The First Lady of the Press Corps

Come mid-November, a new American president will take office. As in the past, the job brings with it a world of responsibility - and, at some point, a showdown with Helen Thomas.

In the heady arena of U.S. politics, Thomas is the first lady of the White House press corps. Or to some, The Godmother.

Thomas has been covering presidents since John F. Kennedy’s administration and she still commands respect in Washington circles - and the White House press briefing room. She’s sparred with Nixon and parried with Reagan, and few reporters have gotten a twitchier squirm out of George W. Bush.

Footage of Bush’s befuddled response to a Thomas question regarding the military buildup to the Iraq war provides the opening moments of the original HBO film Thank You, Mr. President (tomorrow, TMN at 9 p.m.), an affectionate retrospective of the veteran reporter who has spent most of her life on the front lines of U.S. political coverage.

The 2003 clip in question finds the outgoing commander-in-chief greatly flustered by Thomas’s blunt query. His agitation is heightened by the fact she keeps pushing for an answer, which he obviously does not have.

Later in the program, there’s a clip of Thomas pressing Bush in 2006 about lives lost in Iraq, which elicits more stammering and Bush-style doublespeak; in the days to follow, Thomas earned a public rebuke from the White House press secretary and backlash from right-wing media. Being labelled a “pinhead” by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News meant Thomas had made her point.

“Access to the president doesn’t mean you’re going to get the truth,” says the veteran print reporter, now 88, in the program, which recalls her career as White House correspondent for the wire service United Press International and, more recently, the Hearst newspaper chain, which runs her once-weekly column.

Still wickedly sharp of memory, Thomas proves a charming raconteur in the film, which naturally includes her personal reflections on each U.S. president post-JFK. Thomas remembers his successor Lyndon B. Johnson as “sadistic” for his habit of speaking almost inaudibly and insistence on taking reporters on long walks around the White House lawn.

And after Johnson came Richard Milhous Nixon, whose presidency was shortened by the Watergate scandal. “Once you lie, your credibility is shot,” Thomas says simply. “If you lie too many times, then it’s over.”

In a personal aside, Thomas recalls bumping into Nixon at the White House, shortly before he was scheduled to address the nation on Aug. 9, 1974. “I said, ‘Good luck tonight, Mr. President.’ He said, ‘Pray for me.’ ” Hours later, Nixon resigned from office.

The presidential post was then handed to Gerald Ford. “He never really aspired to be president, but lightning struck,” Thomas says. “He turned out to be a good president because he really restored confidence in the Oval Office and a sense of security in the country after Watergate.”

Next came Jimmy Carter, who Thomas believes “missed his calling. He would have been a great minister.” Ronald Reagan was genial though sparing in his dealings with the press. “They [Reagan advisers James Baker, Ed Meese and Michael Deaver] taught him to say, ‘This is not a press conference.’ They had him quite trained on that,” Thomas says.

The subsequent Republican president, George H.W. Bush, was even less generous with the press. “At the tail end, both he and Mrs. Bush began to think we were the cause of all their troubles. So the press was not liked at all.”

The Bill Clinton years, recalls Thomas, were chaotic and marked a new era in which the president’s personal life and sex life was laid open to public scrutiny. “Clinton was denied his legitimacy as president by the ultra-right in this country,” she says. “He was asked so many personal questions … No president has ever been subjected to that kind of tyranny.”

Which takes us back, of course, to George W. Bush. Thomas’s boldness in challenging him on Iraq casualties resulted first in a move to the back of the pressroom, followed by a temporary ban. “There’s a blackout now, I believe, until the end of his term,” Thomas says with a chuckle.

But the sitting president is about to vacate the office. Thomas has been on sick leave most of this summer with a respiratory infection, but is scheduled to resume her reporting duties by Labour Day.

The documentary was produced and directed by Rory Kennedy - daughter of Bobby and Ethel - whose uncle held an abiding fondness for the lady reporter with the fashionable bob. The film’s title comes from the signoff phrase coined by Thomas during her first stint with the White House press corps - back in the heady Camelot days of John F. Kennedy’s short-lived presidency.

Rory Kennedy spent five days interviewing Thomas at her Washington home; her detailed memories and anecdotes are accompanied by archival footage culled from five decades of presidential-style media coverage.

The profile touches briefly on Thomas’s personal background: Born in Detroit, she grew up the daughter of Syrian immigrant parents, neither of whom could read or write. She wrote for her high-school paper and later moved to Washington and began working for United Press International in 1943.

Working her way up the ladder, Thomas was the first female member of the White House Correspondents Association and was originally assigned to the corridors of power to file stories on Jackie and the kids. But her unassuming yet persistent manner soon took her in the front row of the press room.

“Helen represents what is necessary to make our democracy function at its highest level: journalists asking tough questions of presidents,” Rory Kennedy says. “It’s still the only way the public can get the information to make educated choices.”

The film’s closing moments feature still shots of the empty Oval Office and an abandoned White House press briefing room - as though in anticipation of the arrival of the new president. Thomas closes her life story with sage advice for the next generation of White House correspondents: “You should always ask what’s on your mind,” she says in her straightforward way. “You’ve got to be a little daring, and you might incur some wrath from the powers that be, but so what? If you don’t ask the questions, they don’t get asked.”

By Andrew Ryan

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