LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Pierre Salinger : A Former Press Secretary Explains Shift from Campaign to White House

Pierre Salinger is well-equipped to explain how it happens during a presidential transition that a scrapping candidate is transformed into a dignified leader. As press secretary to John F. Kennedy, Salinger was the closest observer of the senator’s passage through the 1960 campaign to the White House. This was a year in which, as Salinger remembers, Kennedy shed the image of a callow and spoiled young man and acquired a patina of presidential gravitas.

Salinger’s own career has been incredibly varied in and out of journalism. After graduating from college and completing a stint in the Navy, where he served during World War II, Salinger won his stripes doing investigative stories for the San Francisco Chronicle and, later, for Collier’s magazine. Salinger was working on a series on Jimmy Hoffa when Collier’s folded in 1955, but continued the story as chief investigator for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee.

In 1959, Sen. John F. Kennedy hired Salinger as his press secretary. Salinger continued in the job during Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, and in to the White House, where he was instantly recognized by his bushy eyebrows.

After Kennedy’s assassination, Salinger stayed on for a time with Lyndon B. Johnson, but left over his unhappiness with the way Johnson dealt with the press. The same year, 1964, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr. of California to fill an unexpired term. He ran for reelection, but was defeated by George L. Murphy later that year.

After a brief time as a business executive, Salinger returned to journalism as a contributor to the French weekly, L’Express, in 1973, and was hired by ABC news in Paris in 1977. Since then, Salinger, now 67, has won numerous awards, including the prestigious George Polk award, the George Foster Peabody Award, for his work on ABC’s “America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations,” about behind-the-scenes efforts to free the U.S. hostages in Iran, and an Emmy. He is the author of several books, including “With Kennedy.”

Salinger spoke by phone from London, where he is now based as ABC’s chief foreign correspondent.

Question: Would George Stephanopoulos be a good press secretary?

Answer: I’m sure he could do that job. But I think he’s played such a major role in communications in the campaign that he’s likely to keep doing that.

When I was in the White House, we didn’t really have a communications director. The press secretary took care of everything. But in the years that followed, most Presidents have had a communications office, which has been the overall look at how the government is dealing with the outside world, and the press secretary is only one part of it. Because Stephanopoulos is an important man, who has handled this thing with great intelligence, he’s more likely to be the communications director than the press secretary.

Q: Do you think it’s possible for a press secretary to actually bring about positive coverage for a President?

A: I think the press secretary can have an influence on a President, and convince him on critical issues. John Kennedy was a man who had a press background of his own. He had enormous contacts with journalists. I once said to him, “You don’t really need a press secretary. You can handle the job yourself.” He said, “Well, Idon’t have the time to do it, that’s whyyou’re doing it.” But he very much understood the relationship between the press and government. I can’t remember any other President since then who’s had that understanding. One of the things I discussed with Kennedy at length is that, except for material that can have an influence on the national security of the country, we have to be open to the press and tell them everything we know.

Q: Were those Kennedy’s own instincts?

A: That was Kennedy’s instinct.

Q: Is it Clinton’s? Clinton has cultivated long-term relationships with reporters, and understands how the press works.

A: Well, it is true his campaign has been very open to the press. He’s been working with them in a very effective way. But the day he goes into the White House, we have to see how he’s going to handle it. Because it’s somewhat different when you get in the White House and when you’re just running a campaign.

Q: Are there any comparisons between the way Clinton works the press and the way Lyndon Johnson did?

A: Absolutely none. Actually, that was one of the reasons I left the White House. I got rather frustrated with Johnson’s views on the press. I had been working with Kennedy, who I thought was very open to the press. . . . Kennedy was followed by a number of Presidents who hated the press and couldn’t stand working with them. Johnson was one of them.

Q: Does the President acquire a new gravitas once elected? Clinton seems to be portrayed far differently the last few weeks.

A: No question. It’s really, really a three-stage operation. The first stage is winning the election. The second stage is the period between winning the election and becoming President. And the third stage is when he becomes President.

What he does when he gets to that office is going to be critical to his future. In the first three months of the Kennedy Administration, we went through a major disaster, the Bay of Pigs. When it came to an end, Kennedy went on TV and said, “I’m the President of the United States, I made this decision, I made this mistake.” And that, really, solved the problem almost immediately. Two weeks after, there was a Gallup Poll showing he had about 80% support of the American people. I’ll never forget him calling me in the office and saying, “Did you see that poll this morning?”And I said, “Yes, I did.” “Well,” he said, “I hope I don’t have to keep doing stupid things like that to remain popular.”

Q: Do you think the President sounds different after the election because of the new tone he assumes, or because the public perceives him differently?

A: Well, I don’t think Clinton sounds very different. After all, he is still operating in some respects, in terms of the campaign, making appearances, as he did when he visited the black neighborhood in Washington. But there is a difference, once a man realizes that he’s going to be the leader of the country, that he’s going to make it. There’s that kind of confidence that enters in. This happened to Kennedy much earlier because he was fairly sure he was going to win--even though the election was ultimately very close. Clinton was not as sure until the last two or three weeks, then he started sounding more like Kennedy.

Q: What happens to the way reporters view the President as opposed to the candidate? There seems to be a different frame of reference.

A: Oh, absolutely. When you look back to 1960, when the campaign started in New Hampshire, we were covered by about 20 reporters. By the time we got to Massachusetts two days before the election, we were covered by 400 reporters. Obviously, the press begins to look more and more closely at a man who has been elected President. From the moment he was elected, the focus on him became dramatically different.

Q: How did Kennedy handle it as opposed to Clinton?

A: I would say he handled himself a little differently, because only about three days after he was elected, we went to Florida, and took 10 days off. Although we took the press with us, we really went into a rest period. That’s something Clinton has not done, even though he had this four-day holiday in California. He has been much more into working.

And one big difference between Clinton and Kennedy is that Kennedy had created a transition team before he was elected. Clark Clifford--who is now, unfortunately, not as well seen as he was in those days--had spent three months doing a study of potential choices for different Cabinet posts, and other posts. We had a meeting the day after the election, where we started to look at some of the potentials for some of these jobs. That’s something I don’t think Clinton did right away.

Q: How does Clinton compare to Kennedy as a public speaker and performer?

A: I thought he developed into a very effective speaker, and that was one of the key points of the Kennedy campaign. The second point is that he handled the debates brilliantly--something Kennedy did also.

Q: Do you see Clinton modeling his style on Kennedy’s to any extent?

A: Not really. I think, obviously, he looked back upon the day he shook Kennedy’s hand as a kid. And I think he respects Kennedy’s presidency, and knows that, despite all of the rubbish that has been published about his private life, that there is still an enormous admiration for Kennedy in the United States. Obviously, he wanted to have some link with it. But I wouldn’t go so far as some people have in comparing his campaign to Kennedy’s, except on a few points.

Q: What points?

A: One is that Kennedy’s major point was that in his campaign he was looking to the future of America--that we had arrived after World War II at a point where America was blocked. Kennedy argued strongly for the future of the country, something Clinton did very effectively, too. He wasn’t looking back as much as he was looking forward.

And, of course, as a joke, Clinton is the only candidate since Kennedy who lost his voice in the campaign. He didn’t lose it in the latter part, he lost it in the primaries, in fact, not long before the Democratic Convention, and more seriously than Clinton did, because there was about a 10-day period when he would hold press conferences and he couldn’t even answer the questions. He would write the answers, and I would read them.

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Q: Does Clinton have Kennedy’s sense of humor?

A: Oh, yes, I think he does. He has a good sense of humor, and an effective wife, which Kennedy also did. The light in America is quite different 32 years after the 1960 election. We’re dealing with different issues, different problems, a different future. But at the same time, let’s not forget that the Kennedy election was a change of generations. Eisenhower was a very old guy when he left, and Kennedy was very young. We’ve had a change of generations again with Clinton getting elected.

Q: Some people have seen the press coddling Clinton. Do you think that’s true?

A: I think in any campaign, particularly if it is run well by the people around the candidate, you can create very close relations with the press. I dramatically changed the system of how we handled the campaign in 1960. For example, up to that time, journalists had to stand and listen to speeches and write notes. I put in a team that recorded Kennedy’s speeches and we put out the texts 20 or 30 minutes after he spoke, which allowed the journalists to go around the crowds and interview people.

The second important thing was that 1960 was the first campaign in which journalists could check in for the trip and never have to worry about the hotel room, their bags or anything. We just wanted to create a situation which was simpler for the press to live through the coverage. I recall that the Nixon campaign got very upset about our operation, because they weren’t doing the same thing, and they found the press was much more relaxed covering Kennedy.

Q: Did you change things in the White House?

A: My predecessor (James) Haggerty had put through a policy that no journalist could see anybody in the White House without going through the press office first. I eliminated that. In other words, journalists could have access to aides to the President without going through me. And as a matter of fact, some journalists who had private connections with the President could even contact him personally without going through my office.

Q: Is that how it might be under Clinton?

A: It’s very likely to be that way.