Dan Bartlett interviewed by Texas Monthly

Interview by Evan Smith

You leave the Bush White House and you come back to Austin? You couldn’t find someplace a little more different?

After being in Austin for a few days, it quickly reminded [my wife and me] of everything we loved about the city. I will say, though, that my experience personally in Washington was better than I anticipated.

(snip)

Yeah, or what if [conservative blogger] Hugh Hewitt called? (for an interview)

That’s when you start going, “Hmm . . .” Because (blogs) do reach people who are influential. That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

Dispel the myth that there’s an underground tunnel between the Fox News studios and the White House.

Um, no, quite the contrary. I’ll tell you, I probably got more complaints from various Fox News programs about not getting the type of access they deserved. Now, there are exceptions to that. Vice President Cheney’s done a lot with them. But I think they were treated pretty equally across the board. If you look at the major newscasters, there were some, like [Dan] Rather, that we didn’t do. You’d be hard-pressed to say that we didn’t accommodate the others.

You acknowledge that the perception is out there that the playing field was tilted a little bit in their direction.

There’s no question that’s the perception. In reality, I don’t think there’s as much behind it.

(More here.)