Press secretaries, then and now

When Grover Cleveland, the 49-year-old president of the United States, married 21-year old Frances Folsom in 1886, reporters covering the White House followed the newlyweds to their honeymoon nest in nearby Deer Park, Maryland, to the considerable consternation of Frances and Grover.  

The displeasure of the president and his bride inspired a robust response on the editorial page of The New York World:  “The idea of offending the bachelor sensitivities of the President or the maidenly reserve of his bride has been far from anybody’s thought (but) we must insist the President is public property.” 

Things have been a bit rocky between the president and the press ever since.

But Cleveland learned from his disrupted honeymoon, and by his second term he had empowered his chief clerk to serve as what would become a presidential press secretary. The clerk stayed on in the McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt administrations and regularly briefed reporters on major events and even gave them a place to work in the West Wing.

Private secretaries continued to work informally with the press through the first part of the 20th century, until the newly elected Franklin Roosevelt put one of his three secretaries, a former reporter named Stephen Early, in charge of press relations.  

Truman hired a wire service reporter named Charlie Ross as his press secretary, who happened to be a member of the Independence High School Class of 1901 along with Harry and Bess, and Eisenhower picked New York Times reporter Jim Hagerty for the post.

These ex-reporters proved effective communicators with their former colleagues, but Hagerty, a somewhat humorless fellow, had a memorably hilarious battle with the great columnist Art Buchwald. The blowup came when Buchwald made fun of the softball questions reporters were tossing at Ike during a Paris NATO meeting.

Upon reading Buchwald’s satirical account of a reporter asking Ike if he enjoyed his breakfast grapefruit, Hagerty pronounced Buchwald’s humor “unadulterated rot.”  Buchwald, feigning remorse, admitted to occasionally writing “adulterated rot” but never the unadulterated kind.  Hagerty was, however, good at his job and served Eisenhower for his entire two terms. No one else has come close.

John Kennedy had a newsman with a sense of humor, Pierre Salinger, as his press secretary, but he was often his own press secretary and his frequent press conferences became popular viewing thanks to Kennedy’s wit.  

But Kennedy also had a feud with the editorial page of the moderate Republican New York Herald Tribune and dropped the paper’s White House subscription — something unheard of again until quite recently.  Buchwald reacted with a parody of the New York Sun’s editorial reply to a little girl who asked the Sun, “which knows everything,” if Santa Claus existed. Buchwald wrote, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Herald Tribune,” and the White House renewed its subscription.

Richard Nixon, of all people, became the father of the daily press briefings, when he covered Kennedy’s swimming pool and converted it into the press briefing room you last saw seven months ago. But Nixon also hired a non-newsman, Ron Ziegler, as his press secretary. A fierce Nixon defender, Ziegler is best remembered for correcting Nixon’s misstatements as “inoperative.” 

There isn’t space to recount the ups and downs of succeeding press secretaries but this is a good time to note that the best White House press secretary I’ve ever seen was a rare female of the species, C.J. Cregg.  Unfortunately, Ms. Cregg, though still performing intelligent and amusing briefings on Netflix, was the fictitious press secretary of the equally fictitious President Bartlet in the wonderful TV series, “The West Wing.”  

Also, unfortunately, the two worst press secretaries are also women — the too-real women working for Donald Trump.  

Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be remembered for arguing and sometimes lying instead of disseminating information to an increasingly aggressive press corps. Her briefings became so chaotic, Trump ordered her “not to bother” in March and there hasn’t been a briefing in seven months.

Stephanie Grisham, who succeeded Sanders in July, has become more of a propaganda minister than press secretary. When Trump called Republicans who oppose him “human scum,” Grisham explained they are “just that.” And then she attacked former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly for saying he had warned Trump against employing “yes” men and women.

Kelly, said Grisham, “was totally unqualified to handle the genius of our great president.”

Had Eisenhower’s or Kennedy’s press secretary said that, he would have been laughed off the stage — and not only by Art Buchwald.

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at rahles1@outlook.com.