How to pacify The Beast? Bill Clinton had done it in 1992 with endless games of hearts and late-night policy gabfests that mesmerized writers with the manic reach of his mind. Bush, true to his own heritage, did it by becoming the clownish but calculating social chairman of a fraternity he had never wanted to join. He charmed people he didn’t trust, played the fool for laughs and lowered expectations, and mastered the dynamics of a foreign culture: fuselage journalism. In exchange, he expected the fraternity to avoid nasty or unexpected questions. When they asked them anyway, he would freeze them out with a smirk or a dagger stare–until he freed them from double-secret probation with a smile and a warm embrace. Overall, Bush got decent coverage–too decent, in the eyes of the Gore campaign.
Given the monumental challenges he faces now, it may seem silly to look back to the Bush campaign plane–full of cranky reporters and day-old turkey sandwiches–for clues to his strengths and shortcomings as a leader in crisis. But, in fact, the president we see today, the one with the lofty approval rating and the frustrated political foes, was present in chrysalis in 2000, and can be seen in two retrospective exhibits that open this week. One is a book called “Ambling Into History” by Frank Bruni, The New York Times’s first Bush man; the other a documentary film called “Journeys With George” by Alexandra Pelosi, a former NBC producer who assigned herself the additional task of chronicling the campaign with her digital camcorder.
Political charm comes in many forms. As Bruni and Pelosi vividly show, Bush’s gift was, and is, a preternatural sense of the room–an ability to suss it out and win it over, or at least survive it unscathed. With dead-reckoning eyes for telling details, the two Gen-X journalists document how the candidate shrewdly handled his reporters even as they constantly wondered (to themselves, if not in their stories) whether the guy had a brain in his head. The outsider seems to get it from the start. “As a politician, I think he’s much smarter than people give him credit for,” says Richard Wolffe, a Brit from the Financial Times, to Pelosi’s camera.
Bush administered the schmooze, big time. But he did it with a conspiratorial wink that made the theatrics more palatable to his jaded audience. As reporters climbed aboard, he would greet them, flight-attendant style, with trays of soft drinks. He would whisper unsolicited advice about their love lives, and inquire about who had stayed up late, and why, in the hotel bar. After a second (and last) primary loss, he had himself paraded through the plane with his sleeping blindfold on, in a parody of self-mortification. Winning big the next week, Bush became the prep-school cheerleader he once was, twisting himself into body letters that spelled out victory.
Behind the showmanship was a touch of steel, and arrogance. You played by house rules or not at all. At one press conference, Pelosi shot him a tough question about the record number of executions he’d approved in Texas. “How did he sleep at night?” she asked, in a moment captured in her film. His eyes narrowed into slits of anger. “I’m sleeping safely, soundly, at night,” he snapped. On the plane, he found his way back to her seat. “I’m not answering your questions,” he said, leaning toward her camera with an air of (mostly) mock menace. “You went below the belt.” He ignored her for several news cycles.
Bush knew how to hang a lantern on his biggest problem, which was his penchant for mangling the English language in ways that made it seem he didn’t have a clue, let alone a life of the mind. If he botched a line at a campaign stop, he’d get on the airplane intercom and jokingly repeat it–in worse form. Bruni was shocked by Bush’s ignorance of popular culture, and of much else besides the business at hand. But challenged to trade reading suggestions, Bush recommended a thriller Bruni found enthralling.
This, plus his ability to “make cutting, cunning observations,” were among the indicia Bruni found of “an ample if sometimes undernourished intelligence.” Bush’s gaffes usually were committed when he was nervously dealing with a topic he had yet to master, of which there were many. The flip side, Bruni observes, was the authenticity he inadvertently conveyed. And, after Clinton, a glibness deficit was not a bad thing.
Whatever else he lacked, Bush had a Ph.D. in social emotions. Though Bruni kept his intellectual distance and wrote his share of tough pieces, Bush charmed him with simple gestures, asking about his dad, halting a press conference when he spotted the Times man fumbling with a balky tape recorder. Bush’s dealings were more complex with Pelosi, a pure-bred San Francisco liberal (a daughter of Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi) who debuted on the plane dressed head to toe in purple. If he could win her, he’d win them all.
So Bush went to work, waiting for a crucial moment to make the sale. It came when an informal onboard poll she had conducted–showing that most of the plane expected a Gore win–found its way into the papers. The journalists, fearful the story would cost them access, ostracized her. Her only friend: the candidate, who made a show of embracing her. “When they see me talking to you,” he tells her, “they’re going to act like they’re your friends again.” Bingo. That was the moment, Pelosi says in “Journeys With George,” when she decided that, while she liked journalism, she “didn’t have the stomach for the cannibalism.” Saint George hadn’t slain The Beast, but he was taming it, one reporter at a time.
