Fewer reporters traveling with president

Ground Air Force One and Two, except for official government business.

With the U.S. economic conditions as they are, we can ill afford for the two biggest jackasses in America to free-load off of the taxpayers.

The Seattle Times: Politics: Fewer reporters traveling with president:

GREEN BAY, Wis. — On one of the scariest days yet in the five-year war with terrorists, President Bush prepared to address the nation to reassure the American people. But the White House press corps was 1,000 miles away in Texas.

Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a previously scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke Thursday that Britain had foiled a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were some local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One.

The idea that Bush could travel across the country without a full contingent of reporters, especially in the middle of a war, highlights a major cultural shift in the presidency and the news media.

In the four-plus decades since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, presidents traditionally have taken journalists with them wherever they traveled on the theory that when it comes to the most powerful leader on the planet, anything can happen at any time.

But increasingly in recent months, Bush has left town without a chartered press plane, often to receptions where he talks to donors chipping in hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no cameras or tapes to record his words for the public.