This was the first full day on the job for President Obama.  He signed executive orders closing the prison at Guantanamo within a year, and restricting interrogation techniques to those found in the Army field manual.

But what do these orders really mean?  Robert Gibbs held his first briefing today as White House press secretary, and the news was in what wasn’t said.  The reporters were prickly and challenging at times, which is good.  There were indications that some of them, at least, have gotten the message that in-the-tank journalism won’t do, especially on live television.  Gibbs, a laid-back southern chap who looked like he’d be more at home in the Bush White House, fielded all questions, but fully answered many fewer.

The main story:  When asked if the restriction on interrogation techniques applied to “high-value” captures, say, Osama bin Laden, Gibbs declined to give an explicit reply, simply saying he’d check with the White House counsel.

The point, of course, is that there may be exceptions in the executive order, expressed or implied, or secret exceptions that will never be revealed publicly.  Thus, no real answer to the question. 

Gibbs was also shy when challenged on what, specifically, will be done with the Gitmo detainees considered too dangerous to release.  No real answer except Gibbs’s constant repetition of the memorized talking point - that the president felt the order closing the prison would enhance American security.

The press is constantly obsessed with itself, and many reporters expressed annoyance at being kept out of the second swearing-in ceremony.  Bill Plante of CBS was especially testy on this point, charging that it violated the Obama administration’s claim of transparency.

Summary:  It was a testier news conference than I would have predicted.

TV coverage then shifted to the State Department, where a confident-sounding and very-much-in-charge Secretary Hillary Clinton, accompanied by her subordinates, the president and the vice president, introduced two new special envoys - former Senator George Mitchell for the Mideast, and former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan/Pakistan.  The president spoke, and, despite some hysterical reporting in the British press that he made a sharp break with Bush policy on Israel, he did nothing of the kind.  He essentially reiterated American policy on the two-state solution and expressed compassion for victims on both sides.  There was nothing, thus far, to be alarmed about.

The president speaks well, as we all know, and it was his style that differed from the former president’s, in his State Department speech.  He has a more personal tone than did Mr. Bush.  You can parse his words all you wish, but I saw far more continuity in policy than rupture.

January 22, 2009.    

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