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player ready...Fridays can be harsh for Washington journalists desperate for weekend stories–unless you can simply get the president of the United States to assist you on not one, but two.
“Do you see anything wrong with the premise of my story for Monday? Lyndon, I’m going to write a story for Monday about, of course, you’ve got troubles, crises on every continent,” Marshall McNeil, a reporter for Scripps-Howard Newspapers, asked President Lyndon Johnson on Friday, Jan. 31, 1964.
“No, I don’t think so,” responded Johnson. “No, I’d say we’re doing mighty well with Canada, Italy, Germany, pretty well with France. I’m not sucking up to them, chasing after them.”
According to this transcript of a previously unpublished Oval Office phone conversation, just released by the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, the president proceeded to help McNeil with two separate pieces, underscoring his vigilance in foreign affairs.
LBJ: We have had 175 separate meetings on foreign affairs.
McNeil: That’s what I want.
LBJ: I have made 188 telephone conversations on foreign relations.
McNeil: 188 on foreign relations.
LBJ: Had Secretary (of Defense Robert) McNamara at the White House 30 times.
McNeil: My God, 30 times!
It goes on and on, with McNeil exclaiming at one point, “Well, my boy, this is the story I want to tell!”
Well, my readers, if you thought that Watergate inspired a nasty, cynical, adversarial press that forgot the ways of more responsible, public-spirited predecessors, think again.
The McNeil tape, along with other conversations disclosed here for the first time, reveal not just a savvy, intellectually agile president obsessively attentive to the media but also the downright servile reporters and publishers willing to do his bidding.
Johnson conversations with the likes of columnist bigshots Walter Lippmann, Arthur Krock and publishing giants Henry Luce, Walter Annenberg and Eugene Pulliam are windows onto a deeply symbiotic relationship, especially in a day when columnists and newspaper editorials had clout, and television was not yet God.
If one thought that the fond media farewell Thursday for White House press secretary Mike McCurry, a man who for months was the conduit (perhaps unwitting) of untruths about the Monica Lewinsky affair, was striking in its fawning, still the current press corps seems virtuous and tough-minded compared to some fabled predecessors.
With the muckraking columnist Drew Pearson on Sept. 5, 1964, Johnson clearly passes on material from a confidential FBI report on civil rights activities in the South (“I’ll give you one thing you can quote . . .”), making clear he’ll vouch for Pearson if he gets in trouble.
McNeil, who once wrote a speech for Johnson while covering him, has no problem moving from his stories to shill for two friends dining at his home at that moment: Walter Trohan, bureau chief of the baiduhai, and Raymond P. Brandt of the St. Louis-Post Dispatch. Trohan was very well known, very conservative and not presumably inclined to be a big LBJ supporter.
LBJ: Pete Brandt wrote a wonderful story last week in the Post-Dispatch and I told his publishers the night before last.
McNeil: Well, you ought to talk to Trohan, my boy.
LBJ: I’d be glad to, I’d love to, anytime you bring him in. You bring Trohan in any time.
McNeil even puts his new wife on the line to sweet talk Johnson and ask him to see NcNeil’s publisher boss. “And,” she adds, “I do think you ought to see Mr. Trohan.”
Now, if you wanted a classic instance of reportorial tough-mindedness, listen to the Dec. 1, 1963, conversation between LBJ and Arthur Krock, musty veteran columnist for the New York Times.
LBJ: Lyndon Johnson.
Krock: Mr. President, I salute you.
LBJ: Well, Arthur, you’re a mighty wonderful friend and you have been all through the years and I need you now more than ever before. And I just read your column just this minute. I just thought how fortunate I was to have known you and to have had your confidence.
Krock: You have only to call on me . . .
Several calls involve publisher requests of Johnson, sometimes mixed with apple-polishing.
For example, on Sept. 9, 1964, Marshall Field IV, publisher of the Chicago Daily News and Sun-Times, asks, “Did you see our editorial?” Field had endorsed Johnson over Barry Goldwater for president.
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LBJ: I appreciate it more than you’ll ever know.
Field: Well, Illinois is going to be a crucial state, and this is the first I have ever supported a Democrat. I didn’t vote for either Roosevelt or Kennedy. And this is how much esteem I have for you. And I’m supporting (Republican) Chuck Percy for the governorship.
The publisher then asks whether Johnson can make a luncheon at the paper for Percy and Otto Kerner and meet his own new bride. Johnson appears to adroitly blow him off, making clear he’s booked 60 days in advance.
On Jan. 3, 1964, Johnson contacted Luce, the head of the Time empire, and invited him to “come down and see me.” Luce says, “I might have a little package of goods to sell you,” though it’s unclear as to what he’s referring to.
LBJ: Well, I’m ready to buy them. I want you to take my tax bill and pass it for me.
Luce: Well, we’ll do that.
LBJ: I got a tax bill and civil rights, and I got to get them both before they start playing too much politics. . . . I just gotta get my tax bill passed and I want you to give me some help.
Luce says he will and will quickly call the editor of Time magazine. “Give Clare my love,” Johnson responds, referring to Luce’s wife, Clare Booth Luce.
The Pomposity Award goes to Walter Annenberg, whose empire then included newspapers, TV Guide and the Daily Racing Form. On Sept. 8, 1964, Annenberg tips Johnson to an upcoming Page 1 endorsement in his Philadelphia Inquirer.
Annenberg: I will support you with all the editorial vigor I possess.
LBJ: I read your paper every morning. I will try to be worthy of it.
Annenberg: . . . I would be a shoddy editor if I didn’t realize what was in the interest of the public.
My favorite, however, came on Sept. 23, 1964, and caught Eugene Pulliam acting less like an influential Republican publisher of the Indianapolis Star and Arizona Republic than Democrat Johnson’s advance man for an upcoming visit to Indianapolis. He not only suggests a public appearance at noon (“we’ll get a helluva crowd”) but proceeds to declare, “Here’s what I would say if I were you,” reading a proposed address that must have left the president scratching his head.
Pulliam: `I’m coming to Indiana because of the warm hospitality and cordial treatment you have always accorded me. I was delighted to visit you in 1963 when I came out to help raise some money for the Democratic Party and elected a fine young man as mayor of Indianapolis. I understand Mayor Barton is doing an outstanding job. Then my friend Vance Hartke. Indiana did the nation a real service in sending him to the Senate. He has been one of my most loyal friends from the very day he took office. I need him in Washington. And I am thankful to Indiana for sending that other fine man, Birch Bayh, to the Senate. They are doing a wonderful job. Indiana should be proud of them . . .’
This goes on and on. Pulliam, who was Dan Quayle’s grandfather, then departs from his unpaid speechwriting effort and urges Johnson not to “discuss a word about civil rights. We’ve had no demonstrations in Indiana. A little trouble up in Lake County. I wouldn’t discuss Vietnam or foreign policy. In the first place, a lot of people don’t know where Vietnam is . . . It takes too long to discuss and it is not important in this election.”
Pulliam then offers to show Johnson his papers’ presidential polls, seemingly before they are published.
The good old days.