ABC reporter offers insights on life at the White House

By ROBERT FLES

In her most professionally stentorian tones, ABC broadcaster Ann Compton stood up before a packed auditorium at Springside School and announced that Laura Bush had resigned as first lady (those 9/11 hearings were just too much); that Osama Bin Laden had been captured (tripped up when his clandestine broadcasting system showed up on "Do Not Call" lists); and that Martha Stewart was making fashion waves by designing a new orange jumpsuit (when a "wardrobe malfunction" could be overcome). With that, she intoned, "And that's tonight's news. This is Ann Compton signing off."

With that parody of her own profession and of the news media's and the public's insatiable appetite for sensationalism packaged in compact sound-bites, Compton was off and running for a fast-paced hour of pithy observations on her work, her personal life and her opinions on the six presidents whom she has covered over the past 30 years as chief White House correspondent for ABC News.

And her observations on single-sex education as well. Compton appeared as the initial speaker in Springside's "Illuminating Women" series, marking the 125th anniversary of the oldest private girls' school in Philadelphia. A graduate of the all-female Hollins College (now University) in Virginia, Compton labeled herself "a wholehearted advocate of schools for girls," citing leadership opportunities, a "level playing field" in the classroom, and a sense of "being empowered" as the benefits she had experienced personally.

But her accounts of Washington — from the vantage point of her "front-row seat to history" as a broadcast journalist — formed the heart of her talk. Moving rapidly from topic to topic, and speaking in the brief, usually anecdotal "broadcast units" of TV news, Compton spoke frankly and often humorously about the politics and politicians of the past three decades.

She found, for instance, a good deal of similarity between Bush the father and Bush the son: "the ADD of both is unmistakable — the short attention span, the totally random waving at somebody in the audience while a foreign guest is speaking." And Compton agreed with an audience member who implied that the President lacked knowledge of Middle Eastern history and culture and also lacked advisors who could immerse him in their knowledge of the Middle East.

"This is a guy," she explained, "who struggles to understand American culture."

Yet she defended President Bush for his refusal to speak apologetically at his recent news conference about his decisions regarding the U.S. war with Iraq. She spoke disdainfully of the reporters who kept throwing "Don't you want to apologize?" questions at the President, and she asked, "We're at war. What leader would stand before the world in the midst of war and apologize? To back down now or show weakness will just increase the casualties."

However, she said frankly that the war in Iraq "has not gone at all the way the President and his advisors have wanted. They envisioned a peaceful Iraq, reduced U.S. troops, the institution of democracy by this time." This will be, she predicted, "a long, difficult, and costly summer" for the U.S. and Iraq, and the war is making President Bush more and more "vulnerable" for the upcoming election — an eerie repetition of the fact that the first war with Iraq, also initially a smashing military success, did not guarantee the first President Bush re-election.

The longest and most riveting segment of Compton's talk was devoted to the attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. She was the sole broadcast journalist in the small reporters' pool that accompanied the President to Florida for what started out as a routine photo op in a key election state in support of a key legislative initiative (his education bill).

"We stood in our places in that Sarasota classroom while the drill sergeant of a teacher put her charges through their spelling drills when suddenly [presidential advisor] Andy Card walked up to the President and began whispering to him — and no one interrupts the President while an event involving him is going on. But I saw Bush's face fall. He was stunned. Š Andy Card told me later that he said simply, 'Mr. President, another plane has struck the World Trade Center. America is under attack.' We raced back to Air Force One and took off without any of the usual preliminaries — it felt like we were going straight up in the air."

Compton continued with her dramatic account of being the only broadcaster with the President that day (ABC News won an Emmy and a Peabody Award for its 9/11 coverage): the need to leave some crew members and some pool reporters behind in Florida; the Secret Service decision that the President could not return to Washington, D.C., when they learned that the Pentagon had also been struck; the tense conversations between the Secret Service, the President's staff, and the handful of reporters aboard Air Force One; the desperate efforts to gain dependable information even as the final airliner crashes were happening; the need to land in Louisiana to refuel the presidential airplane; the first message Compton could receive after landing back in Washington.

That message, she said, was from her son: did she know that a good friend of his worked on the 93rd floor of the WTC? "Suddenly what was 'an event' had become a human tragedy, a personal tragedy. It began to have human faces." She concluded, "It haunts us yet, but I believe we have become stronger since then and care more about the homeland."

On the personal side, Compton said that the term "homeland" — which she disliked at first — captures the two sides of her life: her "land" and her "home."

When asked the inevitable question about "juggling" her career and her family, Compton replied, "I juggled six presidents and four children the same way." All of our lives, she said, "are teeming with demands on them. Your hardest choices are what you choose not to do." Her family and her work have gotten all of her, she said, and so she's had to exclude things she would have liked to do, such as volunteer work in the school or the hospital and the reading of stacks of books. "There've been no country club memberships, no summer homes, no vacations without kids."

She admitted that now and then she has felt as if she has missed too much of her family's growing up, telling of one conversation at the dinner table at which her husband and children talked animatedly of recent routine events; "I knew nothing of what they were talking about. They could have been talking in a foreign language." She also said, "My children have punished me for years for missing Halloweens. Halloween comes just before the elections."

On the other hand, what child could have his mother rush home, as happened to Compton's son, wake him up, wave a letter in his face, and say, "If the President of the United States can apologize to me, you can, too." George H. W. Bush had written a letter of apology to her for snapping at an edgy question of hers one day.

After concluding her talk, Compton fielded questions in what she said was the true White House press-conference style: "you ask rude, boorish questions like the press corps and I'll give long, vague answers like the President, and I'll say the press conference is over whenever the questions start to get too tough." But she answered them all with humor, grace, and clarity and left the podium to rousing applause.

Springside School's speaker series continues next month. Appearing on May 5 will be Ilana DeBare, a journalist and the author of Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls' Schools. Speaking on May 18 will be Dr. Amy Gutmann, president-elect of the University of Pennsylvania. Speakers slated for next fall include Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, operatic performer Frederica von Stade, and Springside alumna Dr. Diana Chapman Walsh, president of Wellesley College.

All lectures will be held in Springside's Upper School Auditorium, 8000 Cherokee St., at 7:30 p.m., with refreshments at 7 p.m. Call in advance 215-247-7200, ext. 6666, to reserve a seat or go to www.springside.org. Unreserved seating will be on a space-available basis.