Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was a superb spokesman on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, but he needs to have full access to what's going on in the Oval Office and freedom to talk about it or he risks becoming another Dee Dee Myers. She was reduced merely to delivering it. The press knew it, and she lost effectiveness. Finally she left. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Bush said that he would deliberately keep Fleischer in the dark about some matters.
All presidents do that some of the time.
But Bush should keep it to an absolute minimum. The best policy for any White House is to get as much information out as possible on its own terms and to dominate the debate in Washington. So far, that's not Bush policy. Rather, the policy seems to be when in doubt, don't talk. The atmosphere is certainly better than the hostility that prevailed at the outset of the Clinton administration, when the president and first lady considered moving the press room to the Old Executive Office Building and then briefly barred press access to much of the West Wing.