Ari: Gone, but not forgotten

The Bush spokesman leaves. The cheers are not all for his benefit.

By Jake Tapper

May 19, 2003 | On Monday morning, White House spokesman Lawrence Ari Fleischer revealed to the Associated Press that he is heading out the door, seeking employment in the private sector. When he told his boss the news on Friday, the conversation ended with the president "kissing me on the head," Fleischer said.

Bush officials heralded his service. "Ari was a good soldier," said Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon. "He has been a very steadfast carrier of the Bush message and delivered a very solid performance across the board in one of the most difficult jobs in Washington. His message discipline was extraordinary."

Little such admiration awaited Fleischer, 42, in the White House briefing room where the bald, bespectacled Bush-backer has been a controversial figure; by one account, the applause greeting Fleischer at his morning gaggle with reporters fit the very definition of "smattering." Some were sympathetic. Said one White House reporter, "Ari had an impossible job. He was supposed to talk to the press in a White House that does not talk to the press." A senior Republican congressional aide pointed to one of Fleischer's higher-ups as the reason so many reporters found Fleischer wanting. "All [Bush senior aide Karl] Rove wants is just a P.A. system," the aide said. "It's not really a job with a lot of art to it in this administration. Ari is just a guy who goes out there and reads some version of congressional campaign committee talking points. It's something that anybody with a larynx could probably do."

But while Fleischer served his patrons with loyalty and single-mindedness, he frustrated reporters by going far beyond spinning -- telling untruths and taking great effort to intimidate, several White House reporters said. "No one's shedding any tears," said another White House reporter. "His personal style -- the smarminess and unctuousness -- was annoying to people. But his deceptions and the telling of falsehoods is what really turned people against him."

"The most recent and egregious example is how he assured us the aircraft carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, beyond helicopter range, necessitating Bush's arrival in the flight suit on that plane," the reporter said. The aircraft carrier was actually 40 miles from shore -- well within helicopter range.

To many in the press corps, Fleischer -- to borrow a metaphor from his beloved New York Yankees -- became the Babe Ruth of out-of-the-park whoppers. As the Houston Chronicle editorial page -- which endorsed President Bush in 2000 -- wrote of Fleischer earlier this month, "Perhaps not since Ron Ziegler made inoperative statements on behalf of Richard Nixon ... has a press secretary exhibited such a brazen and cavalier disregard for the facts."

Fleischer wasn't even close to presidential politics when he began butting heads with reporters. After serving in the press shop of Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., from 1989 to 1994, Fleischer served as spokesman for House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas. It was there that GQ magazine's Ruth Shalit (before her journalistic scandal) found him. She wrote a piece for the June 1997 issue titled "Flack Out of Hell" that at the time seemed inordinately harsh but in retrospect seems prescient of the tensions that would mark his White House career. "Far from charming reporters out of their shoes, Fleischer is driving them up the wall," Shalit wrote.

After serving as the spokesman for Elizabeth Dole's disastrous presidential campaign, Fleischer teamed up with Team Bush in November 1999 after being heavily recruited by advisor Karen Hughes when David Beckwith, a communications director popular with reporters, was ignominiously dismissed. Fleischer was merely one of many campaign spokesmen at that point, but after Election Day, he was tapped for the big job behind the podium.

At the beginning of the Florida recount mess Fleischer disputed the notion that any voters were confused by the butterfly ballot, asserting that "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold," a claim disputed by Buchanan, his Florida coordinator Jim McConnell, and Jim Cunningham, chairman of the executive committee of Palm Beach County's Reform Party.

That quote seemed to set the tone for his tenure. Plenty followed.

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