Farewell, Fluffer

WaPo's Dan Froomkin offers a send off for NYT White House Stenographer Liz Bumiller:

Bye Bye Bumiller

Bidding farewell to the White House beat after almost five years, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller on Sunday offered up a collection of anecdotes in an attempt to clear up what she considers the most important "misperception" about the beat: that it's an awful job.

Her piece offers no great insight into the president ("like just about everyone, he can be short-tempered, impatient and brusque"). And, much like the man she's so dutifully covered, Bumiller declined to engage her critics.

Bumiller, for instance, doesn't address the widespread concern that an overly credulous press corps has been complicit in its own emasculation at the hands of a White House that sees no obligation to explain itself to anyone. Her "White House Letters" in particular have often been cited as examples of fluffy appeasement.

She does write that to "report effectively on one of the most secretive White Houses ever" she "worked the phones in concentric circles inward, from members of Congress who were mad at the president, to put-upon State Department officials, to those ubiquitous 'Republicans close to the White House.'"

But as she herself notes: "Not incidentally, the anonymous Republicans were often White House-sanctioned leakers -- lobbyists, former party officials -- who would pass on information West Wing officials wanted out. . . . White House officials then said they had no idea where these terrible leaks were coming from."

Quite the legacy.