Crawford Dining

We haven’t paid much attention to the Crawford press corps this month, although even in D.C. you can hear them complaining about standing outside in the sun covering Cindy Sheehan

Dan Froomkin‘s White House Briefing today has some exclusive details about a special invite-only dinner that POTUS and FLOTUS had for the Fourth Estate at the ranch. The event is an annual tradition, and, as one scribe notes, a way to keep your friends close and enemies closer.

Although swimming was encouraged, no one took a dip while about 50 reporters broke bread with Mr. and Mrs. Bush over a table graced with fried catfish, potato salad, coleslaw, homemade cheese and chocolate-chip cookies. [You can just hear the new White House chef grinding her teeth over preparing such menus.] The beer was Texas’ own Shiner Bock.

The 2003 dinner (last year’s was canceled because of campaigning) was the scene of the infamous scene depicted in Ken Auletta‘s New Yorker article on Bush and the press: “Bush has let it be known that he’s not much of a television-news watcher or a newspaper reader, apart from the sports section; and during a conversation with reporters he explained, perhaps without intending to, why his White House often seems indifferent to the press. ‘How do you then know what the public thinks?’ a reporter asked, according to Bush aides and reporters who heard the exchange. And Bush replied, ‘You’re making a huge assumption — that you represent what the public thinks.’”

Game, set, match, Mr. President.

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