The 2004 Wimblehack Award Winner

And the winner is...Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times. No surprise there.

Matt Taibi of New York Press has been judging a tournament in which our nation's finest campaign journalists vie for the honor of being named the worst reporter covering the 2004 presidential campaign.

He has announced the winner, and if you read the examples of Bumiller's fine prose and investigative prowess, you'll know why she was practically unopposed in Center Court.

Her ability to take at face value the administration spin in the form of "some advisors" and "a person close to the president" knows no bounds. One wonders at times if her ample NY Times salary is not even more amply augmented by the White House Press Room.

Take her piece from March 2 of this year, "Gay issue leaves Bush ill at ease," in which Bumiller gives off-the-record spokesmen a chance to allow Bush to split the difference on the gay-marriage issue:

When President George W. Bush announced his support last week for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, his body language in the Roosevelt Room did not seem to match his words. Bush may have forcefully defended the union of a man and a woman as "the most fundamental institution of civilization," but even some White House officials said he appeared uncomfortable.

Sweet. Reminding voters that he supports the amendment while also signaling to moderates that his heart really isn't into it. What power. What top spin. What an ability to cover the entire court. She's good, dammit, in an entirely hackish sort of way.

Taibi also lauds her brilliant coverage of Bush's secret, scary trip to Baghdad to eat fake turkey with the troops last year. Bumiller covered it with breathless brilliance...despite the fact that she wasn't invited on the trip! Jayson Blaire's got nothing on her.

No, not being there doesn't stop her from reporting. And if you've got a good second- or third-hand anecdote that supports her overall perception of the White House, then she's all over it.

In this particular, article Bumiller uses a technique that my research indicates is peculiar to her alone. In this passage, she actually swallows an apocryphal story from one aide about another apocryphal story about a different aide's apocryphal relationship to the president. This is Bumiller, reporting from the unseen alien planet New Hampshire, quoting Karen Hughes telling a story about Karl Rove talking to George Bush:

Other times Mr. Rove likes to playfully withhold news of recent polls from the president. "He'll smile and say, 'I'm not going to tell you about the latest numbers,' but he'll have a big smile on his face," Ms. Hughes said.

Bumiller told her Yale audience last year: "What I write about is really important. Ninety-five percent of it is interesting, and 30 percent of it is absolutely riveting." One wonders which percentile this insight about Rove falls under.

Now, Ms. Bumiller won the award not only because of her sickening coverage of the campaign, but because of the extra points she earned writing endless post mortems of the Bush victory and Karl Rove's brilliance.

And we can be relieved to know she won't rest on her laurels. Just this morning she has crafted another example of her incisive perception of the White House inner circle, and the dogged reporting that so effectively ferrets out those "advisers" who have an approving comment on the president's management style, but who doesn't want his/her name invoked, because the president doesn't like inside-stuff being leaked to the press.

Uh huh.

White House officials counter that insiders in the first term were far more willing to challenge Mr. Bush than outsiders. As an example, one adviser said that the direct, often undiplomatic Ms. Rice challenged Mr. Bush a lot more behind the scenes than Mr. Powell did, but that such disputes were kept safely within the family.

The loyalty, Mr. Bush's advisers say, goes both ways. Although the president is described as an impatient, demanding boss who snaps at the people he knows well and can use plenty of profanity when he is angry with the staff, advisers say he also goes out of his way to thank personally the lowest person on the White House food chain for a job well done.

Advisers also say that Mr. Bush never fails to ask about their families and tries never to keep them waiting. Above all, they say, he has a gut instinct for who is with him and who is not.

"You go in front of him, and if you know your stuff and don't take yourself too seriously and he can see that you don't have another agenda, he's awesome," said one Bush adviser who insisted on anonymity because the president gets irritated when his staff talks about internal White House dealings. "And if you don't know your stuff, and you take yourself too seriously and have another agenda, he wants absolutely nothing to do with you." [my italics]

Awesome, indeed.