Byline: Mark Silva
WASHINGTON _ Old presidents and reporters may retire, and old soldiers may fade away, but it's not every day that a smelly old room retires.
"I know you've been complaining about the digs for a while," President Bush cheerfully told reporters on Wednesday crowding in as the old press briefing room in the West Wing of the White House was closing for a nine-month remodeling project. "Let me just say that we felt your pain," Bush added.
The centerpiece of this musty place _ a low carpeted riser holding a podium placed before a White House placard and a blue curtained-wall with eight rows of shabby theater seating _ serves as the political stage where press secretaries routinely hold court and presidents sometimes make an appearance.
It is, formally, the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, in honor of the press secretary who served President Ronald Reagan and was critically wounded in an attempted assassination of Reagan on March 30, 1981, just three months into his first term. Brady was sidelined, but as far as the commemorative plaque here is concerned, he served Reagan for two full terms.
The nameplate will return to the new press room. Brady himself returned Wednesday with his wife Sarah. "Good to see you," he whispered from his wheelchair on the low stage in a standing room-only farewell that drew press secretaries dating back to Ron Nessen, who served President Gerald Ford, and Marlin Fitzwater, who served Reagan and Bush's father.
"I want to thank the former spin-meisters for joining me up here," said Bush, promising the press a new and better workplace. "You want to double the size?" Bush added, in a rare moment of extended ad-lib. "Forget it."
Some journalists, such as veteran White House correspondent-turned-columnist Helen Thomas, have worked here since President Richard Nixon opened the room in 1969. Thomas, covering the White House since 1961, still asks the toughest questions. The last time Bush tapped Thomas in her coveted front-row seat, the crusty correspondent warned the president: "You'll be sorry."
Some, such as Sam Donaldson, have come and gone. The old ABC White House correspondent and evening news anchor returned with a familiar baritone bellow for a ceremony that seemed overwrought for a room so unseemly that perhaps it is best described by the real Washington rat found prowling beneath coiled television cables here the other day.
"Is that Sam Donaldson?" Bush asked. "Forget it, you're a has-been."
"Never was," replied Donaldson, who had characteristically interrupted Bush with a question from the back of the room, asking if Bush will forgive Mel Gibson, the actor who has apologized for anti-Semitic slurs.
"I can't hear you," Bush replied. "I'm over 60, just like you."
"It's old home week," Thomas told Donaldson.
And what a home. President Lyndon Johnson was the last chief executive to use the swimming pool buried beneath the wooden floor. The pool will be dug out to make room for electronic equipment as both the briefing room and adjoining two-story complex of cubicles and cubbies where broadcast, print and wire reporters prepare reports are torn apart from cellar to rafter.
White House briefings and the reporters who cover them will move across the street into temporary quarters in a building known as Jackson Place.
But reporters pulling up wires and roots here aren't the only ones fleeing the White House this week. Bush plans to leave town Thursday for an 11-day working vacation at his Prairie Chapel Ranch near Crawford, Texas. Press Secretary Tony Snow underscored the working angle as he fended off questions about a vacation in the midst of a deadly Middle East conflict.
"My guess is, he's going to be working pretty hard," said Snow, noting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will join Bush at the ranch this weekend. "This is not a situation where he is gallivanting and ignoring the situation."
(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)
When the president returns, the West Wing will be a construction site.
With all the suspicion attached to this renovation _ that perhaps this White House, known for little patience with the press, has no true plans for allowing reporters to return to this ringside seat inside the guarded iron gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue _ reporters have extracted an ironclad promise from the press secretary, asked repeatedly if the press indeed will return.
"Do you want me to screw with you or tell you the truth?" the smiling Snow replied from a soon-to-be-retired podium. "You'll be back."
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PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): BUSH-PRESSROOM
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