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STONEWALL PRESS SECRETARY
Joseph Robertson | 27 February 2004

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan today refused to answer questions about whether the President drinks Washington, D.C., municipal water, saying "I'm not going to get into the President's eating or drinking habits." The concern is lead poisoning and dangerous levels of lead contamination found in D.C. water recently. Last week, McClellan had told the press he would "certainly look into" what water the President in fact drinks.

The point may seem minor, but it demonstrates a pattern, taken on this point to an absurd extreme. In the same press conference, McClellan repeatedly refused to answer questions on government policy, saying "I believe you know the President's views" or "I believe the President's views are clear". This has become a standard rebuttal to questions of all sorts, especially where clear confusion about the President's position has emerged due to conflicting statements, reports or policy actions.

When asked if the White House would condemn spying at the UN, McClellan's response was that the White House would not comment on a matter of UK intelligence. Though he was not asked to reveal sources or methods, though there was no direct question about fact or even law, the White House Press Secretary refused to answer the question, effectively leaving open the possibility that the White House does in fact support spying on diplomats, an action banned under treaties to which the US is party.

When asked why the administration was still actively deporting Haitian immigrants (not refugees, but immigrants already in the US) to Haiti, even as civil war appears to be taking over, the answer was that the President wished to enforce US policy. When asked whether the President did not consider the current crisis severe enough to justify temporary suspension of deportation, McClellan answered that detainees were being deported in a manner which was designed to ensure their safety, but refused to give any details as to how precisely that safety was being ensured.

When asked why the President would not meet with the full 9-11 investigatory commission, the Press Secretary asserted that there are a number of ways in which the commission could gather information and proceeded to criticize the members of the commission for not fully attending meetings with other administration officials. The result is a confounding and paradoxical explanation of White House policy: on the one hand, when members of the Executive meet with a Legislative investigatory commission, it is unfortunate that not all members attend, but the President feels he should only speak with two of the members of the commission.

McClellan went on to note that the White House would like any information the 9-11 commission may have which would help improve administration intelligence. He also specified that this (presumably not the truth-finding process, or a policy of abiding by legally binding acts of Congress) was the reason for White House interest in cooperating with the commission.

He continually referred to the issue of a "separation of powers", suggesting that any information provided by the White House to a legislative commission was beyond the norm and that in this case the level of cooperation was "unprecedented". Yet the 9-11 commission has repeatedly threatened to subpoena the White House for documents related to intelligence assessments predating the terror attacks.

The standard of press briefing has become to refuse any clear comment on almost any issue, especially where it can be asserted that the President has no direct control over a matter raised by journalists, even where thought to be of specific interest to the American people and to the role of the President in securing the welfare of the American people or the integrity of the rule of law. The tenor of the White House press briefings has become defensive at best, and evasive at worst, and many prominent press figures have asserted that there has been no more secretive administration.

On the matter of lead in drinking water, for instance: the President has aggressively pursued the lowering of standards for limiting toxic contaminants in drinking water, going as far as to declare unnecessary any further enforcement of the Clean Water Act, suggesting that polluters will voluntarily regulate their own activities, despite almost all scientific evidence demonstrating the contrary. The attitude adopted by the Press Secretary in refusing to respond to questions about the President's drinking water goes to a fundamental flaw in the President's political strategy.

Despite the fact that a vast majority of Americans support intense environmental regulation (see Oregon poll: 91% support "stiffening penalties" for polluters and 88% think holding polluters accountable is among the most important responsibilities of an elected official), the White House prefers to prevaricate and wage a campaign of silence, to the sound politics of answering the call of the electorate for action. Though a simple strategy, the notion of responding to the will of the governed appears almost totally without merit in the minds of the current administration, as clearly demonstrated by the current Press Secretary's penchant for counterproductive briefings, full of absurd statements, vague retorts and unsubstantiated claims.

We need to demand of our press and our government that the office of the Press Secretary come into the mainstream of American sentiment, and relearn its role as intermediary between the people and their president. The Press Secretary's official function is not to prevaricate and stonewall the press; his basic function is to act as intermediary, to relay the officially (and/or privately) held policies of the executive adminstration of government, as specifically led by the White House and by the nation's highest elected official.

We have heard former President Clinton openly and relentlessly mocked for attempting to define the meaning of the word "is", or rather, for asking prosecutors to be clear about its meaning. But there is something much more insidious at work, when virtually every minute of a White House press briefing fails to meet the basic logic and relevance of even that most famous of hairsplitting virtuoso moments of spin.

The White House should stop viewing the press as its natural enemy and learn to view its presence as a natural and necessary extension of the right of the American people to supervise the government they placed in office, and appeal through sincere dialogue to the electorate to accept or to reject its policies as the people see fit. That is as far as the right to govern goes; if no answers can be given, because no policy is acceptable to the public eye, or because the president prefers the convenience of underinformation to the complications of dialogue, then policies should be changed, and the press should get serious about getting the answers needed to provide a serious and accurate portrait of what goes on behind the closed mouth of the official spokesperson.