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Playing Cat and Mouse on Capitol Hill
September 18, 2007 4:02 PM
ABC’s Z. Byron Wolf blogs:
Disgraced Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was spotted late this morning, back in DC for the first time since word of his arrest for disorderly conduct in a Minneapolis airport men's room and subsequent pledge to resign at the end of this month (maybe). (At left, reporters question Craig after a vote today.)
A reporter for CNN spied Craig using a door reserved for staff and Senators and then slipping into a private Senator's dining room. Word spread through the Capitol Hill press corps like wildfire.
An interview with Craig remains elusive since his fall from grace and he has left open the narrow window that he won't resign after all.
Craig was seen next voting on the Senate floor at 12:15 and moments later he was pursued by still photographers just off the Senate floor.
Reporters who attended a photo op meeting between Sen. Arlen Specter and Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey saw Craig pop out of an unmarked door in the hallway and disappear just as quickly.
It’s like Whac-A-Mole or a Road Runner cartoon perhaps. Journalists covering the Iraq debate and the other business on Capitol Hill have the eyes in the back of their head turned on to find Craig too.
Games of cat and mouse could not happen anywhere else in town. Reporters covering the White House have a cramped set of rooms and offices built over a swimming pool. It is a renovated spot and the pool has been ripped out. But renovated or not, it’s the only place reporters can go at the White House. And it is cramped.
At the State Department, journalists have access to one wing in the basement. Walking the rest of the building requires an escort. It’s a similar story at the Justice Department. Journalists can walk around the Pentagon, but the movers and shakers there are not really public figures. They aren't on television as much as Senators and Congressmen.
But on Capitol Hill, a press pass is like a golden backstage pass to the Van Halen concert. There are some restrictions on where TV cameras can go, but the reporters can go anywhere.
The only places Craig is truly in private on Capitol Hill are in his office and on the actual Senate floor. Pretty much everywhere else is fair game. If you want to ask Hillary Clinton a question, figure out where she is and walk up and ask. Did Minority Leader Mitch McConnell say something that needs clarifying? Wait for him off the Senate floor and ask him. Try staking out President Bush without specific approval. You won't get far.
It’s all in keeping with the point of Capitol Hill, really. The House and the Senate ultimately belong to the voters. The lawmakers, necessarily, are accountable to the people and the reporters who get them information.
September 18, 2007 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (2)
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Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS in the mid-1980s, concealed his homosexuality for years; his on-screen persona was that of a virile man. That was Hollywood. In the political world, the extra-marital affirs of men with women was the usual cause of scandal. The Larry Craig phenomenon is relatively new, and it seems may not have come about if he had not advocated conservative social positions. His hypocrisy was the reason for his being "outed."
I hope that in the midst of this "hot" episode we reflect that the qustions it raises may have deep roots, going back to the Old and New Testaments and to the Greeks, two principal sources of Western culture. My own view is that the culture has a twisting-spiral, two-stranded, DNA-like structure. Since this is not the forum for a dissertation on the subject, I will leave it at that.
Posted by: Candadai Tirumalai | Sep 19, 2007 8:52:35 AM
If journalists wish to think themselves supporting the people, fine. But you must remind yourselves just how reflective you are of the politicians. Intrusions on privacy, trampling Constitutional rights and then using them to defend yourselves;
biased reporting; and some of you even have the same "scandalous" peccadilloes as the politicians you cover. Hypocrites all.
Who's dogging YOUR shadows, I wonder?
Posted by: shortnativetexan | Sep 24, 2007 11:39:36 AM
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