The White House briefing room is brand new and state of the art. Methinks that the people who brought you Paul Wolfowitz's ideas mouthed by a bat-eared fake Texan would also have upgraded their equipment.

The magician's and Karl Rove's old reliable, the misdirection, is such an hallmark of the sales pitch that we ought to have learned from experience to parse not just the language but what appears to be going on.

In this newly furnished room, not only is the probing and pithy question shunted deliberately over to today's prepared sermon, but so are any probing and pithy follow-ups. You can get all that from a transcript such as the one from Thursday's appearance by President Bush.

I was in between coats of stain and just happened to catch it on MSNBC. I watched with curiosity at a man who appeared to be no longer using his trademark crutch: the large type, fully tabbed, poly-protected pages of the big red briefing book that an aid had sneaked onto the rostrum moments before his grand entrance.

The reporters' questions at these affairs often have a long-winded setup and that leaves a little prep time for Dubbya. Just as the room is designed to sort out what we're supposed to think from what we might be led to think from our own research, there is what we are supposed to see and what we are not.

I observed the president looking down at the surface of the rostrum as always but this time with arms stationary. He would get about eleven words into an answer and run out of gas. To a question about Pat Tillman's death and the cover-up which followed, he said "Well, first of all, I can understand why Pat Tillman's family..."

Then he looked down, cogitatingly like, and only then delivered the sound bite for every media outlet to use: "...you know, has got significant emotions, because a man they loved and respected was killed while he was serving his country."

Forget that the family's significant emotions might actually result from being lied to by their government.

Shameless, he looked down again to get the prepared text of how he feels, looking up with showbiz, faux intellectualism and saying "I always admired the fact that a person who was relatively comfortable in life would be willing to take off one uniform and put on another to defend America."

What was different this time was no whipping noise of tabbed by subject area pages. However, the C-SPAN camera over his shoulder, at about nine minutes in, shows a sheaf of papers in his hand along with a curious rectangle just under the microphone. Text messages from Karl?

The tried and true ("if there's a leak in my administration") remedy for the Tillman family must have been a dagger to the heart when he said "...that I expect there to be a full investigation and get to the bottom of it." (One might fill in the blanks with but if Rumsfeld is convicted, expect a pardon.)

Chris Matthews, who anchored MSNBC's coverage, was effusive in praise for the way Bush made his case for staying the course of this surge to the occupation in service of freedom successfully overthrowing the dictator who had big plans if not actual weapons of mass destruction, citing Bush's consistency with the neo-con line from day one.

Surely, Matthews must know how this camera shot game is played.

He would be screaming mad if we saw him reading ahead to the next question, giving the appearance of him not listening or caring about the current answer. The charade that I had just witnessed was somehow found to be testament to Bush's deep neo-con convictions. Really? I thought it proved or invented the adage that just because you come full circle to an earlier position, after much meandering, doesn't mean you held it consistently.

Something's pretty deep, alright. That over the shoulder camera angle is a thing of beauty, eh?

There's the what we're supposed to see and the what we're not. Why isn't the scripted and possibly spoon fed nature of these events topic one in the coverage? The boilerplate which Matthews elevated to courage of convictions came during a lengthy detour from a question involving the "a" word which was supposed to be his presidency's hallmark, according to the first campaign.

The question was:  "Given the decision to commute the sentence of Libby and given the performance of Iraqi leaders, is it fair for people to ask questions about your commitment to accountability?" (Ouch!)

Six transcribed paragraphs of blather later, related here as the tone poem from hell, he got around to the reporter's query. "...I am deliberate in my decision-making; I think about all aspects of the decisions I make...Back to Iraq ... recognize how difficult the task is. ...self-governing entity that's an ally in the war on terror in Iraq? Does it matter? ...to your children? ...it does matter because enemies that would like to do harm to the American people would be emboldened by failure....It matters if the United States does not believe in the universality of freedom. ...change the conditions that cause 19 kids to... murder our citizens....could not send a mother's child into combat if I did not believe it was necessary...there are difficult moments in young democracies emerging...those of us ... believe it's worth it... see progress. ...not worth it... no progress. And that's going to be the interesting debate. ...whether or not the United States should be in Iraq and in the region in a position to enable societies to begin to embrace liberty...I firmly believe it is an ideological struggle. ... what has made the stakes so high...forces of murder and intolerance...capacity to murder innocent people in our own country. I put that in the context of accountability."

The kindest thing one can say is that "accountability" was circumjacent.

The man doesn't seem capable of what most would call being himself. He is the sum of what his quick as a bunny mind can throw together from who knows what sources are at his disposal. It's astonishing that the unrelenting coverage model employed by (mostly) cable news can't find a story in the emperor's new clothes, or lack thereof.

MSNBC, especially, shows you their inner workings as a production value. The discarnate voice-over from the control booth says there's a breaking high speed pursuit with helicopter enhancement or yet more news about someone who is famous, all too often, just for being famous.

The extrusion of news-like morsels, filling the gaps between the money making aspects of their enterprise, is akin to just-in-time strategies in other businesses. While the on-air personalities are ticking through their headlines and leading in to the canned stuff, their little bunny earpieces might go off with a further development - toss it to Clarice "live" - message from central control.

The same techniques which keep up the pace in cable news, I fear, could be at play in the White House briefing situation. Our brains are not wired to correct for every last Orwellian drop you can squeeze out of an extemporaneous appearance but it's worse if you consider there might be a cadre of helpers off camera.

The president did speak absolute truth at one point, though the context was the caveats of the housing markets:  "...a lot of people sign up to something they're not exactly sure what they're signing up for."

Does that answer your question, David?

Answered mine. Overall, Bush was not in front of the reporters so much as Bushism. The brave new noiseless briefing book - blurring once again the distinction between technique and torture.