When Bob Dole, who campaigned unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, was asked what he would do differently were he to run in future, he replied, "Keep the press off the plane."

Unfortunately, President Obama can't and won't do that. Not yet at any rate. Richard Nixon learnt the lesson too late. When Nixon was on his final flight on Air Force One, he went to the rear section which previously held reporters and saw that it was occupied by the Secret Service.

"Well," Nixon commented, "it certainly smells better."

media Relationship

There is no love lost between the presidents of the United States and the press. The honeymoon at the inauguration lasts less time than the Jason Alexander-Britney Spears wedding. While President Barack Obama is trying desperately to get his stimulus package passed, the US media need neither stimulus nor stimulant to keep the fires of discord burning. Many of my friends have commented on what they see as an 'about-face' in the media. When Obama was a candidate, they were on his side; now that he is president, increasingly he is under attack.

The media say they are impartial and objective. Obama supporters increasingly believe that whether the fire is friendly or unfriendly, or the damage is unilateral or collateral, the results are equally deadly.

Significantly, Valentine's Day in American history also com-memorates a massacre.

Some people consider the Obama situation as one episode in an epic and ongoing power struggle. James Reston, The New York Times columnist, put it very bluntly to Senator Edward Kennedy: "We were here before you got here, Ted, and we will be here when you are gone."

There are people who view the media with distaste and look down on them from greater heights than the altitude from which the media view politicians.

But it is not just the tendency to inaccuracy, but also the persistence of the media and their insensitivity that have aroused the ire of previous US presidents. The media view is captured in a statement by former Washington Post managing editor, Howard Simons.

He bluntly declared, "I don't believe any politician in the United States ought to have a private life."

Ronald Reagan was so incensed when he was advised to let the media know the details of a urinary tract infection he had contracted that he said furiously, "Damn it! what do they want me to do? Go down to the press room and drop my pants and say, 'Here it is'?"

Getting back their own

Sometimes the presidents get their own back. During a trip to India, President Carter was shown a pit filled with cow manure which generated methane gas for energy.

ABC Television's, Sam Donald-son, asked Carter, "If I fell in, you'd pull me out, wouldn't you Mr President?"

Carter's response was, "Certainly - after a suitable interval."

When the Soviet Union expelled an Associated Press photographer in 1977, White House Press secretary Jody Powell was asked if the US planned to respond.

Powell replied: "We did discuss something along these lines. It was our feeling that if the Russians got to kick an AP correspondent out of Moscow, we ought to get to kick an AP correspondent out of here."

If as Oscar Wilde quipped, "In America the president reigns for four years but journalism governs for ever and ever," then neither a bailout nor a stimulus will help President Obama. He might be able to keep them off the plane but not out of his hair, short though it may be and hopefully shorter than his presidency.

Tony Deyal was last seen repeating what George Bush told the media after his dog Millie had pups, 'You may have read that the pups are sleeping on The Washington Post and The New York Times - the first time in history that those papers have been used to prevent leaks.'