The President and the Press

During the past year President Johnson's distrust of White House correspondents and of the majority of political columnists has not subsided. The press's criticism of the Vietnam policy and its frequent inflation warnings are partly responsible for this taut, uneasy relationship. But the roots of the impasse lie in the President's limited conception of the press's privileges and responsibilities.

Both press secretary Bill D. Moyers and his boss have circumscribed the press's ability to open up lines of communication between the President and the people. Washington correspondents should not exist solely to pass on White House press releases. They should also provide the public with a clear understanding of the rationale and implications of executive decisions, within the confines of national security.

The Atlantic Monthly reports on Johnson: "His assistants have been almost completely shut off from the press, even for background purposes," because the President feels that this will prevent unwarranted leaks. There is validity in his contention that press leaks, which are often inaccurate as well as ill-timed, may reduce his options. But such incidents have been sporadic and anything but cataclysmic.

The President has carried his tactics for preventing leaks to such extremes that they begin to look like personal neuroses. Reporters groping for a story, but deprived of access to background material, may be reduced to writing what they imagine is fact, instead of what they are sure is so. This is exactly what the President most dislikes in the first place.

Johnson is so acutely sensitive to misinformation that he has refused to divulge information not only before he acts, but afterwards as well. His role last year in getting aluminum price increases rescinded has never been fully explained. The predictable White House rejoinder is that the President doesn't want to lose the support of the business community. But President Kennedy, in greater need of additional support than Johnson has ever been, did not suppress a blow-by-blow account of his 1962 fight with Roger Blough over steel prices.

The concept of the Presidential press conference has undergone a noteworthy metamorphosis since Johnson became president. During the Kennedy administration, no one denied the traditional concept of the question-and-answer period, an occasion to enlighten the public on public matters. But Press Secretary Moyers, speaking for his chief, said in January that the conferences serve "the convenience of the President, not the convenience of the press." This in part may explain the President's reluctance to hold them.

Johnson's replies to reporters' questions tend to boil down to a rehash of the Administration's pat reasons for American policy in Vietnam, occasional diatribes against some rumor reported by a newspaper, and a few straightforward answers to innocuous queries. For example on February 27, Johnson was asked about published reports concerning the replacement of Secretary of State Rusk by Ambassador Goldberg. The President answered testily that newspapers periodically carry on against Rusk; he concluded "I would not believe that the Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune would be in the business of predicting of nominating my Secretary of State."

The President has also surprised reporters by announcing decisions and appointments which he had disclaimed the day before. Last summer he announced Abe Fortas's appointment to the Supreme Court only a day after he had told reporters that he had not even begun to consider a successor to Justice Goldberg. An alarming "credibility gap" has arisen: The President and his staff often cannot bring themselves to reply "no comment" when it is clearly appropriate.

Another technique Johnson likes to use is stage management. Last summer, when U.S. military needs in Vietnam seemed to require a call-up of reserve units, Johnson spent days priming the press corps for his decision. He assured them that he was anxiously consulting just about everybody in Who's Who to gauge opinion on what he described as the most important decision of his career. "Reliable sources" prepared the nation for drastic steps by the Pentagon. The President then relieved millions of worried Americans by reporting in a press conference speech that no mobilization of the reserves would be necessary.

Never in the history of the United Stated has a President marshalled the opinions of so many people in private discussion, or been so tolerant of behind-closed-doors dissent. However, few have ever been so sensitive to public criticism, especially that originating in the press. Relations between LBJ and all but a select few of the nation's columnists (William S. White, his campaign biographer and Max Freedman, whose words seem to parody those of the President, are the two main exceptions) are chilly at best.

The President seems to rely implicitly on his ability to put across decisions to the public on his own terms. He has also decided that speculation--and information--about his policies limits his effectiveness as a popular leader and military and economic strategist.

James Reston has commented that Johnson has transferred the "personal attitudes and techniques he used as majority leader in the Senate cloakroom" to the White House. Admittedly, his system of "punishments and rewards and highly personal arrangements," worked once.

The President has not perceived that the tactics he mastered so well the Senate are not applicable to his dealings with the nation's press. On Capitol Hill he dealt with a group that accepted his strategems and was powerless to affect his Texas political fortunes. In the White House he must deal with the nation's press, not a group of colleagues. And he must also remember, although it rankles him, that what is written about him, and what is suppressed, sometime may shape as much public opinion as all those somber, reassuring speeches on TV.