TERMS
OF ENGAGEMENT
How Involved Was Bush in the China Spy-Plane
Crisis?
Just Ask His Aides
BY
CHRISTOPHER HANSON
There
was a time when journalists were expected to report as fact only
what they could verify empirically, and to leave assertions based
purely on faith to the theologians. No longer. Consider news coverage
of George W. Bush during the recent flap over detention of the
crew of a U.S. Navy spy plane in China. Once the crew was released,
a spate of minute-by-minute behind-the-scenes retrospectives on
White House decision-making projected Bush as a man firmly in
command during the crisis. Curiously, the journalists writing
these "tick tocks" had little, if any, independently verifiable
data to substantiate the story line, which ran contrary to a widespread
impression of Bush as disengaged. Instead, they relied mainly
on Bush aides as sources. In other words, their reports amounted
to an expression of faith that the propaganda line being spun
by the White House somehow coincided with the truth.
Reporters
who took the bait on the China plane crisis -- and not all did
-- may have gotten hooked partly out of frustration. Bush has
eschewed vigorous grilling by reporters. His administration has
suffered few unauthorized leaks. But the "tick tock" is a perfect
setup for the authorized leak -- the type intended to project
an administration as decisive, wise, and in control and to offset
a president's perceived liabilities.
Take
first the line that Bush played a direct, energetic, and detailed
role in the resolution of the spy plane predicament. The Washington
Post ran with this version more boldly than most. On April
12, it published a twenty-six-paragraph, front-page "analysis"
piece headlined BEHIND SCENES, BUSH PLAYED VIGOROUS ROLE, accompanied
by a color photo of a concerned, serious-looking Bush, the official
seal of the White House behind him, the American flag at his side.
Now
consider the less than overwhelming evidence the Post marshaled
to back up its headline. The article began with an Oval Office
anecdote, written with the omniscient, you-are-there perspective
that "tick tocks" demand. Bush, we are told by anonymous officials,
was on the phone with his military attaché in China and
"peppered" him with questions about the crew. According to the
article, his questions included: "How's their health? . . . Are
they staying in the equivalent of officers' quarters? . . . Are
they getting any exercise?" These are fair questions -- the sort
that a beginning journalism student might think to ask in a classroom
exercise -- but not in themselves evidence that Bush was vigorously
or even semi-vigorously engaged in the crisis. They only indicate
a certain degree of alertness.
Then
came the Bibles. According to anonymous White House officials
quoted in the article, Bush, a devout Christian, asked the attaché
if the captives had their own copies of the Good Book. (An April
13 Reuters piece amplified on the Bible question. It quoted Bush
aide Karen Hughes: "He's very curious, and so he asked a lot of
questions . . . . He asked some detailed questions. Several times
he asked do the members of the crew have Bibles. Why don't they
have Bibles? Can we get them Bibles? Would they like Bibles?")
Assuming the sources are accurate, it is probably fair to say
that Bush displayed vigorous engagement on the Good Book front.
But since the crew's release was the paramount issue, Bush's Bible
queries cannot be said to show he was vigorously engaged across
the board.
The
Post article, again citing unnamed officials, reported
that Bush "grilled" national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
on how much remorse the United States would express because its
damaged plane made an emergency landing without permission and
a Chinese pilot died when his fighter and the American plane collided.
Bush, the Post reported, insisted on changes to keep a
letter to Beijing within the "'redlines' he set for negotiators."
If Bush indeed insisted on substantive changes, this would be
evidence of vigorous engagement. But what specific changes did
Bush insist on and were they substantive? On this question the
Post and its anonymous sources were altogether mute, which
might give us reason for skepticism. So might the Reuters dispatch,
describing composition of the statement: "A senior official said
the letter was a combined effort by aides . . . . The official
said it was Bush's decision to use the word 'regret' in describing
the U.S. reaction to the loss of the Chinese fighter pilot. His
aides decided to take it a step beyond to 'sorry' in a late-night
session between 1 and 2 a.m. Sunday, the official said. Bush authorized
it." This version makes it sound as if aides were leading Bush,
rather than the other way around.
The
issue of Bush's level of engagement might only be resolved if
and when reporters get access to verbatim transcripts of confidential
meetings in the years to come. What can fairly be said today is
that the Post did not have enough evidence to justify the
impression of an active, engaged Bush that it created with its
A-1 headline, photo, and lead anecdote.
Meanwhile,
other news outlets embraced a second story line -- that Bush set
negotiating policy in the crisis and the climate for resolution,
leaving the details to others like any good c.e.o. should. The
Los Angeles Times, for instance, led off its 1,029-word
April 13 news analysis this way: "BUSH GETS HIGH MARKS FOR LOW-KEY
APPROACH . . . President Bush's handling of his first foreign
policy challenge contrasted sharply with the style of his recent
predecessors, but served him very well and may have fixed the
character of his tenure . . . . (H)e set a tone that gave Beijing
the chance to end the dispute gracefully while leaving the tough
negotiations to aides." Unfortunately, the piece falls short of
resolving whether Bush set the tone or whether senior aides did.
In fact, the article eventually contradicts its own lead by quoting
a foreign policy analyst suggesting that Rice and Secretary of
State Colin Powell, not Bush, gained "the upper hand" in tone-setting.
Other
news organizations incongruously combined the two story lines,
leading with material that made Bush seem to be a hands-on detail
man, then falling back on the idea that he was a hands-off man
who set policy and delegated wisely. This coverage was confusing
and might suggest that Bush administration leakers did not quite
have their story straight. Even so, the coverage no doubt made
the White House happy because the two faces of Bush were both
positive. The April 13 Reuters dispatch, for example, opened by
quoting "aides" saying Bush was "intimately involved." After quoting
Hughes on much of the same Bush Does Details material as the Post,
Reuters then reported that Bush "did not appear to get deeply
involved in the nitty-gritty details"! The same dispatch described
Bush briefing foreign leaders on the crisis and being, in the
words of one unnamed official, "measured and steady."
Time
magazine led an April 20 piece with an account of how Bush, having
just learned that the crew was to be released, bustled over to
the Oval Office at 6:15 a.m., concentrating on "the logistics
of getting the crew home . . . . What would be the flight path?
How long would the crew be on the ground?" (One can't help wondering
how Time managed to gain access to his interior thoughts.)
But before long, the article transformed Bush from a man of detail
into a delegator ("Powell laid down and enforced the President's
guidelines . . .") but failed to show that Bush had created those
policy guidelines in the first place.
There
is an Alice-in-Wonderland logic in the Time report. In
its opening section, Time pictures Bush as a take-charge
guy very much on top of things but delegating intelligently to
the right people. Then come a few sentences in which the magazine
acknowledges that Bush's team was orchestrating events to produce
a "projected image: Bush at the helm but smartly hands-off, setting
the tone but letting his team of professionals do their job."
Then the article goes back to depicting Bush as an engaged, wise
delegator. It presents this version as verified reality even though
the main sources for the piece are presumably the very administration
insiders Time admits want to "stage-manage" coverage for
p.r. purposes.
In
its own weird way, the Time article points up a dilemma
inherent in nearly all "tick-tocks." On what passes for the plus
side, they supposedly bring you inside the room where dramatic
decisions are made, and make you see the colors, smell the smells,
feel the tension. The tidbits served to Time, for instance,
included a revelation that, at the moment the charter plane carrying
the released Americans touched down in Hawaii, Bush was lunching
with Vice President Dick Cheney -- "the Veep eating salad, Bush
a taco." But, sadly enough, such articles are too often the result
of an unspoken, almost Faustian arrangement. Official sources
provide the essential inside details and reporters then regurgitate
the official line, giving up their independence and skepticism
for a taco and a salad and a Bible, along with a quotation from
the Boss that he might or might not actually have said.
Rough
draft of history, indeed.
CJR
contributing editor Christopher Hanson, a print journalist for
twenty years, teaches journalism at the University of Maryland.
