Several White House correspondents, in interviews with Politico, describe a scene where one might expect tumbleweeds lazily blowing across the finely manicured lawn on Pennsylvania Avenue. 

When White House press secretary Dana Perino appeared on “The Daily Show” last week, host Jon Stewart asked how she got the day off: “Did they not need press secretarying today?”

These days, with President Bush largely relegated to the sidelines rather than the headlines, it’s not surprising that Perino can knock off early.

Fewer than half the seats were filled in the White House briefing room that Thursday afternoon, when deputy press secretary Tony Fratto was even asked at one point if an upcoming economic speech by Bush would provide anything newsworthy.

“No,” Fratto replied, “you shouldn't look for new major announcements tomorrow.” Some laughter and grumbling followed among the press corps.

But that’s the White House beat during these lame duck days, where correspondents compete for front-page real estate and airtime with reporters on the campaign trail — most often, unsuccessfully.

No president is irrelevant and Bush has proved that vividly in recent weeks as his administration has been forced to frantically intervene in the mounting subprime mortgage crisis. In addition, the nation continues to fight two foreign wars and Bush is commander in chief.

But several White House correspondents, in interviews with Politico, describe a scene where one might expect tumbleweeds lazily blowing across the finely manicured lawn on Pennsylvania Avenue. Fewer reporters attend daily briefings, and both foreign and domestic travel budgets for many news organizations have been scaled back in the past year.

Of course, senioritis is common in the final months of any eight-year administration. But this year, said reporters, the historically important and just plain exciting presidential race, coupled with the minimalist agenda of an unpopular president, has led to overall Bush fatigue that outranks the waning days of the Clinton administration.

“You can’t attribute it all to the presidential campaign,” said Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Houston Chronicle. “[Bush’s] rhetoric is so exhausted. He rarely makes any news. It’s rarely worth anyone’s time to cover him like we used to.”

In addition to covering the president, Mason often chronicled the White House press corps in photos on her blog. But now, Mason said, “I don’t do it as much because there’s nobody here.”

“You hear a lot of grumbling here from people who are stuck in the White House and not getting out on the campaign,” Mason added.

Another White House correspondent, speaking on condition of anonymity, dubbed it “the incredible shrinking beat,” since reporters have raced out of the gates to hop on campaign buses and planes.

A look at TV newscasts helps explain the cabin fever in the White House press room.

Television analyst Andrew Tyndall, in looking at the first 53 weekday nightly newscasts in 2008, found that the White House was the lead story only twice on each network — that’s a total of six segments, all of which focused on the economy.

Tyndall said that he felt it wasn’t so much the media disdaining the White House so much as Bush is now “going through the motions.” And that energy level usually means White House packages end up on the cutting room floor of a 22-minute nightly newscast.

Through early 2008, the presidential campaign led 19 weekday broadcasts on ABC and CBS and 22 on NBC. In total, there have been just 19 reports from the White House on the nightly newscasts, compared with 302 dealing with the campaign.

ABC White House reporter Martha Raddatz has been “invisible” on the White House beat, said Tyndall, and CBS’s Jim Axelrod “has been assigned virtually to the campaign.”

And then there’s NBC’s chief White House correspondent, David Gregory.

In a further sign that the briefing room’s star wattage is getting dim, Gregory — the network’s White House correspondent since 2000 — launched a new MSNBC show Monday: “The Race for the White House.”

It’s clear that the story is the “race,” and not the guy still living in the White House.

“The oxygen has been sucked out of the room,” said the Washington Post’s Peter Baker. “It’s not the center of the universe right now. The energy is out on the campaign trail.”

Baker said that the Post continues covering the White House because it’s the paper’s “bread and butter,” but many other news outlets have cut back, particularly on travel. For domestic trips, only the Post, The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times always travel among the print contingent. Networks still largely staff every trip.

Even regional papers from Bush’s home state — the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News — no longer travel domestically.

Carl Leubsdorf, Washington bureau chief of the Morning News, said that with the public interested in the campaign, and the fact that “this president’s long passed the point of getting any initiatives enacted,” there’s not a lot of news coming out of presidential day trips.

With papers traveling, those who do go on the road with Bush pay a higher price. “Costs have been a vicious cycle in White House coverage,” Leubsdorf said. “If costs have gone up, fewer people travel. That means the ones who do travel have to pay more.”

Never mind foreign travel.

Bush plans to take a total of eight foreign trips this year, the most during his presidency. When a president is at the top of the news cycle, the exotic datelines those trips provide can be enticing for news organizations.

But when Bush day stories from Ghana or Liberia land in the back of the front section, the costs per word can seem overwhelming.

For Bush’s recent trips to Africa and the Middle East, the press charter alone was around $20,000 per reporter. And that’s just airfare — add perhaps another $8,000 for expenses like hotels, meals and filing centers with phone and Internet access.

Nevertheless, ABC’s Ann Compton, president of the White House Correspondents Association, disagreed that 2008 is a more dramatic drop-off than 2000 or 1988, when two-term presidencies were also ending.

“Every time we’ve had a two-term president and a campaign, attention drains from the White House,” Compton said.

Compton added that news magazines like Time and Newsweek have been “AWOL,” not just lately in covering the White House, but since at least a year ago.

By way of comparison, when President Bill Clinton toured India and Pakistan in March 2000, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report each had a reporter along for the ride. But for Bush's five-nation Africa trip last month, all three magazines sat it out.

Other White House veterans see a more pronounced shift. “It feels a little more dramatic to me,” said The New York Sun’s Josh Gerstein.

Gerstein, who covered Clinton during his final years for ABC, said that one reason could be that “there is not a lot of overlap between the election and the White House,” whereas Al Gore’s campaign “was an extension of the Clinton White House.

“Bush is not regarded as a terribly successful president at this point,” Gerstein continued, making the point that Clinton’s approval ratings remained strong until his final day in office. “It’s one thing to be loved and irrelevant, [rather] than to be disliked and irrelevant.”

-- By Michael Calderone

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