Ari Fleischer

After a short lived career as a high school gymnast, Ari Fleischer now walks the tightrope between the press and George W. Bush's White House.

"It's hard to be the White House Press Secretary if you don't like to publicly speak or to debate. Every once in a while I get into a debate or three with the press corps."
Ari Fleischer

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Considering a career as a press secretary...

When you were a teen what did you want to be?
Twenty years old. I had no idea. I - probably a lawyer - that's how misguided I was back then.

If you weren't press secretary, do you think you would have followed a career in law?
Well, the fact is when I graduated college, I had applied to law school and to graduate schools of international relations and I had to decide if I wanted to go to any of the schools that I had gotten into for the coming fall and I did get the chance to become press secretary and fell in love with that, so that was a choice I never had to face, but it's possible.

What about the experience made you change your mind about law school?
Well, I thought I had enough academics. The idea of going to school for another three years did not appeal to me. I loved college. I enjoyed the coursework but I had enough of it. And I just — I've always enjoyed politics. I've enjoyed the chance to go work for the government. And so I moved to Washington after that campaign was over and got a job as a press secretary for a Congressman on the Hill, a New York Republican, and that was it; I got the bug.

What extracurricular activities did you participate in high school?
I was on the gymnastics team. I played baseball. I was president of my class.

Do public speaking or debate courses help for a career as a press secretary?
Yes, yes. I think it does. It's hard to be the White House Press Secretary if you don't like to publicly speak or to debate. Every once in a while I get into a debate or three with the press corps.

What was your first job as a press secretary?
Right out of college in 1982 I became press secretary in Westchester County, New York, for a challenger campaign, a guy named Jon Fossil, who was running for Congress in Westchester.

What skills make for a good press secretary?
Well, one, you have to do your homework. You have to be substantive and learn factual, substantive answers, which are accurate, to reporters' questions. Two is you have to have access to the president. You have to listen to him. Three, you have to be patient, and, four, a sense of humor helps.

Describe your typical day...
Well, I get up at about five in the morning and have breakfast for about an hour where I read the newspapers. I get in to the office at about 7 o'clock, 7:15, and I meet with my staff to go over any issue that we see in the newspapers that could present a problem for the administration.

Then I go to senior staff meeting at 7:30 and have a couple of more staff meetings to help me prepare for the gaggle. And then I do the gaggle.

The gaggle is — I do two briefings a day, interestingly — the gaggle is the first one; it's at 9:45 in the morning, and it's on the record. But it's off-camera and not allowed on radio. But it counts. It's a regular briefing for 15 minutes. And it's my way to describe to reporters what the president is doing that day and a way for reporters to start asking questions to start their day and to provide helpful intelligence for the White House about what issues the president is working on.

Then I go from the gaggle into preparing for the briefing, attending many meetings, often with the president, because the best way to speak for the president is to listen to him. And then I do a lot of reading, and that's how I prepare for the briefing. And I spend most of the afternoons returning reporters' phone calls and checking e-mails.

How do you decide what to say and not to say?
That's the tightrope a press secretary walks. My job is to serve both the president and the press corps, and that means every day I'm paid to walk a tightrope. And if you do this business long enough, you just develop a gut, a judgment about what information you leave behind in a closed room and what information you share publicly.

In general, the type of information that you leave behind in the Oval Office is information about policies that are not decided yet, so that when the president has the advice of his staff and some staff says we recommend (a), some staff says we recommend (b), that serves the president very well by totally vetting the issues, but no decision is made, and so that's the type of information I'll leave behind until the president has made a decision, and then I'll share it. So that's an example.

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