[Newspoetry] NEWSPOEM -- from Newton Bigelow

[Robert Porter]

WAR STRAINS RELATIONSHIPS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.


By NEWTON BIGELOW (Associated Poets)

DATELINE MADRID --  Words of war will rumble from the White House again this
morning, when President Bush is scheduled to recite a vague outline of the
strategy for the the next phase of the war on terrorism.  Among those
assembled for the president's speech will be many members of Congress who
have grown frustrated with what they say is the administration's relentless
secrecy about its military plans.

Those frustrations blew up again last week.  In what is becoming a regular
Washington psychodrama, as if the White House and Congress were a married
couple having the same fight over and over, Congress complained that they
had been left in the dark about the Bush administration's war plans and its
"shadow government".  Congress also accused the White House of being
"emotionally unavailable".

The White House responded that Congress had been informed, it just forgot.
Criticizing Congress for its "relentless nagging", the White House issued a
statement bemoaning the fact that it doesn't know "what makes Congress
happy" anymore.  Nonetheless, some, but not all, in the Congressional
leadership were hastily invited to the West Wing for a makeup briefing,
which was immediately overshadowed by a spat over who had been excluded and
why.

A senior administration official said that Congress received plenty of
briefings about the war but that few bothered to turn up, to which members
of Congress replied,  "Why should we? The Capitol Hill briefings offer less
emotional support than what's available on CNN!"

Said Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, "They don't say
anything meaningful. In terms of Congress knowing what's going on in the
heart of the White House, forget it. They are totally shutting us out.  The
worst part of it is that I think they can see what they're doing, and they
don't seem to care. That really hurts, you know?"

Steve Elmendorf, chief of staff for Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the
House Democratic leader, says he tries to see things from the
administration's side. "I think they've got a systemic problem they've got
to figure out.  These folks have some serious emotional knots to unravel."

"Their first instinct is not to tell people things," Mr. Elmendorf said.
"They're not the first White House to be like that, but they're certainly
more excessively secretive than I remember the Clinton White House being, or
even Bush I.  When it comes to problems with intimacy, we haven't seen
anything like this since the Nixon administration."

In an attempt to smooth things over, Mr. Gephardt was invited to the White
House for his very own briefing. Also invited that day for consultations
with Mr. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, were
members of the House and Senate foreign policy leadership.

Afterward, the most talkative was Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the chairman
of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was positively glowing.

"They were nice to me, they offered me coffee, and everything's fine,"
Senator Biden gushed as his car pulled out of the West Wing driveway. The
result of the meeting, he added, would be more regular consultations between
himself, his House counterparts and Ms. Rice. "But I'm not looking to be
stroked or petted on this deal," he said.  Then after a brief pause, he
added, "Well, maybe a little."

Whether this is a sign of renewed closeness, or just the last gasp of a
doomed relationship, remains to be seen.


http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/national/11LETT.html