GOLDEN :

A Silence That Coolidge Would Envy : As the summer has drawn to a close, President Bush has deflected questions and stuck to the script. (DAVID E. SANGER, September 3, 2002, NY Times)

President Bush is well practiced at strategic reticence: his normal affability and Texas backslapping can be flipped off instantly when he is not in the mood to answer questions, or when he senses that unscripted comments could make a politically uncomfortable moment even worse.

But as the summer has drawn to a close, Mr. Bush has nurtured silences that even Calvin Coolidge would envy. Ensconced on his ranch last week, he kept reporters at bay and let Vice President Dick Cheney do all the talking about the administration's thinking on Iraq. When he emerged for obligatory events, like campaign appearances last week in Oklahoma and Arkansas or today's talk here at a Labor Day picnic with the carpenter's union (a favorite because last year it split with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., a Democratic ally), Mr. Bush has stuck closely to last spring's well-worn scripts about chasing down Al Qaeda and getting Congress to pass his energy and domestic security bills.

This, lest we forget, as the Times apparently has, was the announced strategy of George W. Bush and Karl Rove when they took power. They made it clear that they thought Bill Clinton had been overexposed (insert your own joke here) and that speaking constantly had made his words worthless. They took the different, and one believes correct, view that a president's pronouncements are a kind of political capital that should not be squandered like a drunk sailor's wages during a shore leave.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2002 9:27 AM