Media converge on Kennebunkport U.S., foreign reporters in town to cover Putin’s meeting with Bush

KENNEBUNKPORT – Standing near the putting green and pool on the grounds of the gracious old Colony Hotel, MSNBC White House reporter Kelly O’Donnell had just finished a live report Sunday afternoon.

Muttering to herself as much as to the half-dozen crew members who surrounded her, she said, “I don’t know how many times I can say, ‘It’s beautiful,’ without being repetitive.”

MSNBC and dozens of other news organizations selected scenic overlooks of the rocky coast, beach roses and the Atlantic Ocean as backdrops to their reports. It was beautiful, if – visually speaking – repetitive, and reminiscent of the years the president’s father, George Herbert Walker Bush, served as vice president and president, and Kennebunkport was the summer White House.

On camera seconds earlier, O’Donnell reported that President Bush had been using secure videoconferencing equipment to discuss with officials in Washington the latest on a possible terrorism threat in the wake of thwarted car bomb attacks in London.

Bush had been “briefed repeatedly on these issues,” she told the anchor in Secaucus, N.J.

O’Donnell also noted that the president’s father seemed to be relishing the media attention.

“He is the host here,” she told viewers. The event had “put him on the world stage again.”

To a question from the anchor, O’Donnell said the “casual, lovely setting” was expected to be a balm for ailing U.S. relations with Russia. That observation drew her off-camera lament about being repetitive.

The MSNBC crew had been in town since Thursday.

“It’s a lot better than Crawford,” said NBC’s Johnie Roth, who helped set up the shot of O’Donnell. People in the Texas town Bush calls home are nice, he hastened to add, but the summers are hot and humid, “and we’re looking at hay bales in a guy’s backyard,” as opposed to enjoying cool ocean breezes and views of the Atlantic.

“It’s good to go to different places that you’ve never been before,” Roth said. He is a veteran of covering the first President Bush and so had been to Kennebunkport before.

O’Donnell, who said off camera that she alternates following the president with fellow reporter David Gregory, had never been to the seaside village before, but liked it.

Roth said when Bush travels, a camera crew alternates among CNN, ABC, CBS and FOX to shoot and transmit reports. CBS reporter Bill Plante was expected later, he said.

The crew joked about one of their group having had too much to drink the night before, then chatted about O’Donnell’s observation that the elder Bush was enjoying the role of host. O’Donnell said the elder Bush brought White House press secretary Tony Snow into view of TV cameras in the Bush boat, and later brought Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice past the cameras.

Along with faces familiar to American cable news viewers, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presence drew other reporters.

As a protest march ended at a road blockade on Ocean Avenue about a half-mile from the Bush family’s Walker’s Point compound Sunday afternoon, a young woman tried three or four takes before successfully delivering a report to a camera, whose operator spun around to catch her turning, putting the ocean at her back. All the while, she was surrounded by the cluster of demonstrators.

Vanessa Raizberg, based in the United States, reports for Russia Today, a network aimed at English-speaking viewers. She told her viewers the Bush-Putin summit was “a working meeting, [aimed at] repairing relations,” as the protesters’ chants reached a crescendo, making for a dramatic setting.

Albert Elfa of TV-3 in Barcelona, Spain, was preparing for a report, the requisite rocky coast and ocean in the background. He said the summit was of great interest to his viewers.

“It is very important because this kind of relations is moving the world,” he said, apologizing for his weak English.

“It has to work,” he said of the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Most Spanish citizens oppose the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he said, and since Spain withdrew its support of the war, Bush has snubbed the Spanish government, Elfa said.

In Spain, Putin “is seen as a man who likes power.” The Russian president seemed to be trying to create a “democratic dictatorship,” Elfa said, “if it can exist.”

Spanish people worry about the unease between the United States and Russia, he said.

Marcin Wrona, a U.S. correspondent for a Polish independent network, said Putin’s visit drew him to Maine. Though he was working, Wrona enjoyed Kennebunkport, especially before Sunday.

“It is so nice. It is so quiet,” he said.