DONALDSON MAKING HIS MEDIA MARK

Everyone exploits the media--including the media.

So America is now watching the selling of Sam by Sam as ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson promotes his new book, “Hold On, Mr. President!” via the talk-show circuit.

Big shows, small shows, short shows, tall shows, Donaldson is crashing them all, from “Donahue” to Johnny Carson, like a traveling salesman, using TV to push Donaldson as shrewdly and deftly as the White House uses TV to push Ronald Reagan.

As a journalist, and a valued one, Donaldson correctly does his best to expose and resist the Reagan polishers.

In a curious way, though, Donaldson’s present road show is dependent on Reagan, the President with whom his name is invariably linked as part of a neo “Les Miserables,” the relentless Javert of the airwaves on the heels of Jean Valjean.

On talk shows, most of Donaldson’s stories and jokes center on Reagan. Moreover, although his book is a light and entertaining survey of a career that included covering the Jimmy Carter White House, its best anecdotes are also reserved for Reagan. And the book’s cover bears a photo of Sam and Ron together.

They need each other, these unofficial blood brothers, not as newsman and news source but as dueling banjos. The President has always gotten mileage from making the media his foil, and Donaldson is the most visible and identifiable of the White House media. It’s doubtful if Donaldson would be as commercial today if not for his publicized adversarial relationship with Reagan, and the bond is growing stronger.

“The essence of the Reagan campaign is a never-ending string of spectacular stories created for television and designed to place the President in the midst of a huge throng of wildly cheering, patriotic Americans,” Donaldson reported in 1984 about the President stumping for reelection.

And the essence of the Donaldson campaign for book sales is a never-ending string of talk-show appearances.

Donaldson takes few prisoners on the beat, where he invented the White House yell--shouting at the usually inaccessible Reagan from afar--that some of his colleagues are now imitating. Wrote Washington Post syndicated columnist Richard Cohen in the New Republic:

“It is his voice that cuts insistently through the sound fudge of the revving presidential helicopter, that crashes the photo opportunity tea party with a stink bomb of a question, that soars into the picture demanding to know whatever it is we want to know.”

These days, the photo opportunities are of Donaldson’s design.

There he was recently on “Donahue,” seeming almost to revel in his own reputation for nastiness, wittily disarming stink bombs from Phil Donahue and the studio audience. “Listen, my dear, you’re talking to a war hero,” he kidded a woman who accused him of unfairly bullying Reagan. “So have a little respect for me.”

As the hour ended, the two “D’s” had merged into one as Donahue displayed Donaldson’s book and said: “This is real good.” That was the idea, after all.

As the only sit-down guest on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” Tuesday, Donaldson seemed relaxed and cooler than Carson, who spent part of the hour with his chin cradled in his hand, the way he does when he’s a little uneasy.

“Good to be here with you and with Santa Claus,” Donaldson quipped about Ed McMahon, who once dressed up as Santa at the White House and had Donaldson sit on his lap.

Hayohhhhhh!

And they were off in a glide. Carson liked the book. Carson gave Donaldson two enormous, loud ties to replace the red one he always wears. Carson and Donaldson collaborated on the standard interview. Donaldson recounted his career.

How easily Donaldson slid into this mode. And, in a way, how much he seemed like Reagan himself. Both men are charming. Both are amusing. Both are entertainers. Both talk about Reagan.

“The President . . . entertains us, Johnny,” Donaldson said. “He’s your toughest competition.” Sorry, Joan.

Soon Donaldson was giving the world his quivery Reagan impression. Hayohhhhhh! Soon Carson was delivering his own Reagan impression. (“Well, there you go again, Sam.”) Hayohhhhhh!

As he always does, Donaldson delivered mixed messages, insisting that he liked Reagan and believed that the President had a good mind when he wanted to use it, then going ahead and making Reagan the ridiculed punch line of his jokes.

When Carson wondered about reporters’ method of questioning Reagan, Donaldson replied: “You gotta find out what he has on his mind--if anything.” After the laughter subsided, Donaldson added--heh, heh--that he was referring to Reagan’s memory, not his intelligence.

He told Reagan story after Reagan story, how he has had to help Reagan with his pronunciation, how the President had gotten mixed up the day boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife visited the White House and met the media. Donaldson quoting Reagan: “I want to introduce you to my guest, Sugar Ray and Mrs. Ray.”

Hayohhhhhh!

Sometimes you have to wonder about Sam, who also is an interviewer/commentator on ABC’s Sunday-morning program “This Week With David Brinkley,” in addition to being the network’s chief voice from the White House.

Despite wearing so many hats, he contends that he still can cover the White House objectively, and maybe he can. But it gets harder and harder, as a viewer, to separate the White House Donaldson from the book-selling, Reagan-joking Donaldson who exploits for laughs the very President he has accused of exploitation.

By the end of Tuesday’s show, Carson was reading the blurb’s from Donaldson’s book jacket, and as the credits began to roll, Donaldson could be seen autographing a copy of his book.

For Johnny? For Ed? Not that it mattered, for on this stage, all the celebrities looked alike.