Perino says goodbye

Dana Perino, the face of the Bush administration for the last two years, followed her boss off the stage Friday morning with a final press conference, another incremental step toward Tuesday’s inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

The 21-minute affair began with a light-hearted goodbye slideshow by Mrs. Perino, who by turns thanked and roasted the press and also paid tribute to her predecessor at the podium, Tony Snow, who died of cancer last year.

Mrs. Perino, in what she said was her 145th briefing, took questions that mostly asked her to look back and reflect on her time at the podium, but also a few on the conflict in Gaza, which she mostly deflected to the State Department.

And she gave best wishes to her successor, Robert Gibbs, who will on Tuesday assume her duties as White House press secretary.

“Please go easy on him,” she said, pausing before adding, “for a week.”

Following the president’s farewell address Thursday evening, Mrs. Perino said she had enjoyed her time, but added emphatically that she would never want to come back and do the job again.

“It’s a brutal pace,” she said, sharing that her email inbox was down to 997 emails a week ago before ballooning back to 2,071 new messages on Monday.

When asked if she perceived a bias in the media against the president, she said, “I don’t think I would always be asked about my feelings about liberal bias in the media, if there wasn’t any liberal bias in the media.”

She added that “the people who are covering the president strive so hard to be fair…Everybody in this room on a scale of 10, I give you a nine.”

But she said the rise of punditry and commentary has combined with falling revenues to threaten the health of journalism.

“I don’t think that journalism is dead, but I think that we all have a responsibility to make sure that it survives,” she said.

“Let’s hope someone figures out a business model to keep you all in your seats.”

Mrs. Perino is leaving the country Tuesday, after Mr. Obama is sworn in, with her husband Peter McMahon, for a six-week trip.

In February, she said, she and Mr. McMahon are going to do some volunteer work in Capetown, South Africa, at a project funded by the president’s HIV/AIDS relief program.

“I talk about the statistics all the time and how only 50,000 people [in Africa] were being helped when the president took office and now it’s two million,” she said. “I want to go and experience it first hand and see how American tax dollars are being put to good use and come back and talk about it.”

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