On Friday night, Peter Jennings began: “Good evening everyone. It has happened to other Presidents. They go off on a trip to some part of the world and as much as they would like the news to be about them and where they are, sometimes they cannot avoid the news at home or from somewhere else. President Bush’s trip to Africa — and it’s an important trip — had been overshadowed for several days by the war in Iraq.” He folllowed that by reciting new poll numbers that a majority now find the level of casualties “unacceptable.”

So viewers might assume that ABC always hounds presidents on foreign trips with disturbing domestic questions. Wrong. In May of 1997, ABC White House reporter John Donvan reported with President Clinton from Mexico as he denied any “factual discrepancy” whatsoever in his wife’s statements about her fishy lawyering work for Clinton business partner Jim McDougal, convicted of mucho felonies: “Mexicans could care less about Whitewater. They are joining the administration in calling this summit a success.” Four days later, Donvan was at it again: “When the President fended off a Whitewater question by saying, ‘Look, I’m just down here doing my job,’ the Caribbean journalists burst into applause, in part because they had heard enough about Whitewater and wanted to talk more about bananas.”