The Kingdom and the Power

by Gay Talese

  After the visit, Lyndon Johnson kept in touch with Times executives in various ways. Sometimes he communicated through intermediaries; at other times, Johnson himself picked up the telephone and called Times editor. One night at a dinner in Manhattan, there was a call for John Oakes. When Oakes answered, he heard Lyndon Johnson’s voice, in its most folksy drawl: “John … Ah been thinkin’ about you …” Oakes could barely hear because of the noise of the party, and he was thoroughly confused by Johnson’s words, and all that Oakes could think of replying was, “I … I’ve been thinking about you, too, Mister President.”

  Johnson finally got to the point of his call—he was making Thomas Mann, the Latin-American expert, an Assistant Secretary of State. Oakes agreed that Mann was a good choice, and an editorial favorable to Mann later appeared in The Times. Shortly afterwards, at another social gathering, Oakes was approached by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and was berated for publishing the Mann editorial. Mann’s wisdom on Latin-American and Cuban affairs had rarely impressed Schlesinger during the Kennedy years, but the vehemence of Schlesinger’s reaction to the editorial both shocked and startled Oakes, and he was very angry as he turned away from Schlesinger. It seemed to Oakes that Schlesinger was resurrecting much of the old hostility that President Kennedy’s people in Washington had felt toward Oakes a few years before; now, instead of being labeled anti-Kennedy, Oakes was being damned as pro-Johnson, which was untrue. Still, Kennedy’s aides did understand correctly the inner workings of The New York Times. They knew that if the editorials were negative, there was one man to blame—Oakes. They knew that the power in The Times’ News department was much more diffuse, and that it was sometimes more advantageous to gain the good will of a reporter than an editor, and it is possible that the administration of John F. Kennedy had handled the working press with more finesse than had ever been done before.

  Kennedy himself was a masterful student of journalism. An omnivorous reader of newspapers since his days at Choate, Kennedy had on two occasions worked as a reporter, and he had often expressed the desire to own a newspaper after retiring from public office. Through his father, he had been introduced at an early age to many prominent journalists, and he developed a keen awareness of their vanity and style, their susceptibility to flattery and sensitivity to criticism, their delight in being on the inside of anything momentous or intimate. As a Senator he had sent notes of thanks to those who had praised him in print; as the President he was particularly adroit in his use of the press, timing his announcements to meet various deadlines, being gracious to friends, cool to critics, bestowing favors like a king.

  Those journalists whom he liked and trusted were admitted to his court. They dined with him, played golf with him, were privileged observers of his New Frontier, were treated with an informality and charm that former presidents had not extended even to most publishers and star columnists. But the Kennedy manner was not comparable with the past. He had altered the social structure of the press establishment, creating his own system of stardom. By merely favoring a journalist in small ways, even a journalist of relatively minor talent, Kennedy could and did elevate the status of that journalist, and in a few instances such men became columnists or featured faces on television.

  Kennedy’s willingness to give interviews on television, and his use of television for his news conferences, offended some veterans in the press corps. James Reston called the televised news conference “the goofiest idea since the hula hoop,” even though Reston’s career itself did not suffer during the Kennedy years. Reston, together with other good reporters and writers, was able to compensate for television and for any social absence at Kennedy dinner parties by working harder. Perhaps they also profited by not getting too close to Kennedy: they were able to judge him with more detachment and honesty without the fear of losing such a costly friendship, and they were capable of criticism—as Reston was a week before Kennedy’s death:

  There is a vague feeling of doubt and disappointment in the country about Kennedy’s first term.… He has touched the intellect of the country but not the heart. He has informed but not inspired the nation. He is undoubtedly the most popular political figure of the day, but he has been lucky in his competition.… It is not a general reaction, but there is clearly a feeling in the country, often expressed by middle-aged women, that the Kennedys are setting standards that are too fancy, too fast, and as one woman said in Philadelphia, “too European.” … Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt have there been so many men’s-club stories in circulation against “that man in the White House.” … [It] is a far cry from the atmosphere he promised when he ran for the Presidency in 1960.

  But one Times columnist who felt the Kennedy style adversely was Arthur Krock. The recognition accorded Krock by other presidents and their aides did not continue during the Kennedy years, and this both disturbed and disappointed Krock. He had been a friend of the Kennedy family for decades and had been very courteous in his coverage of Joseph P. Kennedy’s political career, earning the elder Kennedy’s everlasting gratitude. Once, while the Kennedy family was in England, Arthur Krock received the loan of the Kennedy’s large villa in Palm Beach for a short winter vacation. When John F. Kennedy was writing his senior thesis at Harvard, he brought it at his father’s direction to Arthur Krock to see if the latter had any suggestions to make. Krock, very impressed with the manuscript, said that it could be published as a book. Together they went over the work, Krock’s role being that of a copy-editor. Then Krock secured a publisher and suggested the book’s title, Why England Slept, borrowing from Churchill’s earlier book, While England Slept. Joseph Kennedy, then the American Ambassador in London, proceeded to promote the book among his powerful friends. He got Henry R. Luce to write the foreword and he sent copies to such potential taste-makers as the Queen of England. The book sold eighty thousand copies in the United States and England, and John Kennedy, who was twenty-three when he wrote it, donated part of his royalties to the English town of Plymouth, which had been partially destroyed during the war, and he also bought for himself a new Buick.

  When John Kennedy became President of the United States, Arthur Krock did not seek any preferential treatment, nor did he receive any. Krock was a proud and formal man, a hardened political conservative in a town now dominated by young liberals and the Jet Set, the Beautiful People, and what the writer Midge Decter would later call “Discothéque Radicals.” Since first arriving in Washington more than a half-century before, Arthur Krock had witnessed the comings and goings of every conceivable movement and madness, had heard all the new singing jingles created for old political hogwash—Wilson’s “New Freedom,” Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Truman’s “Fair Deal,” and now it was Kennedy’s “New Frontier”—except that Arthur Krock, as a venerable member of the loyal opposition, was not being listened to now as he once had been. While Krock had been critical of the New Deal, Roosevelt had nonetheless given him an exclusive interview, an unprecedented honor, and it had won for Krock the Pulitzer Prize in 1938, his second such award. Although Krock had also been critical of Truman’s administration, President Truman, too, had been interviewed exclusively by Krock in 1950, and this would have earned Krock a third Pulitzer had not one member of the voting board objected to it. That objector was Krock himself. Mindful of the gossip that the Pulitzer awards had been influenced by “logrolling,” among other factors not entirely noble, Krock believed that if the Pulitzer board awarded the prize to one of its own board members, it would lend substance to the gossip; so he offered a resolution barring any member of the awards group from eligibility, and the resolution was adopted.

  But now, in the Sixties, Krock felt that such grand gestures and standards were a thing of the past. Now the social order had been overturned, the traditional Presidential news conference had become an electronic circus, and almost anybody could get an exclusive interview with the President—even Krock’s colleague Lester Markel.

  Markel had merely telephoned Kennedy’s press
aide, Pierre Salinger, and made an appointment. Markel spent forty-five minutes with Kennedy, during which he apparently did not charm the President. After Markel had left, Kennedy approached Salinger with a frown, asking, “What the hell was that all about?”

  “What?”

  “Markel didn’t come down here to interview me,” Kennedy said. “He came down to tell me what to do as President.”

  The next time that Lester Markel called for an interview, Salinger put him off, explaining that there had been several Timesmen in to see the President recently—at which Markel quickly interrupted: “I do not wish to be treated as a New York Timesman. I wish to be treated as an adviser to Presidents.”

  Salinger did not back down, and neither Lester Markel nor any other Times editor became an “adviser” to the President during Kennedy’s tenure; although there was one Timesman, a reporter, who did develop a close friendship with Kennedy, and this led to situations that were resented within The New York Times—and eventually this caused an incident that ended with the reporter’s quitting The Times.

  His name was Bill Lawrence. Lawrence was a big, strong, toughtalking man who looked like an Irish plainclothesman. He was also a drinker, a womanizer, a good golfer, an aggressive reporter who could keep a secret—and John Kennedy was enchanted with him, which said as much about Kennedy as it did about Lawrence. The type of man that Lawrence was would probably not get a job on The New York Times today; but when Bill Lawrence was hired by The Times in 1941, a brash young bully of twenty-four, journalists were not so uniformly stylized and stamped out by schools of journalism. There was then more freedom and a more romantic notion about the newspaper business, although the reporters of that time were generally less sober and perhaps also less responsible with their facts.

  Bill Lawrence, born in Nebraska, had won a scholarship to Swarthmore in 1933 but lacked the money to cover the incidentals and so he took a job on the Lincoln Star at night and entered the University of Nebraska. Expelled eleven weeks later for cutting classes, he became a full-time reporter; and in 1936, at the age of nineteen, he was covering local politics for the Associated Press. During one of his first big assignments, a convention of the Young Democrats of Nebraska, Lawrence’s passions were suddenly and angrily aroused when the Young Democrats were about to endorse Senator Edward R. Burke, a Democrat who had opposed most of Roosevelt’s programs. Shouting from the floor, waving his arms, Lawrence threatened to offer a resolution commending a Republican, George W. Norris, who was sympathetic to Roosevelt. Lawrence’s challenge was accepted and, though not a delegate, Lawrence offered the resolution—and, to his amazement, it passed. This made a bulletin on the AP wire, which Lawrence wrote, somehow ignoring the name of the resolution’s sponsor. A few days later, Lawrence received word from the AP bureau chief in Nebraska that he was through.

  Lawrence next got a job in Chicago with the United Press as a labor reporter, and in 1938 he was transferred to the UP bureau in Washington, one of his colleagues there being Harrison Salisbury, who had also come out of the Chicago bureau. Lawrence covered the Presidential campaign of 1940, gaining the attention and friendship of Wendell Willkie, who proceeded to recommend Lawrence to some editors on The Times, which had backed Willkie against Roosevelt in 1940. Although Willkie’s recommendation did not get Lawrence hired at that time, it was indirectly through Wendell Willkie that Bill Lawrence came to be a Timesman.

  One night at a gathering of the White House Correspondents Association, after Roosevelt’s reelection, Lawrence noticed that as Roosevelt was being wheeled out of the room he had been approached briefly by Willkie and that the two had exchanged a few words. Anxious to know what had been said, Lawrence began to push through the crowd toward Willkie. He did not get there in time, but learning that Willkie was scheduled to be at Arthur Krock’s home later in the evening, Lawrence waited and then called him there, announcing over the telephone in his forthright manner, “This is Bill Lawrence of the United Press and I’d like to speak with Wendell Willkie.”

  “I’m sorry,” said a gentle voice on the other end, “but Mr. Willkie is engaged at this moment with guests and cannot be interrupted.”

  “Look,” said Lawrence, “you tell Mr. Willkie that this is Bill Lawrence of the United Press. And if he doesn’t have time to talk to me, that’s all right. But deliver that message.”

  There was silence for a few moments. Then Wendell Willkie came to the telephone and told Lawrence what had been said, which, as it turned out, was not all that important.

  The next day Lawrence met Turner Catledge, whom he knew casually, and Catledge exclaimed, “Boy, what did you say last night to Mr. Krock?”

  “I didn’t say anything to Mr. Krock.”

  “You didn’t call him up?”

  “I called his home but I spoke to the butler.”

  “That wasn’t any butler,” Catledge said. “That was Mr. Krock.”

  Catledge that afternoon reminded Krock of his recently expressed wish to hire a young, hard-working man for the bureau, and Catledge proposed Lawrence. Krock thought it over for a few moments and agreed.

  Bill Lawrence was hired at $80 a week, five dollars more than he had been making at the United Press, and within the next two decades Lawrence became one of the most industrious, highest-paid reporters on the paper. His by-line—“W. H. Lawrence”—appeared over important stories in Washington and Okinawa, London and Moscow. He toured South America and was the correspondent in the Balkans until he was thrown out for reporting them pro-Soviet. He helped to organize The Times’ United Nations bureau in 1946, rejecting as incompetent some of the veteran correspondents assigned to him; he concentrated instead on developing the talents of younger men that he thought were potentially first rate, particularly one skinny newcomer named Abe Rosenthal.

  But no matter where Lawrence worked for The Times, whether at the United Nations or Europe or Korea, he remained “on loan” from the Washington bureau, and this was as Lawrence preferred it. He was fearful of the bureaucracy of the New York office, the layers of editors and formality in the big newsroom, and the only time that he lingered there was on the night of national elections when he was writing one of the political leads, or was analyzing the election results with other Timesmen over the newspaper’s radio station, WQXR. Inevitably, Lawrence was accompanied to the newsroom on these occasions by a very pretty young woman who dolefully sat in a corner waiting for him to finish so that they could go off to Sardi’s or “21.” And then he would be back in Washington, another story, another pretty girl, another round of drinks, his manner seeming more reverential toward bartenders or copyboys than Congressmen or editors. One day in Washington, Lawrence called the bureau desk and asked in a loud voice, “Is that little jackass of a Napoleon still there?” to which James Reston, who had picked up the extension, replied with resignation, “Yes, Bill, I’m here.”

  Reston liked Lawrence for reasons that often escaped both of them. Lawrence was hard-working and did have a certain boyish charm. As for Lawrence’s other side—the carousing, the two divorces, the impetuosity and apparent lack of guilt—this did grate on Reston’s Calvinism, but in every family there was room for an erring son, and in the Washington bureau this role was Lawrence’s. And he might have maintained it indefinitely had the knowledge of his growing friendship with Kennedy during the 1960 campaign not magnified his every move, causing the New York editors to scrutinize his stories with heightened intensity, to speculate on whether his reportorial objectivity was being compromised as he covered a Kennedy speech in one town, then played golf with Kennedy in another town, then attended a New Year’s Eve party with Kennedy in Palm Beach, then flew back with other reporters in the Kennedy airplane with a very lovely Kennedy aide on his arm.

  The romance that developed between the girl and Lawrence along the whistle stops and plane hops of the campaign at first amused John Kennedy, then it seemed to delight him to a point where he tried to encourage it by his attention. At crowded airports, while po
sing for pictures, Kennedy would sometimes scan the room until he had spotted the couple standing together, and he would smile and remark, “There they are.”

  The full extent of this never reached the editors in New York, but they already had sufficient misgivings about Lawrence. They had felt that Lawrence’s coverage of the West Virginia primary had made Kennedy’s battle seem much more difficult than it really was, and consequently when Kennedy triumphed his victory seemed all the more spectacular. After Kennedy’s election, when Bill Lawrence produced a number of exclusive stories about the new administration, The Times published them but within the office there was editorial grumbling about The Times’ news columns being used for John Kennedy’s “trial balloons,” and when this comment was made after Lawrence’s exclusive that identified Robert Kennedy as possibly the next Attorney General, Lawrence became infuriated. Although Lawrence was unaware of it, even some of his friends in the bureau were now becoming a bit disenchanted with him. One morning after Lawrence’s story had named Kennedy’s new Secretary of Commerce, but had not beaten the Washington Post to Dean Rusk’s appointment as the Secretary of State—an exclusive obtained by the Post’s late publisher, Philip Graham—Arthur Krock walked into the office, paused in the aisle, and said to another reporter, “Well, I’d give three Secretaries of Commerce for one Secretary of State, wouldn’t you?”