Williams, Wallace, Stephanopoulos: Lunch Tales

President Bush hosted another lunch today for journalists, (ahead of tonight’s address) and those journalists are talking about it:

NBC’s Brian Williams: “A number of television journalists gathered for lunch with the president at the White House today — a practice becoming more and more common when this president has a major speech to deliver. Vice President Cheney attended but did not speak.”

FNC’s Chris Wallace: “It was a different George Bush than I have seen before. I have been privileged enough to go to three or four of these lunches over the years. There is a certain lame duck, sense of, ‘I’m at the end of my term, I don’t need to worry about polls.’ He said repeatedly ‘presidents who worry about polls are lousy presidents.’”

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos (before the lunch): “These 1.5 to 2-hour sessions…can be incredibly illuminating. Yes, the president is never really off stage. Yes, he’s giving us his talking points. But the chance to hear him explain his policies, and to have a conversation, to see his expressions close up, to get the occasional off-the-record nugget that can be used to pursue other stories, is invaluable.”

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