The Secret Pleasures of the White House Press
Randolph, Eleanor
The Secret Pleasures of the White House Press by Eleanor Randolph Years ago, when I told my mother that I intended to become a newspaper reporter in my hometown, she showed a sign of distress...
...I saw Schmidt through several rows of elbows, a web of television microphones, and a brigade of Secret Service agents...
...I can say with the authority that comes only from personal observation that Helmut Schmidt sometimes wears a dark, pinstriped suit...
...It was not a great news weekend, as I recall, but the deputy press secretary, Rex Granum, called to wake me up one afternoon to inform me that I had been chosen as the President’s pool reporter for Easter Sunday...
...Some people plot their careers according to what will sound most impressive at their college reunion...
...The reasons include, for some, the easiness of the work-which requires a lot of energy, but not much of the vast journalistic talent that some of us like to think we possess...
...In a profession that has no respect, the title White House Correspondent may be as close as some of us will ever come to ordinary dignity...
...Then he called over another guard, who peered through the booth at me...
...My parents still call sometimes and ask me, with obvious pride, how the President is doing...
...And for the drinkers (at least somebody knew what journalists are really like), native vodka in Poland...
...This does not happen because of the quality of the Irish fuel...
...The Yazoo City trip did have two small seductions, however...
...I had been sent to interview Betty Ford as a kind of preview of a visit she planned to make to Chicago...
...It was a school gym...
...Wilkie: You just fired the translator...
...Another time in St...
...it’s about why they do them at all...
...When the President arrived they turned off the fans so the audience could hear, and they turned on the television lights so the rest of the nation could watch...
...We have suffered under the pieties of the President for some time, but I take exception to your piety last night in Boston where you are reported as saying that, in Poland, ‘the verbal slips of Carter’s American translator were overemphasized, Powell said, because most of the American press was drunk on well-chilled Polish vodka...
...The statement said that he had just fired Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz for talking dirty...
...Her reaction was understandable in the Southern town I came from, a place where the resident newspapermen left a wake of disrepute wherever they went...
...Traveling with the President is more than just covering a moving head of state...
...It can also be a good way of getting free trips...
...As Washington’s huge corps of press critics has repeatedly pointed out, news of the White House is usually fed to a complacent circle of reporters who dutifully swallow whatever the press secretary tells them...
...In short, there are a lot of reasons for covering the White House besides the job...
...In fairbecause after I had told the Ron ness, I must say that presidential trips Nessen story a few times it would get are considered a kind of reward to old...
...We in the White House press corps do what’s sometimes a not-sointeresting job partly because it impresses practically everybody we come into contact with-friends, family, colleagues...
...The Secret Pleasures of the White House Press by Eleanor Randolph Years ago, when I told my mother that I intended to become a newspaper reporter in my hometown, she showed a sign of distress that I had come to know well over the years: she put her head in her hands and quietly lamented the loss of the $10,000 she and my father had borrowed to send me to college...
...Covering the White House is better than those things, and sometimes it can even be enlightening, important, and educational...
...I would miss the one-liners, like the jokes last year about Prime Minister Desai of India, who drinks his own urine...
...First, the wine on the White House press plane is very good...
...Once in Chicago I had to cover a fire in February...
...The next morning my story dominated our front page...
...Now I don’t want to appear to be complaining...
...A lot of the people were there that night in Yazoo City...
...The press room, then as now, is not a grand place...
...and it was not air-conditioned...
...Powell: I had a lot, but I didn’t file...
...I flash room was fairly empty except for a large man who sitting on one of the couches and slowly flipping his Cigar ash on the mg...
...Of course, I sometimes worry about this position and whether it allows some of us to understand the larger trends...
...He then emerged with a pass that had to be clipped onto my suit, and he said the pass could never be out of sight...
...He preferred that they wait in the press room for his call-a practice that had the added advantage of keeping newsmen from leaving the press office and perhaps stumbling on some tidbit Daley didn’t want to get out...
...Why They Do Them This isn’t a story about how well White House reporters do their jobs...
...My favorite recent one concerns my friend Curtis Wilkie of the Boston Globe who was incensed a few weeks ago when Jody Powell told a Boston audience that the press had made such a big deal of the bloopers of President Carter’s interpreter in Poland because of all the iced vodka the reporters had been drinking that evening...
...It can be seductive over there past the wroughtiron gates, even if journalistically it would be a lot more fun covering a 32 nice, old-fashioned bank robbery...
...I would miss knowing that Jimmy Carter has fired Arthur Bums a few minutes before anybody who owns a working radio would know it...
...Being introduced at a state dinner time Nessen would complete a sen- somehow makes it appear that you are tence this man would whisper, not really a part of the administration of entirely to himself, “you horse’s ass...
...They are often too busy reporting simply that it’s happening...
...It may also be the closest I will ever get to convincing Eastern Airlines to stop abusing my luggage...
...These stories are difficult, but they are the kind of work that many White House correspondents would prefer to do...
...There were also salads and some unusual-looking vegetables...
...We’re thinking of dressing him in a dancing costume,” Powell replied...
...Wilkie: You had a lot...
...Likewise, on the last trip, when the plane left Brussels, it stopped an hour later at Shannon, once again to refuel...
...Ford, I knew I wanted to But the state dinners are nothing come back...
...Sometimes it is the less heady feeling of knowing that Johnson talked dirty or Kennedy liked girls or Ford looks more like a monkey in person than on television and Carter looks shorter and older in the Rose Garden than he does on the nightly news...
...I wanted to come back because members of the White House press for the long, dreary hours spent in that dark pressroom...
...The sofas are made of industrialstrength naugahyde...
...He closed the door of the booth and looked through a sheaf of papers...
...Some of the reasons, as I have mentioned, are not really as grandiose as we would like to believe-the desire for approval by my parents after all these years, the desire for a nice picture of me and Jimmy Carter for my bathroom wall, the realization that even if d don’t have anything important in my life, I could at least watch something important...
...Now, when I approach the northSigns of Impending Action west gate, there are people standing in the rain the way I stood four years That afternoon, as I walked in, the ago, but I’m not one of them...
...Still, the good as well as the bad must spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for the briefing, living through it, and then deciding whether it’s worth writing about...
...For them, the daily feeding is little more than a snack...
...It was one of those occasions in President Carter’s recent history as chief of state when he was still trying to get close to “the people...
...it was summer...
...Powell: Once again, I was somewhat misquoted in the Boston Globe [laughter], I did indicate, as I have to several of you before that I thought that was a right interesting party that they had over there and I did convey what was a misimpression that there was a fair amount of vodka being consumed and a fair amount of flacking going on...
...I want to explain why all of us find ourselves over at the White House occasionally, feeling strangely proud while writing some of the lowest dog-easy copy that journalism has ever known...
...On the other hand, most of the truly good reporters I know at the White House, like Charles Mohr and James Wooten, former New York Times White House correspondents, or Curtis Wilkie of The Boston Globe or Sam Donaldson of ABC, spend their days tracking down elaborations of the day’s news...
...Shannon has for many years had what’s considered the best duty-free shop in Europe, with the best deal available on Wedgewood china, Waterford crystal, and so on...
...Into this menagerie strode President Gerald Ford...
...Little Treats But foreign trips are another thing altogether...
...my old neighborhood...
...Also, 1 don’t have a long dress...
...The White I-b~se ConesPondent’s life is full of ingratiating little touches like that...
...This has been called the desire to have a front-row seat in the theater of history, which is a good position because it is far enough away that you don’t get blamed for anything but still close enough to write a book about it...
...The coffee tables important, and if I was in on what was are made of some kind of stainless going on in there, I was important steel and have been worn over the too...
...My second trip was to Yazoo City, Mississippi...
...There are other reasons for doing this kind of work besides the fact that it’s easy...
...Petersburg, Florida, I witnessed a beauty contest where the winner of the talent competition styled seven wigs...
...For the squeamish, bottled mineral water in India...
...The other advantage was a laminated tag that they gave me for my suitcase...
...The first was to Calhoun, Georgia, where the President and I and about 20,000 other people spent Easter with his oldest son...
...The chairs are sturdy...
...Wilkie: My mother may read it [laughter...
...Another, a constant smoker, fell asleep one night in a sleazy motel and nearly burned up the town’s entire one-block red light district...
...For reasons of time, the limits of human energy, and, especially, the limits of understanding in the home office, most White House correspondents don’t explain why something is happening at the White House...
...He had descended into the press room, which is about 60 feet from the oval Office, to announce fie appointment of his new press secretary-a smiling Ron Nessen, who had Once been a television newsman covering the White House...
...For the healthy, a gym bag in Riyadh...
...State dinners, for example...
...There are those who went on the trip who will tell their grandchildren about the feast the Shah of Iran provided for the White House press corps on New Year’s Eve...
...It says Trip of the President in huge letters, below which there is a presidential seal, below which there is my name, in perfect letters...
...Why do top-notch reporters, and some not so top-notch reporters, spend so much time as presidential stenographers...
...An Ominous Moment My first trip to the White House was in 1974...
...with Mrs...
...It was the most successful job of flacking by the American press under the influence of vodka that I have seen for some time.’ Are you serious...
...the state...
...I would tell you the brand and the year, but unfortunately I drank several large glasses of it and can only remember that it was red...
...I realized that I wanted to come years by so many journalistic feet back for all the wrong reasons, and I (and bottoms) that they look like have resisted the urge as often as small pieces of an old freighter...
...Reporting on the President of the United States (especially this President) is, as far as I can see, not much different from covering city hall...
...It came as some relief in my hometown, then, when I was awarded my White House press pass two years ago, and, shortly afterwards, the back of my head made its first appearance on national TV...
...For her only daughter to be a newspaper reporter edged precariously close to being a family scandal...
...I recall an occasion when I had to rush over to the White House because our correspondent was on assignment that day...
...I try, of course, not to do it pridefully...
...If they let boys in the press room would be a those folks in, I figure, I’m hostile one...
...I have never been able to bring myself to remove 34 that tag from my suitcase, in part because it may be the closest 1 will ever come to the white-hot center of American power...
...Perhaps because that is so easy and perhaps because most newspapers want their White House correspondents to follow these daily events, it is not often that one of the members of the White House press corps has the time to sit back and tell what it’s really like, the way Jim Wooten did, for example, when he compared Jimmy Carter’s work style to that of his mentor, Admiral Hyman Rickover...
...There was booze and wine and champagne, and someone had provided silly hats...
...Powell: I certainly regret any personal discomfort that my comments may have caused...
...1 knew that the son of ABC, Judy WoodruffofNBC, relationship between Ron and the and stan Cloud of Time...
...Here is the exchange between Wilkie and Powell, without elaboration, from the White House briefing records: “Wilkie: Jody, I rise on a point of personal privilege [laughter...
...Powell: It is now confirmed that Wilkie has a mother [laughter...
...Shannon is the airport in Ireland where presidential press planes refuel on the way back to the U.S...
...Howwithin a few minutes the room was ever, 1 do recall on one occasion being filled with one of the strangest assort- unable to control a small quiver of emotion when a tourist saw my press merits of People I have ever seen* pass and took a picture of me...
...I was told that nothing would happen, but shortly after I arrived, President Ford appeared with a heavy heart and a prepared statement...
...Hotels that cater to the White House press corps traditionally leave little treats in these distinguished visitors’ rooms...
...CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer asked Jody Powell what the President would be wearing for that speech-a business suit, or slacks and a cardigan sweater...
...But covering the White House can be a lot more fun to talk about with the people back home in Northwest Florida than it is to actually do...
...I stood at the glass-lined booth at the northeast gate and gave my name and driver’s license to a guard...
...So my mother had come by her view of newspaper people as “different” and “unpredictable” honestly...
...I prefer to live under the When I left the White House 45 illusion that I write about it, not run minutes later, after my appointment it...
...It can be a breathtaking brush with war and peace and other forms of history...
...When the press corps went to London last year, the plane left London and stopped at Shannon a few hundred miles later to refuel...
...Sometimes, it is the heady feeling that just down the hall the President of the United States is quietly changing the world by trying to talk the Israelis and the Arabsinto trying to talk or looking for a way not to be impeached or trying to end the Vietnam war or trying to start the Vietnam war or trying not to pass the buck or not to buck the militaryindustrial complex...
...It is a long, rectangular room decorated in the kind of furniture that people usually buy shortly after giving birth to their fifth son...
...Some of them explain that the White House beat is the highest you can go in the news business without opting out to become a flack or, worse, an editor...
...I wanted to come back compared to presidential trips...
...I would also miss the little things that are seldom written about until the books by all my friends with more permanent seats on the front row of history start coming out...
...It was Same way I feel when I get my Christmas card from Jimmy and Rosalynn...
...Then he directed me to the White House press room...
...The temperature rose to 120 degrees, which sent most of the press scurrying into an air-conditioned back room to watch Carter on television just like the rest of America...
...She doesn’t know I drink...
...There were towering cakes and puddings, fancy sauces, bowls of dark chocolate syrup and marshmallow cream...
...And back in the States, there’s no trouble with customs, because the press plane has its own customs official aboard...
...When Ford went to Paris in 1975, there was Pierre Cardin perfume, wine, brandy, and champagne...
...Wilkie: As opposed to being a mother [laughter.] ” It is being able to tell little stories like that that helps lure me back, long after I have complained to everyone I know about how dismal and dreary and demeaning it is over there...
...Reporters aren’t the only people in the world who are afflicted with this malady...
...It reminds me of stories about Mayor Richard J. Daley, who never liked to tell reporters when his press conferences would be...
...He made it sound like an honor...
...reporters are part of the court, and many of them know it-if not beforehand, certainly by the time they get abroad...
...The desire to live life for the stories you can tell is present in almost everybody...
...I could do without the Wedgewood and the Shah’s New Year’s Eve party, but if my bosses decide to banish me from the White House I would miss it...
...possible since then...
...Piled on a long table was lamb, roast beef, fish, shrimp, chicken, turkey, pork, and, of course, caviar...
...it was fdled to above capacity...
...I’ve never been invited to one-either because 1 don’t cover the White House full time, because I’m not in very a brief, unremarkable session except that after it was Over I knew do as press secretary than all the people who read the N~~ york l-irnes good Odor with the President, Or because they haven’t gotten around to entertained a number of reporters at state dinners, including Jack Germond about how Ron Nessen was going to me- Recently, the White House has or the Washington Post stories about of The Washington Star, Sam Donaldhis appointment...
...I would not be in on the private feuds, like the recent one when CBS refused to televise Jimmy Carter’s speech on the Panama Canal...
...Then, on the way home, as always on trips with the President, there was Shannon Airport...
...Some of the more candid correspondents admit they do it because it impresses people-sometimes even people in Washington...
...I learned later that I was the only one who wasn’t quick enough to remember that if you go to church with the President on Easter Sunday morning, it means you have to get out of bed...
...It also doesn’t hurt that the White House press corps is full of funny, odd people who play tricks on each other or turn a good phrase now and then or privately make fun of some of our former world leaders (one news magazine writer who covers the White House does a very good imitation of the late Generalissimo Franco, who apparently walked the way Charlie Chaplin would have walked if his legs had been bound at the knees...
...1 felt then the did not look like People write for 25 major newspapers and the three big networks* They looked like people who frequently write letters to the editor...
...But the most important reason for staying in the White House press room is the feeling that you are in the middle of things...
...I knew it because one of Of course, my reporter’s intuitive his former colleagues in the television sense of ethics tells me that even if I industry was standing next to me got such an invitation I would refuse during that announcement, and every it...
...it just takes different forms...
...One reporter who was unaccustomed to such expensive welcomes figures the hotel spent about $40 per journalist...
...I was around last year, for example, when Helmut Schmidt came over to visit Jimmy Carter...
...I came very close to confessing that once I almost got arrested for picketing Rich’s department store in Atlanta...
...The Early Evening Hours These are the moments that do not become part of the daily public news but headline the early evening hours when reporters meet at their favorite bar, The Class Reunion...
...Because I have not spent much time there, due in some degree to the general level of humanity of my bosses, I have only taken two presidential trips...
...On the latest jaunt-seven countries in nine days-there was some small gift at each stop along the way...
...It doesn’t hurt that sometimes reporters can get tickets to White House tours for their children or personalized photos of the President signed by several staff members who are government-approved experts at forging their chief executive’s signature...
...Finally, one guard picked up the phone and called inside...
...However, there were signs of action and my official laminated White House pass and achieve a kind of instant governmental acceptance...
...It’s also a good way to get on the front page or on the nightly news...
...It was his way of telling me that this moment of trust had its limits...
...I have had a lot worse jobs in the newspaper business...
...Some people take grueling vacations so they can get the satisfaction of telling their friends about them later...
...It was an ominous moment...
...The only major difference between them, in fact, is that the White House sounds better...
...Someone made the mistake of carpeting the floor with a corn-yellow carpet that sometimes takes on the look of a cocker spaniel who has been what was going on in there seemed rolling in fresh mud...
...My stock in the family rose dramatically...
...Indeed, it’s true that there are newsmen and women, who will go unnamed because I have to see them again, who derive their careers from those daily briefings...
...One editor had married the town stripper, who occasionally locked the house on him, which forced him to keep his clothes in the bottom drawer of the city desk...
...Still, I succumb...
...Then the CBS executives might think it was entertainment and cover it...
...She thought what 1 had been trying to resist thinking-that if 1 had that pass, 1 had to be important...
...I can speak with great expertise about the area of Helmut Schmidt between his collar and his right shoulder...
...To the extent that I cover the White House, a task that my editors at The Chicago Tribune ask me to do occasionally, I am a success back in Eleanor Randolph is a reporter for The Chicago Tribune...
Vol. 10 • March 1978 • No. 1
