The Trucker Newspaper - April 15, 2018

12 • April 15-30, 2018 Nation
b Fleischer from page 1 b
Like any polished speaker, Fleischer
opened with a little ice-breaker.
“Now, I realize that this isn’t a religious
meeting or a religious event, but I came here to
make a confession,” Fleischer said. For a man
who’s travelled in the circles he has, there was
no telling how big a bombshell this could be.
Without hesitation, he spilled it.
“I was actually raised as a liberal Democrat,”
he said. “My parents to this day remain
proud principled Democrats who were horrified
that I went to work for President George
W. Bush.”
In fact, he said, when he left the White
House in 2003 and his hometown newspaper
asked his mother about his work there, “she
told them that this was a phase I was going
through.”
“My father told the same little local newspaper
that if his son was going to rebel, it’s better
I became a Republican than a drug dealer,
but not by much.”
Fleischer told the crowd his transformation
occurred while he was attending Middlebury
College in Vermont. He said Jimmy Carter’s
presidency turned him from a liberal to a conservative,
then Ronald Reagan’s administration
inspired him to switch parties.
He said it’s possible he’s the only person in
the history of Vermont to arrive a liberal and
leave a conservative.
Fleischer then recalled waiting in Texas as
the 2000 election dispute was being sorted out.
Bush, who by this point had made Fleischer
something of an honorary Texan by nicknaming
him Ari-Bob, grew concerned that they
were losing time for their transition. He sent
Fleischer ahead to Washington.
“When I returned to Washington and when
I drove past the White House, I averted my
gaze,” he said. “I could not bring myself to
look at that building” until the election was
confirmed and he drove for the first time into
the White House grounds.
He said a few months later, in April, he got
a note saying to meet the president out on the
South Lawn for a game of catch. Bush had
been asked to go to Milwaukee to throw out
the first pitch at the Milwaukee Brewers’ new
ballpark. Bush is a competitive guy, Fleischer
said, and honorary or not, he wanted to make
sure his pitch would be a strike.
“So at the appointed hour I showed up at 6
o’clock on the South Lawn in a business suit
along with the baseball glove I always keep in
the trunk of my car. The president had the advantage
of living there; he showed up in sweatpants
and a bulletproof jacket.”
At one point Bush threw one in the dirt and
it scooted past Fleischer halfway across the
South Lawn. He went after it, threw it back,
and as he was jogging back, that’s when he was
hit with a, “Wow, look at where I am” moment.
“I can’t begin to tell you how much I loved
my years at the White House,” Fleischer said.
That is the key to being good at the job, he
believes. “The heart of that job is to believe,
to believe in your boss, to faithfully articulate
Thetrucker.com
that what the boss, the president of the United
States, is thinking and why. And in that sense,
the White House press secretary job is an easy
job.”
It may not have always seemed that way,
but he said he loved working with the White
House press corp. They were tough and smart.
They could be cynical and mean. It was a lot
of fun.
“I viewed that job as engaging in intellectual
chess,” he said. “I knew if I said A that
it would prompt them to ask question B. And
I already had to be thinking about answer C,
knowing that would prompt them to ask question
D, and I was already thinking about answer
E.”
Even though that game ended for him
nearly 15 years ago, Fleischer keeps close tabs
on what’s happening at today’s White House.
He can analyze and assess the current White
House with a perspective few people have and
he’s happy to share.
That was why he was there at the TCA con-
See Fleischer on p13 m
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