Margaret Truman Read online

  As the editor well knew, the chances of getting any news from the Cleveland White House were almost nil. But Price was unfazed by the challenge. As the editor of a small-town weekly, he had gotten his news by hanging around the local train station and interviewing the people who arrived each day. Deciding to use the same strategy at the White House, he stood outside the North Portico and talked to the visitors who went in and out. “Fatty” Price—he weighed three hundred pounds—soon had a job at the Evening Star.

  With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in the spring of 1898, the press finally managed to win working space in the White House. President William McKinley agreed to let Price and other reporters gather in the east hall on the second floor. There they could write their stories, interview visitors going in and out of the president’s office, and badger his secretary for scraps of news.

  Theodore Roosevelt ordered Charles McKim to include a pressroom in the new executive office building—today’s West Wing. The scribes were even provided with telephones, eliminating the need for them to send their copy to Western Union by bicycle. There was something in all this for the president, of course. The press was instantly accessible anytime he wanted to barrage an opponent with hostile headlines.

  VII

  With Teddy Roosevelt, the country got a president who showed future Oval Office occupants how to handle the press and set the style for making the White House the red-hot center of the nation’s politics. We have often heard about the way Theodore Roosevelt turned the presidency into a “bully pulpit,” but not many people realize how much manipulation of news and newsmen this involved.

  Teddy (he hated the name) produced a gallery of presidential tricks still in use today. Bad news was released at the end of the day on Friday because many people slept late on Saturday and skipped reading the papers. Middling news was released in time for the Sunday papers, when hard up editors were likely to put it on the front page for lack of anything more interesting. TR was also the master of the trial balloon, an idea or proposal that he floated through some willing reporter and then might deny or even denounce if the public disliked it.

  VIII

  Woodrow Wilson’s opinion of the press was on a par with Grover Cleveland’s. “Those contemptible spies, the newspapermen,” he called them on one occasion. Nevertheless, Wilson became the first chief executive to hold regularly scheduled press conferences. Unfortunately, they were not very successful. The president, with his college professor background, lectured the reporters as if they were not-too-bright freshmen, and when their stories failed to get passing grades, he stopped seeing them almost entirely.

  Although Wilson considered his press conferences a waste of time—and the reporters were inclined to agree with him— the fact that they had been established was an important step in the relationship between the White House and the press. The relationship was further formalized in 1914 when the newsmen organized the White House Correspondents Association. The move led to stricter rules about who could, and could not, attend presidential press conferences and created a forum where complaints by and against reporters could be heard.

  IX

  Although you would never guess it from all the stories about his taciturnity, Calvin Coolidge supplied more wordage to the press during his tenure than Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson combined. He was not only the first president to make radio addresses, he made them at the rate of one a month. He also met with the press twice a week.

  Coolidge followed the presidential custom of accepting only written questions submitted to him in advance. That precedent was broken by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who let the reporters fire away. FDR also revived regular press conferences, which had all but disappeared during the Hoover administration. Roosevelt turned them into a Washington institution.

  Once or twice a week, FDR would invite about twenty newspaper and radio reporters into the Oval Office and let them pelt him with questions that he sometimes answered and more often ducked, dodged, or joked away with his marvelous combination of charm and wit.

  FDR’s amicable relations with the press did not last. Some journalists grew disillusioned when he failed to cure the Great Depression. Others became skeptical after the outbreak of World War II when he barred them from covering such major stories as his 1941 meeting with Winston Churchill at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, and the 1943 Teheran conference with Churchill and Joseph Stalin. In both instances, British reporters broke the stories.

  X

  Meanwhile, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was changing White House coverage in a very important way. She started holding press conferences—for women reporters only. The Washington bureau chiefs, male to the last grizzled whisker, were thunderstruck. It meant they might have to let women start writing about something more important than the first lady’s taste in china.

  Mrs. Roosevelt’s conferences were not replays of FDR’s free-for-alls. The women reporters all wore hats and gloves—and that dreadful topic, politics, was forbidden. Mrs. R. sat among the women, often knitting while they chatted. Only gradually did the topics change from cooking, interior decorating, and White House entertaining to Mrs. Roosevelt’s concern for the poor and neglected.

  Though Eleanor Roosevelt often spoke up on behalf of black Americans, she never managed to reverse her husband’s exclusion of black reporters from the White House, in spite of their frequent petitions. The president’s press secretary, Steve Early, offered the not very convincing argument that the blacks represented weeklies, and White House correspondents were supposed to be from daily papers.

  The blacks, good reporters, discovered that Early was letting in journalists from weekly trade papers and testily asked: How come? In 1944, after twelve frustrating years, black journalists finally joined the throng in the Oval Office.

  XI

  FDR’s death after only eighty-two days of his fourth term catapulted Harry S Truman into the White House. Although he was often taken to task in the press, historians seem to agree his performance was pretty creditable. But he, too, had more than his share of troubles with reporters, beginning with the very fundamental question of where they were going to meet.

  The West Wing was already bursting at the seams, and one of Dad’s first orders of business was to find a way to enlarge it. Plans were drawn up for an expansion that would provide more office space, a staff cafeteria, a new pressroom, and an auditorium where press conferences could be held. In December 1945, Congress approved an appropriation that would cover the cost of the added space.

  But when a sketch of the proposed addition to the West Wing appeared in the newspapers, the public was convinced that the White House itself was going to be changed and no amount of explanation could persuade them otherwise. Always sensitive to the voice of the voters, Congress amended the appropriation bill and the precise amount allotted for enlarging the West Wing disappeared.

  Ironically, it was the president perhaps with the strongest antipathy to the media who finally managed to get them decent facilities. Annoyed at the noisy, messy pressroom adjoining the lobby where his visitors entered, Richard Nixon started looking for new space. He found it in the basement of the West Wing, where Franklin D. Roosevelt had installed the swimming pool he used as therapy for his polio-damaged legs. The swimming pool was torn out and the space was reconfigured to accommodate a press center with a briefing room where the White House press secretary could fill reporters in on the latest news from the Oval Office.

  Plans are in the works for a new pressroom to be built under the West Wing drive. When—and if—it is completed, the new facility will spell the end of Pebble Beach, but it seems unlikely that its disappearance will provoke an uproar. No one will miss the crush of lights and cameras on the White House lawn, least of all the TV reporters who have to endure all kinds of bad weather in the course of doing their jobs.

  XII

  Like presidents before him and since, Dad acquired a low opinion of newspapermen during his White House years. Always mindful o
f history, he dug into the press relations of previous presidents and was comforted to discover he was not alone.

  “It seems that every man in the White House was tortured and bedeviled by the so-called free press,” he wrote to his sister. “They were lied about, misrepresented and actually libeled, and they have to take it.”

  With this as background, you can easily imagine why I administered one of the worst shocks of Dad’s postpresidential life when I called him from New York to tell him I had fallen in love and was planning to marry a man named Clifton Daniel.

  “What does he do for a living?” Dad asked.

  “He’s a newspaperman.”

  There was a moment of thunderstruck silence on the Missouri end of the phone. Finally, gamely, Dad said: “Well, if you love him, that’s good enough for me.”

  (P.S. They got along beautifully.)

  XIII

  In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower became the first president to hold televised news conferences. Ike was coached in advance by actor Robert Montgomery and the telecasts were carefully stage-managed by Ike’s press secretary, who reserved the right to edit the tapes before they were released to the public.

  Both televised press conferences and stage-managing were raised to high arts by Ike’s successor, John F. Kennedy. JFK’s first press conference was broadcast live from the East Room, beginning what one weekly newsmagazine called “a new era in political communication.”

  The president, who was not only young and handsome but had a quick wit and an engaging manner, apparently had no difficulty pulling whatever facts he needed from his agile brain on demand. Not many people knew that his astute press secretary gave him a thorough briefing on the probable questions just as Ike’s had done.

  When it came to charming the press, Jack was well on his way to outclassing Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had also mastered the Rooseveltian art of manipulation. He leaked stories, planted news, gave exclusives to favored journalists, and played reporters off against each other. Like FDR, he was not above withholding news from the media when it suited his interests. As he remarked to one of his staff members, “Always remember that their interests and ours ultimately conflict.”

  XIV

  The undeclared war between the press and the president saw the media’s greatest triumph when a pair of investigative reporters from The Washington Post found an anonymous source who filled them in on the doings in the Nixon White House during the Watergate affair. Their stories made front page news and helped to drive Nixon out of office. But while the press was busy congratulating itself on the victory, the White House was gearing up to fight back.

  Under Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon’s successor, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue started to become a media powerhouse in its own right. The press office staff was increased to forty-five people, about seven times more than there were in John F. Kennedy’s day.

  The trend continued under President Jimmy Carter. In 1978, the Carter press office, now called the Office of Media Liaison, regularly sent out thousands of press releases, audio-tapes, and films to news organizations each month. The output grew even larger under Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton. In this blizzard of information and images, press conferences lost much of their importance. In Ronald Reagan’s administration, reporters were often reduced to screaming questions at the president as he boarded his helicopter on the White House lawn.

  During the Clinton tenure, press conferences were reduced to the vanishing point. The Clinton White House preferred to rely on its own awesome ability to communicate directly to the American people. The Clinton White House beamed programs to public and commercial television stations at the rate of one a day. Meanwhile the White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov) was bundling transcripts of the president’s speeches over the Internet and streaming live interviews with the president, in which fifteen thousand people could fire E-mail questions at the Oval Office. This led one reporter to suggest that the “White House propaganda machine has . . . clearly been winning the battle” for control of public opinion.

  I have too much faith in the people who write and edit and broadcast the news to believe that this can ever be the case. When President George W. Bush took office, his press secretary warned the media not to expect him to hold formal press conferences in the East Room, like many of his predecessors. Instead, he would hold them in the White House briefing room, supplement them with informal chats with reporters, and answer a few questions during photo ops.

  I was concerned at first. Then I read an interview with my old friend Helen Thomas, who has been covering the White House since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961. Helen has made more than one president squirm at a press conference.

  Was she concerned about Bush’s approach? “I don’t think it matters when or where the press conference is held,” she said, “just so we really get a crack at him.”

  She went on to point out that press conferences are the only real chance Americans have to question their president. With Helen and her colleagues around, we are unlikely to lose that chance. That means sooner or later at least some of the truth about what’s happening in the White House is going to reach the American people, whether the president likes it or not.

  Questions for Discussion

  Why are presidents wary of the media?

  How can a good press secretary improve a president’s relations with the press?

  Why should presidents meet with reporters on a regular basis?

  The man on the left of President Calvin Coolidge is Secret Service agent EdmundStarling. Of the five presidents he protected, Coolidge was his favorite. Credit: U.S. Secret Service

  14

  Keeping Killers and Kooks at Bay

  MY PARENTS HAD to move to Blair House while the White House was undergoing its historic foundation-to-roof reconstruction, but the West Wing was perfectly sound so there was no reason why my father couldn’t continue to work in the Oval Office. The only question was: How would he get there?

  The West Wing is only a few steps across Pennsylvania Avenue, but Jim Rowley, the Secret Service agent in charge of the White House detail, wanted him to go by car. Dad was not too happy about the idea. “Can you imagine being driven across the street?” he said. But he took Jim’s advice.

  A couple of years later, Dad had reason to be glad the Secret Service was on the job. On November 1, 1950, around two P.M., two armed Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, approached Blair House. My father and mother were upstairs dressing to go to a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. I was far away, preparing to give a concert in Portland, Oregon.

  The two gunmen planned to assassinate the president on behalf of Puerto Rican independence. Collazo, who had never fired a pistol before in his life, approached from the east, Torresola from the west. They planned to meet on the front steps of Blair House and charge inside together.

  The house was guarded by White House policemen in booths at either end of the building. Another policeman, Donald T. Birdzell, was on duty at the front door, which was open to the mild fall weather. Only a lightly latched screen door prevented access from the street.

  Collazo mingled with some tourists as he passed the east booth. When he was within three or four feet of the front door, he whipped out his pistol, aimed it at Birdzell, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  If that pistol had gone off, the plot might well have succeeded. With Birdzell dead, Collazo planned to whirl and shoot the guards in the east booth while his partner took care of the men in the west booth. After that the only person between them and the president would have been the Secret Service man stationed at the head of the stairs to the second floor. The assassins might have shot him, too, leaving the president and first lady unprotected.

  Hearing the click of Collazo’s gun, Birdzell turned to find him pounding on the jammed pistol. It suddenly went off, striking the policeman in the knee. Not wanting to fire with pedestrians in the area, Birdzell stumbled down the steps to the stre
et before drawing his gun. A Secret Service agent who was with the policeman in the east booth opened fire. Meanwhile, Torresola reached the west booth and quickly pumped two bullets into policeman Leslie Coffelt and another slug into Joseph Downs, the other policeman in the booth. Whirling, he took a second shot at Birdzell and another policeman coming out a basement door. As Torresola paused to reload his gun, the dying Coffelt tottered to the doorway of the west booth and put a bullet in his brain. By this time, three shots fired by other policemen and Secret Service agents had hit Collazo. In less than two minutes twenty-seven shots had been fired.

  My parents left for the dedication ceremony on schedule. “A president has to expect these things,” Dad said. The next day, at a press conference, he told the reporters, “I was never in any danger. The thing I hate about it is what happened to these young men—one of them killed [Coffelt] and two of them [Downs and Birdzell] badly wounded.”

  II

  There are any number of people who gravitate to Washington from all parts of the country to tell the president their troubles, or to give him advice on his troubles—or to do him serious bodily harm. The Secret Service has been trying to keep them at bay for over one hundred years, with varying degrees of success.

  If you have any doubts about the need for the Secret Service, consider these statistics. One in every three presidents has been shot at or otherwise attacked. Four have been killed by assassin’s bullets. In the past few decades, Gerald Ford survived two blasts of gunfire and Ronald Reagan came within a hairsbreadth of being killed by a seriously disturbed man who thought shooting a president would impress screen star Jodie Foster.