Candor at the White House

"I wonder if there have been any discussions of a successor to Adlai Stevenson?" a newsman asked bluntly just 24 hours after Stevenson's sudden death. Had George Reedy still been White House Press Secretary, such a query would have probably drawn a curt "No comment"--plus a suggestion, perhaps, that it was indelicate in its timing. But Bill Moyers, only a week in the job, took a puff on a slim cigar and answered evenly that the President had already talked over possible replacements with his staff and would not fill the post until after the funeral services for Stevenson.

This calm and candid response put an abrupt end to rumors running through Washington. It also marked a change of style in the White House press room that was particularly appreciated by the Washington press corps. For months, its members had been griping about President Johnson's management of the news and Reedy's inability to give them the information they thought they had coming to them.

Advantage of Intimacy. Once Reedy quit to undergo a series of foot operations, the President set out to repair his tattered press relations by putting one of his most trusted aides in the job. While only briefly a newsman, Moyers, at 31, has worked for Johnson in one way or another for most of the last eleven years. A graduate of the University of Texas and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, he served as deputy director of the Peace Corps before he moved into the White House.

Moyers' performance in his new job is largely shaped by his relationship with the President. Johnson gave Moyers' predecessor little leeway. Wary of the presidential temper, Reedy even hesitated to reveal Johnson's traveling plans, much to the annoyance of the White House correspondents. As an intimate of the President, Moyers not only attends staff meetings, he also helps make policy. So he has no trouble fielding questions about major matters at his twice-a-day briefings.

Man in the Middle. Pacing back and forth behind his desk, occasionally stopping to stare through the tall windows at the White House lawn, Moyers composes his answers coolly, without hesitation. He never says, "I think," or "I believe." He knows. He took much of the sting out of a recent speech by Senator Robert Kennedy belaboring the Administration for not doing more to check the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Said Moyers when queried: "If you go back and look at the President's speech at Johns Hopkins, when he said we are not going to build the kind of world we want with bullets and bombs, you will find this consistent with Senator Kennedy. This is the policy of the Government."

Though he resisted taking it, Moyers now seems to be enjoying his new job as much as the press enjoys him. "You never do the same thing twice," he says. "Every day's sunrise brings new problems." But the honeymoon is not likely to last indefinitely. The President and the press will eventually clash again, and Moyers may well find himself the man in the middle. Until that happens, the new secretary promises to be an ideal answer to the presidential press problem.

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