This Washington Post story on presidential press conference questions isn’t too exciting, but it does highlight how little Bush talks to the press. There’s also a great quote describing the President’s relentless message discipline:

White House reporters can go months — or even years — without getting the chance to ask Bush a question. (This reporter has been called on about 15 times in four years.)

Bush has held 16 solo news conferences, compared to 43 for Bill Clinton, 84 for George H.W. Bush and 26 for Ronald Reagan at this point in their presidencies, according to research by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University.

These sessions are a contest between Bush’s desire to repeat his previously articulated views (“sticking a tape in the VCR,” as one frequent Bush questioner puts it), and the reporters’ quest to elicit something that will contribute to democracy, not to mention getting them on television or the front page.