ADA: THE UNWRITTEN STORIES
Wechsler, James A.
ADA: The Unwritten Stories by JAMES A. WECHSLER Tn the Presidential campaign of 1964, the clipping service employed by Americans for Democratic Action found itself virtually overwhelmed....
...As I have noted, Saturday's Times buried the ADA meeting with the President as a sort of social note in a round-up of his day...
...any organization worthy of some ninety minutes of his time would seem deserving of larger notice from The Times, and even from Time, which has long pursued a policy of mentioning ADA only when it is under fire, or commits a palpable political faux pas...
...But I will accept Mr...
...For those millions denied access to my column, perhaps I should briefly report that the President's auditors, many of them critical of the air strikes in North Vietnam, were deeply impressed by the solemnity and candor of his description of his "measured" policy...
...who argued rather persuasively that Freeman's critique was based on a misreading of the ADA platform...
...Johnson felt that it was important to spend that much time stating his case to this delegation...
...but far less interesting or inspiring sermons have been duly recorded by The Times on many occasions...
...But no large journalistic initiative was required to interview the twenty other members of the delegation at the convention hotel where —as President Johnson no doubt anticipated—many of them recited their recollections without inhibition...
...The Times (and others) have never been so grudging in allocating manpower and space to the annual deliberations of such senile bodies as the Daughters of the American Revolution...
...candidates, Americans for Democratic Action is a quadrennial recipient of news and comment...
...To much of the country, however, the essence of the proceedings probably remains a total secret...
...On this occasion Lyndon B. Johnson gave the assemblage what, by any news standard, would seem a notable build-up by spending ninety minutes with an ADA delegation on the afternoon preceding the opening session...
...Many citizens will go to their graves knowing little about the organization except what they have read in the Republican denunciations so scrupulously transcribed and transmitted during the Presidential election bouts...
...He addressed its most recent convention by telephone from North Carolina...
...But, ironically, even this report contained a fatal defect...
...Bartlett and John Herling, the able syndicated labor columnist, were the only other press representatives I encountered...
...There is an ancient axiom that conflict makes news...
...Throughout the land, newspapers of large and small circulation were diligently publishing wire service dispatches and, in the case of the bigger gazettes, special communiques from their own political correspondents, recording the anti-ADA manifestoes of Barry Goldwater and his running mate, William Miller...
...These can hardly be called stop-the-press matters...
...Since The Times is officially known as our national "paper of record," its performance can be legitimately regarded as a clue to the conduct of many other news-desks...
...In those campaign seasons, as in that of 1964, this eighteen-year-old organization which came into being as the voice of "the non-Communist left," received a confetti of press notices, a high percentage of them traceable to the mimeograph machines of the Republican department of enlightment and propaganda...
...As far as I can ascertain, columnist Charles Bartlett and, if I may say so, the writer of these remarks were the only newspapermen who undertook to find out what the President had said and what response he evoked...
...Since Hubert Humphrey first evoked national notice as chairman of ADA in its formative years, there was a special fury in the assault...
...He kept the National Security Council waiting for almost an hour while he communed with the liberal contingent...
...journalism...
...This was, of course, the top story of the convention...
...The New York Herald Tribune carried a reference to the event...
...Our "paper of record" carried no word of a memorable address delivered extemporaneously by Bayard Rustin on Saturday night in which he proclaimed that the basic victory of the Negro civil rights revolution had been won and projected the vision of a Negro-white coalition to strike at the roots of common economic and social injustice...
...in fact he spoke for almost thirty minutes...
...to that extent, it is understandable that ADA would receive more notice during the heat of campaign battles than in the offseason...
...Edwards happened to be a notably newsworthy choice because he is a former FBI man (as well as the present leader of the fight to abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee) and surely J. Edgar Hoover never anticipated that one of his lads would achieve this eminence in the liberal community...
...I am told that on Friday evening an Associated Press man arrived to pick up some handouts but he did not tarry...
...As a whipping-boy for G.O.P...
...What ADA says and does in those periods is apparently deemed inconsequential by the pillars of U.S...
...Johnson's estimate...
...Perhaps the most conspicuous omission, however, was The Times' avoidance of any mention of the election of Representative Don Edwards of California as new national chairman of ADA...
...But surely any Washington correspondent knows that Mr...
...And, as far as The Times was concerned, that was the end of the convention...
...Yet neither The Times nor the AP nor the UPI— again to cite the basic sources of official history—were present to hear him...
...If and when an ADA leader denounces his colleagues and transfers his allegiance to the Birch Society, he is likely to receive larger recognition...
...Most of the session was devoted to a remarkably candid exposition and elaboration of his course in Vietnam...
...But the discrepancy assumes absurd dimensions when its national convention is so widely blacked-out, its affirmative positions so generally unreported, and its serious—and frequently high-level—discussions uncovered...
...But it was hardly the only story...
...Presumably Mr...
...It is perhaps also worth reiterating that is was out of ADA that the current Vice President of the United States emerged...
...Both AP and United Press International sent out perfunctory dispatches based on handouts and no doubt they appeared in scattered places...
...Yet throughout the convention proceedings, beginning on a Friday evening and ending at midday on Sunday, the press table was almost entirely deserted...
...Among his books are "The Age of Suspicion" and "Reflections of an Angry Middle-Aged Editor...
...No representative of the Associated Press or United Press International made any effort, as far as I could determine, to track down the story...
...Unhappily, in the long intervals between Presidential campaigns, the initials of ADA have usually been found in the press in connection with the activities of the American Dental Association or the American Dairy Association...
...It was written in The Times bureau office from a handout...
...But the bombardment was in many respects a replica of three previous national contests in which Richard Nixon—twice as Vice-Presidential nominee and finally as seeker of the big prize—chose ADA as his target on many days and nights...
...Indeed there were moments when Miller's campaign was almost wholly dedicated to the JAMES A WECHStER is editor of the editorial page of The New York Post...
...But not in all the off-years in between...
...In The New York Times, the President's meeting with the ADA group was politely recorded in a list of his varied activities on that busy Friday...
...one must assume this reflected his appraisal of ADA's influence in the shaping of opinion...
...But, alas, the irony escaped The Times, as it did most other news media...
...Neither was there any reference to the speeches by I. W. Abel, new chieftain of the Steelworkers, and Hans Morgenthau, the noted specialist on foreign affairs...
...it was headlined: Freeman Assails ADA Farm Stand...
...thesis that a Johnson-Humphrey victory would result in an ADA coup d'etat from which the republic would never recover...
...By the inadvertent device of exposing itself to criticism, ADA had made the paper with a story all its own...
...Since neither AP nor UPI were present to "protect" the absent correspondent during this argument, The Times reporter and his readers may never know what happened unless this documerit falls into their hands...
...The point was dramatically illustrated anew in the opening days of April of this year when ADA held its national convention in Washington...
...Sue Cronk of The Washington Post was the only reporter faithfully present...
...so he could not know that Freeman's address met a sharp challenge on the floor from ADA's Joseph L. Rauh, Jr...
...The dispatch gave no indication of the substance of the discussion...
...there is every likelihood that it will be so again in 1968 and 1972...
...The election of the captain of the tennis team at Bowdoin College was recently reported by the same paper...
...But it must be sadly observed that the press almost unanimously missed the point...
...It is not my intention here to exaggerate ADA's world significance or proclaim its infallibility...
...a fragment of his prepared remarks was distributed in advance, and these words received a few press notices...
...The correspondent was seemingly unable to traverse the distance to the convention hotel...
...As one who is now, through the cruel passage of years, described as one of its "founding fathers," I have an admittedly special interest in the offspring...
...Humphrey will never be restricted by such a slim text...
...On Sunday, back on Page 59, there did indeed appear a separate report on ADA...
...It is true that, in the White House lobby, the leaders of the delegation—-John Roche and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr.—were formally questioned and declined to spell out the story, since the meeting was officially billed as private...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
