Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years In The White House - Softcover

Ari Fleischer

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9780060759438: Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years In The White House

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060759437 ISBN 13: 9780060759438

Publisher: Thorndike Press, 2005

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For two and a half years, Ari Fleischer served as the official liaison between the White House and members of the press, acting as the primary spokesperson for President George W. Bush and delivering the daily White House briefing. In this riveting account, Fleischer goes behind-the-scenes as he recalls his experiences in the West Wing and offers an assessment of the leadership lessons he learned from America's first CEO president.

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About the Author:

Prior to resigning his post in 2003, Ari Fleischer served as the official liaison between the White House and members of the press, acting as the primary spokesperson for the President and delivering the daily White House briefing. Fleischer served as press secretary for Senator Pete Domenici from 1989 to 1994 and later spent five years as spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee. Prior to joining the campaign of then Governor Bush in the fall of 1999, he served as communications director for Elizabeth Dole's presidential campaign. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife and daughter.

From Publishers Weekly:

A former White House press secretary, Fleischer became a lightning rod for accusations about the Bush administration's alleged spin, secrecy and hostility to the press, claims that may not be quieted by this sunnily defensive memoir. Fleischer acknowledges the White House's fanatical "message discipline," which still seems in force in his glowing portrait of Bush as a decisive leader, stalwart in advancing freedom and opposing "evil," forever comforting the families of terror victims and military casualties. And he cops to some stonewalling at press briefings, explaining, with some justice, that many questions concerned security and military operations he couldn't discuss. The many lengthy fencing matches he reprints sometimes evoke sympathy, as reporters badger him with provocative questions and he responds "with the same non-answer every time." Mainly, though, he blames his testy relations with the media on the media themselves and what he sees as their knee-jerk controversializing and pervasive liberal bias, and gleefully cites examples. Fleischer is less forthcoming on his own responsibility for relating false claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; "we may all have been wrong," he shrugs, but contends it doesn't matter because Saddam might have gotten WMDs someday. Seldom have a press secretary's inaccuracies had such momentous consequences, so Fleischer's reluctance to examine how and why they occurred is disappointing indeed. Photos.
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