Elisabeth Bumiller

Elisabeth Bumiller (born May 15, 1956), an American author and journalist who is currently a national affairs correspondent for the New York Times.

Personal

She has been married since 1983 to Steven R. Weisman, also a former White House correspondent, who reported from India and Japan for the New York Times and is now the international economic correspondent for that newspaper. The couple has two children.

Born in Aalborg, Denmark to a Danish mother and American father, Bumiller moved to the U.S. when she was three years old. She moved to Cincinnati, where she graduated from Walnut Hills High School in 1974. She is a 1977 graduate of Northwestern University.

Career

Bumiller produced varied coverage of the White House during her stint as the Times' White House correspondent, from 2001 until the spring of 2007. Some criticized her as offering flattering coverage of the president and deferring to administration spin, with "human interest" stories often centered on such matters as the first family's haircuts or pets. She was the winner of the Wimblehack!, a Wimbledon-style elimination tournament for America's worst campaign journalist.[4]

In 2003, in an article headlined "Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights," she wrote of the president's famous "Mission Accomplished" speech, "George W. Bush's Top Gun landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in American history," and described it as "the latest example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the foundations in stagecraft set by the Reagan White House."

She has been criticized, along with other White House reporters, for not questioning George W. Bush aggressively during a press conference in the run-up to the Iraq war. Bumiller said, on the timid press conference in 2003 on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq: "I think we were very deferential because ... it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

Books

She is also the author of May You Be the Mother of A Hundred Sons, a study of women's roles in 1980s Indian society, as well as The Secrets of Mariko, a book focusing on the inner workings of a Japanese family during a year in the early 1990s.

In 2007, Bumiller went on leave to write a biography of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, published by Random House in December 2007.[5]The book gives a sharp portrayal of Rice catering to Bush's desire to invade Iraq, and it describes her being taken completely by surprise when Hamas won the Palestinian elections. She returned to the paper full time in October 2007.

Quotations

"Two and a half years later, do you (President Bush) feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?" [6]

External links

• Profile in Northwestern Alumni Magazine
• Elisabeth Bumiller at IMDb