The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Television's sultan of splutter, ABC's Sam Donaldson, walked out of the East Room and, as usual, was still talking. "The fire's gone out," he boomed, his words cutting through the noise and confusion of the mass exodus from Ronald Reagan's first news conference in three months.

Whether Sam meant the fire had gone out of Reagan or out of the media, or both, was not clear. Later Sam allowed as how he meant the media had barely laid a glove on the Great Communicator through 37 minutes and 25 questions.

Sam's ears and eyes were, perhaps, telling him something about this hoary device known as the presidential news conference. It is a dinosaur that deserves burial, with a little remembrance softly read about how it used to be when reporters gathered around a President in search of information instead of entertainment. Maybe Sam sensed that the pulse of the great press conference is steadily weakening.

Last week, as so often over these past 20 years, more than 200 reporters, cameramen and technicians crowded into the East Room on an otherwise perfectly lovely night. Eight women wore red dresses to gain a minute advantage in the desperate bid for recognition by the President. Another wore a red-white-and- blue stocking cap set off with blue lipstick. A few male contenders looked suspiciously as if they had blow-dried their hair and patted on a bit of makeup. The U.P.I.'s veteran Helen Thomas blinded them all in a frock with patches of blue, orange, raspberry and green. "We'd better get a fire extinguisher," said Press Secretary Larry Speakes. Portraits of George and Martha Washington stared down on sound technicians who padded below in their Nikes. With the lights full ablaze, the atmosphere was, as Donaldson suggested, something like a prizefight.

Indeed, that day a large part of Washington had paused and, like gladiators preparing for a mighty struggle, gathered in clusters to pump each other up. Some news organizations crafted questions that might flummox or embarrass the President. A few of the old-line institutions like the Associated Press still caution their reporters to seek enlightenment rather than drama, but they stand in a minority. More of the participants at these events believe that both their editors and the public want to see a confrontation. The White House works to avoid it, so few surprises emerge, though there is endless blathering later about the color of the President's skin, the timbre of his voice and what this word or that phrase meant compared with what he said someplace else. A little of that is worthy grist: e.g., Reagan's complexion. Three days later the President went to Bethesda Naval Hospital for his first checkup since his cancer operation in July, and the results made news. The doctors reported a "100% complete recovery" from the surgery.

Last Tuesday, Reagan began the news conference with a spirited stand on free trade, an open invitation to a question that would give him a chance to vent his ire against the Democrats. Instead, reporters instantly changed the subject to the coming summit meeting with the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev. From there they wandered back and forth through a dozen subjects ranging from AIDS to spies. Too few questioners seemed to hear, or care about, any answers.

Sam Donaldson's question ("Is it necessary, do you think, that you and Gorbachev like each other at the summit in order to do business?") had been answered five minutes earlier ("Not that we'll learn to love each other. We won't, but . . . we have to live in the world together"), but Donaldson wanted his moment with his question.

Reagan seems to understand very well that some of his questioners are not after facts, they are after him. Thus, like a good running back, he has developed all the moves to get him through the scrimmage without being tackled. Last week he sidestepped about half the questions and answered only those for which the answers were already known. That is a waste of everybody's time.