CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 28 -- In the time-honored political tradition of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, President Bush invited the White House press corps out to his ranch Wednesday night for a poolside barbecue.
For reporters who have spent the last month sleeping in cricket-infested Waco hotels and watching cable news in a middle school gymnasium that houses the news media's operations, it was a chance to see another side of central Texas: the rolling prairies, roving cattle herds and, not least, the large swimming pool on the president's 1,600-acre ranch. Sipping their Shiner Bocks at sunset (Bush drank nonalcoholic Buckler), many of the journalists were forced to acknowledge that Prairie Chapel Ranch is not such an awful place after all.
Though the combined audience of the assembled news outlets is in the tens if not hundreds of millions, the words uttered by the president and Laura Bush cannot be conveyed to the public -- the White House required that the conversations be off the record. It was the first such gathering of the full press corps at Bush's ranch and the second of its kind in Bush's presidency.
In early evening, some 50 journalists and camera crews, along with a dozen aides and as many Secret Service agents, piled into a half-dozen white vans for the drive to the heavily fortified Bush ranch and its relatively modest limestone compound. (Reporters were not allowed in the main house but connived their way into the guest house by saying they needed to use the toilets.)
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61966-2003Aug28.html(Well, I guess we can expect some love notes from the 50 members of the press for the next while, ugggggggh)
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