The Show-Biz Conference

It was just a few minutes before show time. In the new State Department Auditorium on Washington's 23rd Street waited 400 anxious reporters, cameramen, radio and TV technicians, as well as an assortment of high school students, foreign visitors and stenographers who had wangled accreditation for the occasion. Offstage, in a small anteroom, stood Secretary of State Dean Rusk, clutching a sheaf of intelligence cables, prepared to give the star a quick final briefing. Then the President of the United States arrived, trailing a funereal squad of black-suited aides; nine still photographers, as if on cue, frantically recorded the presidential progress to the podium. At the sides of the room, boxed behind glass, the television sound men put out their pipes. Onstage, television cameras zeroed in on their target. The reporters, the students, the stenographers all rose in deference to the star. It was exactly 4 o'clock in the afternoon. John F. Kennedy's 18th presidential press conference had begun.

For the next half-hour, the show proceeded as predictably as if Kennedy and the assembled newsmen were following a script--as they might well have been. The President had a few announcements to make. Then came the questions, ranging from the oracular to the silly. "Mr. President," began Tom Wicker of the New York Times, "this is the first anniversary of your election last year, and in the campaign that preceded that election there was considerable talk." etc. Eighty-five words later, Wicker got to his point: If Kennedy were campaigning all over again, would he do it differently? (Answer: No.) May Craig, correspondent for a Maine newspaper chain, rose to ask what Kennedy was doing for women. This query produced exactly what Supporting Player Craig was looking for: laughter.

But at least one of the 19 questions that Kennedy fielded was not in the script. "Could you enlighten us sir." asked Jack Horner of the Washington Star, "as to why you're not having these press conferences more frequently--especially as to anything in particular you don't like about them?" Kennedy's response was revealing. "Well, I like them." he began; then he added hesitantly: "Sort of."

Careful Tutelage. For reporters, the press conference simply ain't what it used to be. It is now show biz. Gone is the easy, intimate banter of the F.D.R. days, when a hostile questioner might be told to go stand in the corner. Gone are the folksy chats and bursts of temper of the Truman era. Gone are the improvisations ("often complex in their syntax) of the Eisenhower day. Kennedy has efficiently expanded on his predecessors' skull practice sessions. The day before last week's conference. Kennedy's chubby, cigar-smoking press secretary, Pierre Salinger, summoned to his office the press secretaries from all major federal departments. Together they considered what questions might be asked the following day. After 1 1/2 hours, the list totaled some 70 questions. On the morning of the press conference, Salinger handed this list of probabilities to Kennedy, along with suggested answers, and at Kennedy's request, Salinger produced additional material. At lunch, over ham and spinach, Kennedy prepped himself further, under the tutelage of Secretary Rusk, Special Counsel Ted Sorensen, Special Presidential Assistant McGeorge Bundy, Walter Heller, chairman of Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisers. and Salinger.

As spotlights go on and cameras whir, the newsmen, separated from the President by a broad expanse of beige carpet and sitting as if in a classroom, are massed in such numbers that only a small--and sometimes preselected--handful ever get the floor, serving as little more than props. Some of them Salinger has already tipped to raise questions that the President wants to answer. Last week, for example. Salinger suggested to ABC's William H. Lawrence that a certain question might get an interesting response. Lawrence accordingly asked about the relative power of U.S. and Soviet nuclear tests. Kennedy had a ready answer to that one--neatly organized on paper.

No Challenge. The press conference has thus largely become a place to observe the young President's impressive memory for facts and figures, and occasionally to watch the flicker of hesitation as he gropes for words that will not antagonize an ally, tip off an adversary or betray his irritation. The press increasingly feels itself to be accessory to an act, rather than participant in a drama. Most newsmen, while sighing for the carefree old days, acknowledge that, in an atmosphere of international peril, with the President facing a battery of cameras and microphones that give his words instantaneous global range, he must inevitably prepare his script and guard against indiscretions. But they are disturbed that until last week. Kennedy, who had promised more press conferences, had held only one since August. Taxed on this, the President said that he thought silent stretches were necessary at awkward international moments, but hoped that when domestic events loomed larger, conferences might be more frequent. That, too, seemed more a hope than a promise.

The presidential press conference may still serve as the President's principal forum to the nation and the world, but it is less and less the place where he is informally required to give an account of his doings. The hard news content of the conference is rarely more than the President means to give out (he seldom expands, when asked, on what he has announced). Some panjandrums of the Washington press corps, such as Walter Lippmann and the New York Times's Scotty Reston think that the President is not communicating enough, or educating the public. The President himself has newspaper publishers and editors from all over the country in for lunch* and seems to impress most of them favorably. So the White House's answer is that the press conference is not everything and that that fireside chats should be reserved for important occasions. At his White House lunches, and in not-for-attribution after-hours talks with intimates among the presidential press corps, Jack Kennedy keeps up his communications.

* Further word got out last week of what happened at Kennedy's recent off-the-record lunch with 19 Texas editors and publishers, where, as Publisher E. M. ("Ted") Dealey of the Dallas Morning News boasted to his readers, he had told the President that the country needed "a man on horseback." while Kennedy seemed to be "riding Caroline's tricycle." Kennedy answered: "I have the responsibility for the lives of 180 million Americans, which you have not . . . I'm just as tough as you are, Mr. Dealey, and I didn't get elected by arriving at soft judgments."

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