Off Beat: Farewell To 'Ari Bob'

Until Clinton, nearly every press secretary wrote a book--but only after the president left office. "I've never seen one that didn't have a few tidbits," says Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary to Reagan and Bush 41. He is working on his third book, a novel. Being a former White House press secretaries can be job unto itself. "Once you've been a press secretary to a president, you work for him the rest of your life," explains Fitzwater, who is still a popular speechmaker. He gave one last week at a hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Most press secretaries, however, find that their shelf life is limited. "There's not much demand for Bill Clinton anecdotes," says Mike McCurry, Clinton's spinmaster who instituted the first live coverage of press briefings. Except in Washington, McCurry doesn't get recognized too often anymore. And if he does, it's often that perplexed don't-I-know-you-from-somewhere? kind of recognition. In the Charlotte, N.C., airport a few years ago he says someone came up to him and said, "I know you! You do the weather on Channel 4!"

Fleischer is a bigger celebrity than any of his predecessors, thanks to cable news and historic events. He's not just a star on C-Span. There are Web sites devoted to him (pro and con). He's appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." He had a stalker. But as Ron Nessen, who covered the White House for NBC before he became Ford's press secretary, explains: "The nature of America and of celebrity, soon it will be Ari who?"

But Ari Bob--as President Bush dubbed him--will long be remembered among the White House press corps, if not always fondly. He could do circumlocution with the best of them and often did. His parsing was almost Clintonian; he'd "respond" to questions but not necessarily "answer" them. In the closely held, nearly leakproof Bush White House that means he did his job well.

Before Reagan, press secretaries often came from the press corps. Eisenhower's James Hagerty, for example, worked for The New York Times. These days, being a government spokesman is a career unto itself. "The White House press operation is far more professional now," explains Nessen, who says he saw himself as a "super pool reporter" for the press corps. In his own way, Fleischer saw the job the same way. Away from the Klieg lights, Fleischer often acted as an advocate for the press. He invited himself to West Wing meetings he'd been dialed out of and made such a nuisance of himself gathering information that some secretive staffers saw him as the enemy. Bush himself would sometimes tell staffers "Don't tell Ari" about things that were going on.

Only the peculiar club of White House press secretaries really understands what it's like to work both sides. They don't get together very often. Maybe once a year they'll see each other at academic panels or charity events. When they do, they often talk about the reporters who plagued them. "I don't think you could put five of us in a room for more than an hour without sooner or later the conversation circling back to Trudy Feldman," says Clinton's Jake Siewert, who now works at Alcoa. Feldman, who worked for several small publications but was a big headache, rivals only Helen Thomas in their reveries.