ON BOARD REPRESENTATIVE PAUL D. RYAN'S CAMPAIGN PLANE - Paul Ryan really wants to be friends. He comes bearing white-chocolate macadamia nut cookies, and offering to buy you a hot dog on your birthday. If he hears you will soon be leaving his back-of-the-plane entourage, he walks down to shake your hand.
Mr. Ryan has made repeated small overtures to his traveling press corps, often involving food, clearly seeking good relations with the journalists who cover him everyday â€" and to avoid the mistake the Romney-Ryan campaign acknowledges that Mitt Romney made on his recent European trip, when a freeze-out of the foot soldiers of the media resulted in some edgy coverage of a series of verbal slip-ups.
But because the media strategy of both Mr. Romney and now Mr. Ryan is to avoid free-wheeling press conferences at all costs, aggressively managing their message, the small gestures are often fraught encounters.
When Mr. Ryan walked to the back of his plane Thursday night, on a flight between Missouri and Michigan, he was set upon by reporters so hungry for access that video cameras and tape recorders were thrust in his face.
“Every time I come back here, are you guys going to always do that?'' he said in exasperation. “Does it have to be so formal?''
You need to talk to us more often, someone said.
“You're always here,'' Mr. Ryan said. “It's kind of weird not talking.''
The impression, indeed, is that the candidate and the traveling press are the closest of strangers. Reporters might make an ice cream run with members of Mr. Ryan's staff, or glimpse him in workout gear in the gym of the same Marriott Courtyard where everyone stays. But as soon as a reporter springs a question about, say, Representative Todd Akin's recent comments about rape and abortion, the portcullis gate slams down.
At an intimate forum in North Carolina on Thursday, when the local host invited questions from the audience as well as the news media, campaign aides quickly put the kibosh on the idea and said no media questions would be taken.
So the relationship is one of mismatched expectations, the kind a Miss Lonely Hearts might be able to help with.
On the campaign plane Thursday morning, the day after Mr. Ryan passed around the plate of cookies, a television reporter rolled an orange down the aisle with the message “Hey Congressman, thanks for the visit. Don't be a stranger.''
It rolled back with a message from Mr. Ryan's traveling press secretary, Michael Steel: “Eat your fruits and veggies if you want more cookies.''
On Thursday evening, Mr. Ryan tried again. The pretext was to shake the hand of a reporter who would be moving on to cover Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
But questions were fired fast and furious at Mr. Ryan: On welfare reform. On his difference with Mr. Romney over exceptions to anti-abortion laws. On what he talked about in his policy briefing that day with staff.
“I want to get the C.B.O. baseline,'' Mr. Ryan responded to this last query, referring to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office on projections for economic growth. “That's the kind of thing I like to do,'' he said.
Most of Mr. Ryan's interviews are with local television stations, in an effort to woo voters in key battleground states. Some are hard-hitting, like a Pittsburgh station that asked him to clarify what a bill he co-sponsored meant by including the language “forcible rape.â€
Most are less probing, like a zany interview conducted by a Roanoke, Va., station that aired Thursday, in which the reporter asked Mr. Ryan to play a game of word ass ociation. Chick-fil-A? “Good chicken,'' Mr. Ryan offered. “Free people exercising their free speech rights.''
He also revealed that “having a piece of cake is just like having asparagus as far as I'm concerned,'' adding, “So I'm like, well, eat the asparagus then.''
Mr. Ryan and his traveling press corps shared a laugh about the interview. “That was weird. I've never had an interview like that,'' Mr. Ryan said.
And what, he was asked, was his position on asparagus? “I love asparagus, it's my favorite vegetable,'' Ryan said, implying that in a Romney-Ryan administration, one Obama legacy that won't be uprooted is the White House vegetable garden.
An aide to Mr. Ryan said dinner was served at the front of the plane. And it included asparagus. “I'm going to eat my dinner,'' Mr. Ryan said, backing away. “Nice to see all you guys.''
