Bush being more open? Not so fast!

The MSM have been swooning over Bush in the past few days because of his (koff) interview with Brian Williams and (gasp) actually fielding some unscripted questions. (Whether or not he actually answered them is another story.) The pundits are waxing poetic about a more "available and open" Bush. Give it up guys. There is no way that Bush will ever speak to anyone who challenges him. Period. Photo-ops are still the rule. And the MSM, as usual, is aiding and abetting this lie. Froomkin lays it out.

Here's a problem with following the president around all day long: Sometimes the story is where he's not.

Reporting that President Bush steered clear of the White House's own Conference on Aging yesterday -- making him the first president ever to do so -- fell to the regional newspapers and NPR, not the big guys.

It turns out that had Bush attended, he would have been facing a very hostile audience.

So instead, Bush held a photo-op with a hand-picked group of seniors at a swanky retirement home -- and it was well covered by the usual suspects.

[. . .]

"The White House team handpicked the seniors who met with President Bush at the closed meeting."

Stephen Nohlgren writes in the St. Petersburg Times: "While President Bush was in Virginia touting his new Medicare drug plan Tuesday, delegates to the fifth White House Conference on Aging demanded it be overhauled.

"Their paths never crossed. . . .

It gets worse...

"Bush, Republican governors and Republican members of Congress appointed most of this year's 1,200 delegates, which makes the resistance to [the drug plan] particularly striking."

Larry Lipman and Ken Herman write in the Palm Beach Post: "Rather than embracing the Medicare drug law and Bush's call for private Social Security investment accounts, delegates at work sessions on those issues overwhelmingly rejected those positions.

[. . .]

"Also this year, the rules have changed for delegates, so they cannot debate resolutions.

" 'They've convened the best and the brightest people on aging in the field but they don't want input from us,' said Helene Stone, a retired social worker who works for the Lorain County Council on Aging."

Sean Mussenden writes for the Media General News Service about the conference: "Social Security and Medicare were on everyone's mind.

"And so was the president who wasn't there."

And Bush's bubble? Still there and built by the MSM.

Williams asked Bush several questions about the protective bubble in which he operates. So why did the NBC anchor then build one for the president himself?

Williams said that while tagging along with the president he could hear protesters outside the Philadelphia hotel where Bush was speaking yelling "Shame! Shame!"

The third part of the interview took place in that very hotel. And Williams revealed to Matthews: "Something I haven't said before is, to dampen the noise outside the hotel because of the floor we were on, we had mattresses that our production crew had put up against the windows and curtains on the other side, because we had to conduct this interview."

And finally...

Bush and senior aides yesterday briefed a group of Republican senators on the war in Iraq. ...

This morning, Bush was scheduled to meet with some House Democrats as well -- just not members of the increasingly adversarial leadership. Among those I've been told were invited: Reps. Ike Skelton of Missouri, Tom Lantos and Howard Berman of California, and Stephanie Herseth of South Dakota. It appears that all of them have a few things in common: They voted for the war and oppose Rep. Jack Murtha's proposal to begin pulling troops out of Iraq right away.

Smoke and mirrors. It's all this corrupt group has.

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