There's something inherently proper about going to the Silverton to hear a talk by Ari Fleischer. That's not to say that the most famous presidential press secretary couldn't have given his speech elsewhere (though it would be safe to rule out any French-themed casinos), but the Old West and conservatism make comfortable bedmates.
Standing in line was equally comfortable. Normally having to push my way through crowds of tourists to reach the Man with the List at a nightclub's door, I'd forgotten what it was like to politely wait in a nice queue with other polite people. Well, mostly polite. There were the two women who somehow thought that appearing by the door earlier and then departing for the bar for an hour somehow ensured their spot at the head of the line.
After the people who had been standing and waiting and shifting from one foot to the other and waiting some more told them no, they weren't going to be allowed to be at the head of the line, they complained to the Silverton staff about the unfairness of it all—which only goes to show that Republicans can sometimes be guilty of the same false sense of entitlement and victimhood as Democrats. (They were eventually told to wait off to the side, which they did, pretending not to notice the glares of everyone else in line.)
President George W. Bush's first press secretary was the first in a speaker series. Next up will be Scott F. O'Grady, the Air Force captain who evaded capture after being shot down over Bosnia in 1995. It's pretty clear Al Franken won't be appearing any time soon.
Once settled in and seated—those two women trampled beneath Florsheims and not-too-high high-heels—it was clear that my wife, friends and I brought the average age of the room down by a couple of decades.
Ari (and let's face it; no matter what your political stripe, you call him by his first name, and not "Fleischer" or "Mr. Flesicher") gave the sort of talk to be expected. He asked anyone named Helen to please leave, a comic reference to reporter and White House press conference gadfly Helen Thomas. He recounted his liberal-Democratic parents' disappointment when he switched sides during Jimmy Carter's malaise-filled presidency; his mother still thinks it's just a phase. He related a time when he and the president played catch and had to knock around in the Rose Garden searching for a lost ball. He also explained the necessary adversarial relationship between the press and well, just about anyone. His line about journalists feeling that it's their duty to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable got a few laughs, but I wondered how many people would have chuckled if they knew that's no joke but a journalism school slogan often exercised to the extreme. And he pointed out the clear liberal bias of much of the mainstream media, the small rhetorical flourishes sometimes used by oft-trusted news sources, such as the time Dan Rather spoke.
It all really was quite stirring, especially on the eve of the Iraqi elections, which, as Ari pointed out, was a test of the Bush manifesto as much as it was the Iraqis' hope for a better future. After the speech and the quick, required plug for his new book, Taking Heat, came the Q&A. I was crushed that whoever had been present earlier from CityLife either had decided to leave or didn't want to raise his hand and challenge Ari. Certainly, the Las Vegas Sun's Eric Leake didn't pose any tough ones—perhaps wanting to preserve his observation about questions being "softballs and fan mail," which he used the following day.
Which actually wasn't true at all. One elderly gentleman announced to Ari and all attendant that he was 86 and had rewritten the U.S. federal income tax code to the benefit of the poor, the middle class, business and the deficit.
He wanted to show it to Ari and get him to pass it along to the president, but first, if he could take a moment to explain exactly what it was that he had done, he had started with Title 1, Chapter 1, Section 1 ...
If diplomatically dealing with that question wasn't an example of fielding a hardball, I don't know what is.