Ari Fleischer biography

Synopsis

Career Highlights

Spokesperson and government official Lawrence Ari Fleischer was born in Pound Ridge, New York. Fleischer became the official spokesperson for President-elect George W. Bush in December of 2000. As White House press secretary, Fleischer was in charge of handling media queries and disseminating information about the administration, its policies and its goals to reporters.

His notoriously tough job became even more difficult in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent U.S. military assault on Afghanistan, but Fleischer won high marks for his performance. Joe Lockhart, a predecessor of Fleisher who worked for the Clinton White House described the role of White House press secretary to People as "an impossible job." Lockhart went on to say, "If you can avoid making yourself the story and reflect the President's beliefs, you've done a good job. And so far he's done that."

Starting out Democrat

Fleischer, who turned forty years old the year that Bush was inaugurated, grew up in Pound Ridge, a suburban enclave near New York City. His father was an executive recruiter, while his mother worked as a computer programmer at IBM. He attended Fox Lane High School, where he was elected president of his class twice. Both of Fleischer's parents were committed Democrats, and admitted later that their youngest son's Republican sympathies, which emerged during his years at Middlebury College, surprised them. After graduating with a degree in political science in 1982, Fleischer found work as press secretary to Jon Fossel, a Republican from New York who was running for a Congressional seat. Fossel lost, but Fleischer was still determined to work in politics, and so he moved to Washington and lived with his older brother. He first worked the phone banks for the Republican National Committee, and was eventually hired as press secretary to New York congressman Norman Lent. From there he took a job with New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici in 1989.

Fleischer became a trusted up-and-comer in Republican Party circles. He served as deputy communications director for incumbent President George Bush in his failed 1992 re-election campaign. During the Clinton years, Fleischer ran his own lobbying firm for aircraft makers and cattle ranchers, and returned to the back halls of Congress when he took a job with a Republican from Texas, Bill Archer, who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee. He quit that job when he was hired by American Red Cross president Elizabeth Dole as communications director in her campaign to become the Republican Party nominee for the White House in 2000.