Weapon of Mass Communication

"If not for sixteen specious words about African uranium, George W. Bush's post-war PR would be humming along," declares Sam Gwynne in a mostly gushing profile of Dan Bartlett, the Bush administration's director of communications. Gwynne depicts Bartlett as an affable Texas good ol' boy who gets "the spit knocked out of him with alarming regularity by the velociraptors of the media," while acknowledging that he is "the linchpin of the most far-reaching, tough-minded, and technologically advanced government communications operation in history - one whose sophistication, sweep, and scope make even the silken spinners of the Reagan era seem primitive by comparison."