The Art of Asking Questions

I am a prosecutor. And one of the things that I do for a living is ask questions of witnesses who don't particularly want to answer me. Sometimes, they don't -- you ask a question, and they use it as an excuse to repeat their stock answer, without ever acknowledging that they're not answering the question that you've just asked. It is possible to get them to answer your questions; the trick is not to lose your focus, and keep reminding them that they haven't answered the question that was asked. Eventually, you wear them down and they answer the question that you've asked. It's tedious, but it works.

Why do we do it that way? Because it's the best way to get to the truth. It doesn't endear me to the witnesses that I'm questioning, and it's not likely that they're going to invite me to dinner anytime soon, but then, my job isn't to get dinner invitations, it's to investigate wrongdoing.

Would that the White House press corps had the same interest in getting to the truth, even if it didn't endear them to the President and even if it imperiled their dinner invitations!

After watching the President's press conference, I was amazed at how often he simply failed to ask the question that was actually asked. But I was just as amazed that few reporters called him on it, either as a follow-up to their own questions, or as a follow-up to the previous questioner's question.

Below, a question-by-question analysis:

The President was asked "How do you explain to Americans how you got that [WMD, that the US would be greeted as liberators, and that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for reconstruction] so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series of false premises?"

There was a 9-part answer, but no mention of either how the intelligence on WMD turned out to be so wrong or why we weren't greeted as liberators. And on the oil question, all he said was that oil revenue was "significant", but didn't address why, if the revenues are "significant", he still needed to get $87 billion from Congress to rebuild Iraq.

Elizabeth Bumiller, of the New York Times, felt no need to follow up that evasion, and turned to whether the President felt any "personal responsibility for September 11th?"

There was no answer to this question, either, although he did state "There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place." [Side note: Incredibly, one of the things he wishes had been in place was a Homeland Security department, despite the fact that he opposed just such a thing when it was originally proposed by Senator Lieberman, a Democrat.] Other than that, he only rambled about how the country was changed by 9/11. Again, there was no follow-up by Bumiller or the next reporter.

Next up was this question: "One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?"

There was no answer, just (1) no one could have envisioned 9/11; (2) the people know where I stand on Iraq; and (3) our mission in Iraq is important. Let's face it -- he didn't even try to answer this one, not even close. And once again, no follow-up.

The President did give a sort of answer to the next question, which was whether he requested any specific action as a result of the August 6, 2001 PDB: according to the President, if the PDB had given specific information about an attack involving airplanes flying into buildings, the government would have "moved heaven and earth" to stop that plot. Note however, that this was only a hypothetical answer ("If we had known, we would have taken action") and not an actual answer ("Yes, we did x, y and z"). Needless to say, there was no follow-up to pin him down on what the actual answer to that question is.

The President answered the next question, which assimilated testimony from today's hearings of the 9/11 commission to the effect that the FBI investigations reported in the PDB were exaggerated, and did the President have any additional information about that? The President answered that he expected to learn more about that soon.

The next question was whether the President was prepared personally to apologize for failures that led to 9/11. The President stated that he could "understand" why "his people" were "anguished" over 9/11, but did not answer the simple question that was actually asked. Instead, he took the obvious, but irrelevant tack of blaming Osama bin Laden. Not surprisingly, there was no follow-up.

He answered the next question about whether the "coalition" in Iraq was merely window dressing for a unilateral action (he says it's not), so let's give him credit for that one.

On the next question after that, it was as if the President was in a different room than the reporters. He was asked -- twice -- why he had insisted that he would appear before the 9/11 commission only with the Vice President, and not alone, as the Commission had requested. His answer the first time: "because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions." Remarkably, the reporter repeated the question, but got the same evasive non-answer: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them." No one, not even the East German judge, could give him credit for that one. And there was no follow-up.

He gave a mangled, but responsive answer to the next question (you've been accused of letting the 9/11 plot mature too much before taking action, and not letting Iraq mature enough -- how do you respond?), so again, credit where credit is due.

There was a softball question about whether he's willing to do what's right even if it means being voted out of office in November. He parried and evaded the answer, but it was a political, rather than factual, question, so I wouldn't deduct points for the non-answer. Some questions are made to be evaded, and you learn either to live with whatever evasive answer you get, or not to answer the question in the first place.

Then, an unscripted question: have you made any mistakes since 9/11? This elicited an honest response, I think: the President is sure that he has made some, but can't think of any off the top of his head. Hubristic, yes, but also honestly evasive, rather than duplicitously evasive.

The next question was whether he would revamp intelligence and law enforcement at the federal level despite pleas from field agents not to. The President didn't quite answer this one, but that may be because he doesn't have an answer yet. At the same time, he used the question as a jumping-off point for his 10-minute stump speech about staying the course, which wasn't responsive to the question.

And finally, he was asked whether he thought he had failed as a communicator because despite the White House's relentless projection of its "stay-the-course" message, public support for his policies in Iraq have deteriorated. The answer was another rendition of the stump speech and a political nonanswer-answer. No evasion, but no light shed, either.