Ari Fleischer biography

Synopsis

Spokesperson, government official. Born Lawrence Ari Fleischer 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 is 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. A predecessor who worked for the Clinton White House described the role of White House press secretary as "an impossible job," Joe Lockhart told People. "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 twice he was elected president of his class. Both Fleischer 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.

Wavered Before Accepting Bush Offer

Fleischer quit the Dole team in September of 1999, and Dole herself dropped out of the race when the presidential campaign of another Republican, Texas governor George W. Bush, began to gain momentum. When the communications director for the Bush team, Karen Hughes, learned that Fleischer had quit the Dole campaign, she offered him a job. He initially declined, but Archer urged him to take the job, and so he interviewed with Hughes. "I remember him telling me what he really wanted to do was find a nice Jewish woman and get married and have children," Hughes told Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz.

After the election dispute between Bush and Democratic hopeful Al Gore was resolved in the Texas governor's favor, Bush began making his staff appointments, and Fleischer was named the next White House press secretary. Fleischer endured some initial trials during his first few months on the job. Members of the White House Correspondents' Association complained that he called press conferences on too short a notice, and in June of 2001, a Washington Post article allowed Fleischer to voice his ire about acts of vandalism he claimed were committed by outgoing Clinton staffers. At times, he was derided as a member of