Not Your Sweetie

Ari Fleischer Dancing around the Fairness Issue


TERRY MORAN: You said the President is against racial
preferences because they're divisive. Is he against other
preferences that colleges and universities routinely grant that
people see as unfair? Like the one he got?

MR. FLEISCHER: I understand -- I understand all the interest
and the specific questions dealing with the review of the
University of Michigan case --

Q That is not what I'm asking.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- and the implications that come from
whatever decision is made. I'm not going to go beyond --

Q I'm asking a question about fairness.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- I'm not going to go beyond where I've
gone, because --

Q All right. Let me --

MR. FLEISCHER: -- be able to base it on reason and judge for
yourself once you see what the President has concluded and
why he's concluded it. And he'll share his thoughts.

Q But the general question about his feeling about fairness in
America. When he was 18, he got into Yale University, which
had and still has a policy of granting very special preferences
to children of graduates, like him. Is that preference okay, to
give him a leg up, but other preferences are not?

MR. FLEISCHER: I think you're going to have a good
understanding of how the President approaches the issue of
opportunity and diversity when the President shares his
thoughts publicly -- which is going to be, as I indicated, in
some short period of time.