TheWoes of a Government PR Man
McClure, Donovan
TheWoes of a Government PR Man by Donovan McClure “INKING. . . Robert McKinney, new Top Tilsit of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board-he’s an Indianapolis millionaire and a big buddy of Jimmy’s...
...When the speech didn’t make the Eastern papers, Scanlon got an angry call from McKinney’s assist ant . “But we got great coverage in San Francisco,” Scanlon protested...
...Two weeks later (and three weeks into the job) came the San Francisco speech, which was a rehash of one McKinney had delivered a few days earlier in Houston...
...Before an appearance on the “Today” show, some of us were taking him through a dry run...
...Scanlon’s first effort for McKinney was a White House press conference at which his boss outlined the Federal Home Loan Bank Board’s proposed regulations to stop banks from “redlining,” refusing to give housing mortgages to homeowners in black neighborhoods...
...Give Me Another’ But the toughest boss I ever had-a man who steadfastly and resolutely refused to face the realities of dealing with the press-was the late Winthrop Rockefeller, who was the governor of Arkansas...
...The poor guy never did get to talk to McKinney...
...McKinney now saw the national media as being as easy to crack as The Indianapolis Star...
...Even before there were any volunteers in the field, Shriver had the press agog about the new American adventure...
...HOW come I didn’t get any Ink in the East...
...Fates like his befall publicists all the time, especially at the start of an administration...
...In any case, it’s the rare Donovan McClure has been a public relations consultant in Washington for government, private organizations, labor unions, and political candidates...
...I’ve been in public relations myself for 16 years, ever since I took a one-year leave from The San Francisco Chronicle to join the PR staff of the Peace Corps in Washington...
...I read another question, and another and another...
...I know how tough it is for a publicist to please his boss out of bitter experience...
...Even that nomination ran into trouble in the Senate over McKinney’s civil rights record and his banking interests, but those were only superficial stumbling blocks...
...it’s routine for a politician’s staff to prepare him for an interview by asking him hostile questions he might get...
...After helping Carter get elected, he really wanted to be an ambassador, but the only job offer was as chief regulator of the nation’s savings and loan industry...
...His replacement won’t make the same mistake...
...After I had finished my list, Win finally said, “I don’t like those questio:is...
...My boss, Sargent Shriver, was a master at getting publicity, but that people like me...
...But investigation turned up only one inaccuracy: Bob McKinney didn’t make his complaint directly or fire into the whites of his victim’s eyes-he did it through an aide...
...I read him the first question, a real nasty...
...Vic Gold, who was Agnew’s press secretary, had been working for him for just a few weeks when, he says, “a newspaper not only tore hell out of him but out of me personally...
...The White House wanted him to help repay a favor by accepting as his PI4 man someone from his home state of Indiana, Mike Scanlon...
...But don’t waste your sympathy on Scanlon...
...The briefing made the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times, and got McKinney on Cronkite...
...I went in to see the Vice President and asked him if he’d seen the story and he said, ‘sure, what about it?’ and I said, ‘well, I’m sure sorry as hell about it . . . .’ “He interrupted: ‘Oh, don’t let those bastards get you down...
...Sure,” replied the aide, “you did fine on the West Coast, but what about the East Coast...
...Washington is a city where the press is a lot tougher than wet-behindthe-ears appointees realize-or maybe they do realize it, and would rather just blame their publicity difficulties on their PR people out of convenience...
...The only politician I ever heard of who didn’t expect his public relations staff to work miracles with a minimum of cooperation was Spiro Agnew, a man of few other discernable virtues...
...So profound a point did it make that one veteran public relations man cancelled his seat at the poker table and began checking the story’s authenticity, thus breaking the cardinal rule of PR-don’t check it out, ycu may kill it...
...Scanlon had respectable credentials for the job: he was a Notre Dame journalism graduate, a former reporter for The IndianapoZis News and Time-Life, and press secretary to outgoing Senator Vance Hartke...
...Save a tear or two for his replacement, who, when the Times ignores a ribbon-cutting in Cleveland, is sure to be told, “Jesus, the other guy wasn’t much, but at least he got us on Cronkite...
...When Patricia Roberts Harris became Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, she told her new PR man she wanted press right away on all the great things HUD was going to do under her leadership...
...With several nudges from the White House, Scanlon got the job, which meant $36,000 a year and all the job security of baseball managers who work for Charlie Finley...
...Once ensconced in office, McKinney found himself on the receiving end of the Carter Administration’s need to place old friends...
...That was the end of that preparation session...
...It was always the same response...
...Shriver wanted to know what had happened to Time...
...There wasn’t a dry eye in the National Press Club bar the November evening that item appeared in the gossip column of The Washington Star...
...Give me another,” he said...
...boss in Washington who thinks that his publicity staff can do anything right, or that his lack of good press is his own fault...
...He lasted a month...
...And what made it worse, it was a Baltimore paper...
...the government regularly hires foxes to guard public henhouses...
...Here’s some ink, Bob...
...The aide fired Scanlon that afternoon...
...He decided it was time to educate her on the subtleties of dealing with the Washington media, and suggested they wait until HUD had done something and then tell the press...
...Right Away Also, Scanlon must have known what he was getting into...
...One week, three magazines-Newsweek, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post-hit the stands with Peace Corps stories...
...McKinney is a classic case in point...
...You know how they are.’” Such is the only good position a PR man can be in- working for a boss who expects bad press...
...Robert McKinney, new Top Tilsit of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board-he’s an Indianapolis millionaire and a big buddy of Jimmy’s from Way Back-zipped out to San Fran to make a Heavy speech last week...
...he asked, And canned the guy...
...This didn’t work with Win...
...What the story shows is the woeful lot of the public relations man, especially in Washington, where the bosses are particularly ambitious and free publicity is particularly hard to come by...
...Earwigs: Hardly anyone here noticed, So Bob called in his nice new pack of three weeks...
Vol. 9 • February 1978 • No. 12
