Ole' Georgie has been on a charm offensive lately with the press. He held one of his regular off-the-record getting to know you get-togethers with White House correspondents the other day. You know, one of those times when everyone let's their hair down and they all do some White House brush clearing while drinking sweet tea.

"David Bohrman, the Washington bureau chief for CNN, one of whose reporters attended a session, said they were a good idea.

" 'Most of the time, the environments that our reporters deal with the president in are very structured, very managed, and they rarely get to just kick back and have a conversation,' he said. 'I think there's a lot of value in it for both sides.'

This is wrong on so many levels. Do reporters actually think they are going to gain some "insight" into the President? Like, he's going to act natural when he's around a bunch of press corpse's because it's all, you know, off-the-record.

"Ya' all come on down and let's chat while my hair hangs down"

I recognize that past Presidents have had similar encounters with the press, albeit in a less formal way. But somehow past reporters seemed capable of seeing past the bullshit. This press corpse only fires on three out of eight cylinders on a good day. Does anyone really expect that they'll not be influenced by the charming chimp?

Joe Strupp writes for Editor and Publisher: " 'It was very pleasant, he seemed very thoughtful and frank,' said Stephan Dinan, a Washington Times reporter and one of about six reporters who took part in a session Monday afternoon. 'It was on a wide range of stuff.' . . .

Well Stephan, what were you expecting? Maybe Bush would start picking his nose? Or how about a tearful admission that he's been so totally wrong throughout his Presidency perhaps. Sheesh.

There was one good piece of news in the story:

"The New York Times, which was invited to attend a session today, has declined to participate.

"Philip Taubman, the Washington bureau chief for The Times, said in a statement last night: 'The Times has declined this opportunity after weighing the potential benefits to our readers against the prospect of withholding information from them about the discussion with Mr. Bush. As a matter of policy and practice, we would prefer when possible to conduct on-the-record interviews with public officials.' . . .

Well, waddya know. The NY Times may have learnt something from their Blair/Miller debacles. Here's hoping so.

And let's hope the rest of the press learns too without falling on their swords after helping the Preznit send us to another war on false pretenses.