq, and obviously that wasn’t the case.
With regard to the president’s legacy and how historians will treat him, is everything riding on the outcome in Iraq?
No question. I think the separating of Iraq from other issues in the war on terror will be less obvious twenty or thirty years from now. I think they’ll be judged collectively. My sense is that things will steadily improve in Iraq, and I think the perception of the president will change with it.
You still find cause to be optimistic about the war?
I do. I’ve sat in hundreds of briefings. I think the team advising this president and executing this strategy on the ground should give us hope. I also understand probably better than most how threats emanate from the Middle East, and I fundamentally believe that if our country ever changes its posture into more of a defensive posture instead of more of an offensive posture, it’s going to threaten the security of our country.
If you’re optimistic for what you believe are good reasons—if the information flow inside the White House is cause for optimism—why shouldn’t this be seen as a colossal failure of communications on the part of the administration? Why haven’t you been able to message that good news successfully?
Whether you’re communicating properly is a result of how good your facts are. Up until recently, there haven’t been good facts. There’s also considerable fatigue. It’s my view that ever since it was official that there weren’t weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we were largely on borrowed time with the American people. There have been too many Charlie Brown moments where we felt like, okay, there’s some positive optimism, and then it was rescinded. I think now more than ever we have the right strategy to have sustainable progress, but the time and sacrifice have been more than we anticipated. That doesn’t make it any less necessary, but it does make it harder for the American people to tolerate it.
Who is the Republican presidential nominee going to be?
I don’t know. I really don’t. I could make a case for three of them.
It’s John McCain you can’t make a case for.
I’d have a difficult time. Because of resources, I think, he could win New Hampshire and lose the presidential nomination, just like he did in 2000.
Is Hillary Clinton going to win?
I don’t think so. There’s a long road ahead of us. Someone who enters into a general election with a high negative approval rating has a built-in disadvantage.
Regardless of the Democratic nominee, the Republican brand is tarnished right now.
I feel very bullish about the fact that a Republican can win the fall election. The interesting thing is, as much as Iraq has been dominant throughout the politics of ’04, ’06, and now ’08, you’ll have tens of thousands of troops coming home next year, and so Iraq is not going to be the front-burner issue in the way that everybody initially predicted. We were down eight to ten points to Al Gore. We were down eight to ten points to John Kerry. I can see why conventional wisdom says Republicans ought to be despondent, but I don’t feel that way.
Is there another Democrat who worries you more than Hillary does? What if, say, Barack Obama were the nominee?
He poses a different set of challenges. When it comes down to it, Hillary Clinton will very much excite the Republican faithful to get out and work hard. I don’t know if a similar case can be made if Obama is the candidate.
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