White House Takes One ‘Right Between The E’

President Clinton often has used town hall meetings to navigate through difficult moments in his political career, but his top foreign policy advisers learned Wednesday that even a trusted format for communicating with the American people has limits.

As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Defense Secretary William Cohen and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger struggled to fend off a series of hostile questions about the administration’s policy on Iraq in Columbus, Ohio, administration officials in Washington did little to hide their conclusion the event was a bust.

The White House’s opinion of the event was demonstrated by the speed at which officials dashed away from any responsibility for it.

“I’ve never been to Columbus,” one administration official said.

“I didn’t pay any attention to this,” another said.

“I thought Ohio State was in Cleveland,” said a third, speaking, like the others, only on condition of anonymity.

One White House aide, however, said with a laugh that he had managed to detect a silver lining: “I think we probably bumped Monica Lewinsky” from the top of the network newscasts, he said - and he was right.

“As it turned out,” Peter Jennings said on ABC Wednesday evening, “the administration took it right between the eyes.”

Some White House officials were furious with CNN. “CNN did a horrible job with this,” one administration aide said. Referring to two CNN anchors, Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw, he added, “Judy and Bernie looked like they were deer caught in the headlights.”

But Frank Sesno, CNN’s Washington bureau chief, ridiculed the notion that CNN should have done a better job controlling the crowd. “My response to that is simply that the White House wanted a town hall meeting and they got a town hall meeting.”

Malcolm Baroway, director of communications for Ohio State University, said CNN wanted “to have an atmosphere as similar to a television studio as possible.” They wound up with Jerry Springer’s studio.