When Barack Obama met with Fox News Chief Roger Ailes in a secret meeting at the Waldorf Astoria last June he cut him up. Obama put his hands between his legs, lowered his shoulders until he came to eye-level with Ailes and then, inches from his face, asked why he should waste another second talking to Ailes, who had only ever portrayed him as a crypto-terrorist.
The new president was much more magnanimous to the conservative media last night. By dining at George Will’s house with New York Times columnists William Kristol and David Brooks, and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, he’s single-handedly revived these guys' careers. (Too bad he can’t help revive newspapers.)
Indeed, undoubtedly with design, he picked this special, print-centric, lap-dog group of conservatives with which to start his rapprochement, guys so out of touch with the current Republicanism as to make them almost irrelevant.
The Obama message is a crafty one: He’s choosing these fretting, parsing, neurotic, limp-wristed, desperate-to-be-liked print guys, over the crass, spitting, scary, voluble guys on television and
radio, the Ailes-Rove-Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party.
(AP Image)
Something else: The idea of his doing dinner at George Will’s house suggests a level of bonding and good-will and, even, intimacy. But let me tell you what one of these dinners, with a vaunted featured guest, is really like. It’s all timed, because your big guy—in this case, the president-elect—is on a tight schedule. First, 25 minutes of cocktails—with the big guy arriving 15 minutes late. So you’ve got him for 10 minutes, with everybody lining up trying to get one exchange (to be able to say to editors and fellow media people,“I said to him…”). Then, to the table, with the host monopolizing the guest. Then, quick catered salad. Then, piece of meat. At which point, host introduces guest, speaking way too long. Then, the big guy gives a talk, a stilted, rote summary of things he has said a million times before, with some minor tailoring to the people in the room.
While this is all carefully off the record, it is all conducted as if the world was watching—the main point being about everybody’s self-importance. Then, questions, all respectful and composed. The big guy’s out in under an hour.
It is all a set of ritual bows. Nothing really has happened at all, no real exchange, no real bonding. But the message has been sent. From the conservative columnists' side, it may be a Democratic age,
but we’re still important men in Washington. Harrumph-harrumph. From the new president’s side, these hoary old columnists are my kind of conservatives.
Anyway, you can bet the new president didn’t stay for a cigarette.
