Why Are Robert Gibbs and the White House Press Corps Laughing About a Torture Investigation?

There was a time during the Bush years when I was addicted to the White House press briefing. Not watching it, but reading the transcript. There was something sort of awe-inspiring about the back-and-forth, the inane dialogue of the whole artificial process, in which Scott McClellan (though never the pugnacious asshole Ari Fleischer was) would respond to reporters with answers that were so baldly dishonest, they did not even need to be shrewd. It was as if there were a common understanding: "I am bullshitting you, and you will accept it." And for the most part, they did. Some reporters would appear obviously frustrated in their attempts to follow-up. But others just seemed genuinely glad to be there. (How long did you say the president's bike ride with Lance Armstrong would be again? Right on.)
McClellan of course, went on to write a book attacking the administration on whose behalf he so dutifully lied. But that's another story.

White House press secretaries have always been bullshit artists, of course, and the press room is their stage. As Matthey Yglesias pointed out earlier last year, "Reporters ask questions that they know perfectly well won't be answered, and then the press secretary does his best to dodge him. Nine days out of ten, the result is a not-very-amusing spectacle for mid-day C-SPAN viewers. If the world is lucky, the Press Secretary commits some kind of gaffe. But nothing real is ever learned."
Which brings me to Robert Gibbs. As communications director for Barack Obama during the election, Gibbs no doubt did a masterful job responding to many of the ugly smears against the then-candidate. But today, when he stands before the White House press corps -- a group of people who obviously find him an affable fellow -- it feels more and more like he's insulting our intelligence.
Take the issue of torture and accountability for Bush's crimes. Yesterday, Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn asked Gibbs whether the Obama administration would cooperate with the Spanish court that is bringing forward an investigation against former Bush officials for their role in making illegal torture a policy of the U.S. government. As Corn wrote later, "He had a predictable response: 'I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals.' He quickly pivoted to point out that Obama has moved to prohibit torture at Gitmo and elsewhere."

I posed a follow-up: Have you spoken to the Spanish government about this case? He seized on my use of the word "you" and, with a broad smile, said, "I have not spoken with the Spanish." Reporters in the room laughed. I obviously did not mean him personally; the "you" had referred to the Obama administration ... The point was whether the administration had been in contact with the Spanish government about the Bush Six investigation. "The Justice Department?" I asked. Gibbs, though, essentially brushed off the question: "I would send you to Justice. Like I said, I've not spoken" to the Spanish government.

... Often White House press secretaries say, take your query elsewhere. Yet moments later, when a reporter asked Gibbs if Obama had any reaction to the conservative groups organizing "tea parties" of protest on tax day, he replied, "I've never monitored them nor spoken with the Spanish about them." People in the room laughed. And when the questioning in the room turned to the all-important subject of the Obama's new Portuguese water dog, Gibbs continued the joke. Noting that the dog might be spotted on the White House lawn later in the day or that it might not, he added that "the dog has also not talked to the Spanish about impending torture cases." More laughter. But I wondered, had the press secretary just made a joke about a torture investigation?

So maybe the mood of the White House press briefing under Obama is not as confrontational as it (sometimes) was under Bush. And maybe Gibbs is an all around nice guy. But the smug laughter in the room yesterday is a reminder of how happily and shamelessly Beltway reporters cozy up to power, and what gets lost in the process.
Thankfully, then there's Helen Thomas. Yesterday the veteran White House reporter asked Gibbs point blank: "Why is the President blocking habeas corpus from prisoners at Bagram? I thought he taught constitutional law."
Gibbs piped up -- "You're incorrect that he taught on constitutional law" -- and then vaguely referred to "several issues relating to that that have to do differently than in some places than others," Referring to Bagram's prisoners as in an "active theater of war," he then said that "we want to ensure protection and security of the American people."
That particular platitude was old in the first Bush term. So is Gibbs's contention that "the President has taken strong and swift actions to ensure that whatever actions were either permissible or carried out previously are no longer the policy of this government and will no longer be undertaken by this government."
"I think that is important for people to hear throughout the world," Gibbs said. But that's the point. People have heard the promises. They just haven't seen much else.

For more, see David Swanson's take on yesterday's briefing.