Bizarre Morning At The White House

The morning that the White House press secretary resigned, the news organization assigned to pool coverage for print reporters -- Copley -- apparently forgot to show up.

And moments after a tearful McClellan, with POTUS at his side, did announce his resignation, the president's helicopter, (known as Nighthawk to its pilots) had a malfunction.

The details after the jump, courtesy of a very regretful Copley reporter. (BTW: Joe Manchin is a DEMOCRAT.)

FROM A WH POOL REPORT

It was a morning of massive systems failures.

Failure number one: In an attempt to shed its reputation as a crack news gathering machine, the Copley News Service managed to screw up its pool duty. The details are too trivial and boring to recite here but the curious may call and I will sheepishly supply. That there is any pool report at all is entirely due to the gracious and patient help of Reuters' crack WH staff, Patty Wilson in particular.

Failure number two: Another machine, Marine One, didn't feel up to flying this morning.

Enough negativity.

The morning began with the one scripted event on tap before departure:

The president's South Lawn appearance with four governors recently returned from Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. You have the transcript, but the intrepid quartet was Joe Manchin, R-W Va., Jeb Bush, R-Fla., Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., and Tom Vilsack, D-Iowa.

The statements finished, everybody retreated to their White House haunts awaiting Marine One's departure, an open event. With about two minutes notice, the press was alerted to an impending presidential statement.

That, of course, had to do with Press Secretary Scott McClellan's decision to resign.

Transcript has moved on that event as well. Scott seemed somewhat choked with emotion as he delivered the news. (It must have been the thought of saying farewell to our sunny personalities.) The president, at one point, placed a hand on his shoulder.

They then moved to the temperamental helicopter.

Boarding along with the president and McClellan was a clutch of staff including Karl Rove and Joe Hagin. The doors closed, the rotors started, and then stopped about a minute later. The door opened, and the staff exited by the rear door, while Bush reappeared at the front. With something of a smile and a shoulder shrug, he said, "We have an issue with the helicopter. Everybody's safe."

Hagin approached the stakeout to say the unscripted turn of events was due to an "avionics" problem.

The president later motorcaded to Andrews.

Again, with apologies,

Finlay Lewis

Copley