Face Value

Time for a Debate

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, May 23, 2006; 1:09 PM

Is President Bush genuinely willing to confront his critics?

Talking about the war in Iraq last week in a brief interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, Bush said something quite remarkable:

"There are some in Washington that say 'pull out now.' I look forward to debating those voices."

So how about it?

Bush has been getting a lot of positive press over the last several weeks for taking questions from unscreened audiences. And while that's certainly a change from past practice -- in which nonsupporters were frequently not even allowed in the same room with him -- it's a far cry from actually engaging in a dialogue with those who disagree with him on important issues.

The new White House communications strategy is ostensibly to get the president out in public more often, speaking to the press and the public, serving as his own best advocate.

But if yesterday's appearance before the National Restaurant Association in Chicago was any indication -- and it was -- then the plan is not so much for Bush to publicly mix it up with critics as to have him continue repeating his tired old talking points so often that people, hopefully, start to believe them.

Even if, statistically speaking, two out of three people in the room yesterday thought Bush was doing a lousy job as president, the White House can count on the fact that the vast majority of people who get to the microphones at these events are going to be respectful, if not downright obsequious.

Here's the transcript of yesterday's event. Bush devoted 43 minutes to a question-and-answer session, but on account of his extremely long, rambling responses, there were only 10 questions in all. (No follow-ups, naturally.)

Bush chose to ignore the woman who yelled out "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" Instead, his questioners launched into their softballs with such phrases as "First of all, I want to say you're doing a fine job," and "Let me first say, it's an honor to hear you speak. And I'm a proud supporter."

Then there was the guy in the chef's hat who got up and said: "[O]n behalf of all the cooks and chefs in our country, I have to say you're running it the way a chef would run the country, and we're proud of you."

Sure, Bush has gotten the what-for a few times lately. Most memorably, at an event last month in Charlotte , a soft-spoken, 61-year-old real estate broker named Harry Taylor got up and told Bush that "in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington."

But Bush doesn't engage those few critical voices, he just drowns them in those talking points.

So here's my suggestion: It's time for Bush to invite dissenters not just into the room, but onto the stage with him.

How about welcoming Rep. John Murtha to the White House for a public conversation about the war? Or Sen. Russell Feingold, for a discussion of Article II? What about calling a town meeting on global warming and sharing the stage with Al Gore? Or asking Lou Dobbs up to talk immigration?

Or is Bush afraid it wouldn't go so well?

The idea of a president actually facing his critics head on sounds utterly alien today, but as I wrote in my February 8, 2005 column -- after Bush himself compared his Social Security blitz to President Clinton's -- when Clinton held his "discussions" on Social Security, he intentionally brought opponents along with him, spoke before a mixed crowd, and let himself get grilled.

Here , for instance, is the transcript of an April 7, 1998 appearance by Clinton in Kansas City. He invited Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), among others, to join him.

And while the audience was laboriously prescreened, that was so that it would not be one-sided. Members were selected by a market research company to reflect the demographic and economic characteristics of the region.

Craig Crawford wrote last month for Congressional Quarterly that Bush's "recent performances in town hall meetings with average Americans show all the signs of a tired show: formulaic scripts, weak jokes and a waning audience."

Indeed, Bush's meandering, familiar responses to most questions are so unrevelatory, and add so little to the public discourse, that it's hard to see how they're doing the White House any good.

CNN broadcasts these things, even though they are a joke and the political reporters on the WH beat just take dictation rather than doing any fact checking or analysis. Bush habitually uses straw man arguments, but you don't know that unless you read Froomkin, who is the only Postie doing any real reporting on these photo ops.