During a discussion about President Bush's October 11 press conference on the October 15 edition of NBC's The Chris Matthews Show, author and Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward advised White House correspondents to be more “specific” in their questioning of Bush because “so often, they go off on the wrong tack by asking general questions.” Woodward stated:

WOODWARD: I understand how difficult it is to be a White House correspondent. I think so often they go off on the wrong tack by asking general questions. What you have to do with Bush is ask very specific questions.

Woodward continued stating: "[T]he question I would have asked" Bush is: "[Donald H.] Rumsfeld, your defense secretary, wrote a secret memo a couple of months ago saying that the government, the system in government is so screwed up that competence is next to impossible. Do you agree?" Woodward presumably was referring to a section of his book, State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III (Simon & Schuster, September 2006), in which Woodward reported that in May, Rumsfeld circulated a secret memo, responding to criticism about the administration's handling of the Iraq war, that argued that "[t]he charge of incompetence against the U.S. government should be easy to rebut if the American people understand the extent to which the current system of government makes competence next to impossible."

As Media Matters for America has previously noted after several press conferences, the assembled press corps has failed repeatedly to follow Bush's vague, often unresponsive answers with specific questions that would require direct responses or expose his evasiveness. Most recently, at an October 11 press conference, Bush engaged in unfounded attacks on his political adversaries and made misleading statements in support of the recently-passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 and in support of legislation to authorize warrantless surveillance of domestic phone calls, any one of which could have elicited pointed follow-up questions.

Additionally, as Media Matters has documented (here, here, and here), reporters have often left Bush's false claims unchallenged during one-on-one interviews and have failed to follow up on assertions Bush made.

From the October 15 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show:

MATTHEWS: Bob, you wrote in your book something, a great little moment about, in late in 2003, and you put in your new book State of Denial. When, you're interviewing the President, George Bush, who we're talking about here, and you say, well, you're very careful and very respectful, but you get to the point of saying we did find or haven't found weapons of mass destruction yet in Iraq. And you hoped the President would simply say, “Yeah, that's right, Bob.” Instead he said, “I don't know anybody who said that. I'm not -- maybe you hang around elite circles, but nobody has ever been in a room with me who's said we haven't found weapons of mass” -- Now, most Americans think that sounds daffy, because everybody in America knows we didn't find weapons of mass destruction.

WOODWARD: Well, I was surprised. It took five minutes and 18 seconds to get him to acknowledge, through about 20 questions, that it was true, true, true, at that point, that we had not found weapons of mass destruction. He even went further and said, “Why is this important? Why is this going in your book?” And I said, “Well, you know, it's the reason or a main reason for war.” He finally got it. And, quite frankly, in watching the press conference, I understand how difficult it is to be a White House correspondent. I think so often they go off on the wrong tack by asking general questions. What you have to do with Bush is ask very specific questions. And, the question I would have asked: Rumsfeld, your defense secretary, wrote a secret memo a couple of months ago saying that the government, the system in government is so screwed up that competence is next to impossible. Do you agree?"