The Press: The Romance

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It was really turning into quite a romance: the U.S. press, which Democrats have long loved to label Republican, could hardly restrain itself in its fondness for President-elect John F. Kennedy, his policies, his appointments, his family and his pastimes.

As Kennedy parceled out his announcements of Cabinet appointments, he was greeted with a chorus of approbation. The New York Times, whose campaign endorsement of Kennedy had been singularly tepid, warmed to his appointees as the list lengthened: the choice of "Soapy" Williams was merely "good," but Dean Rusk's was "first-rate" and John J. McCloy's "splendid." The Montgomery, Ala. Advertiser took conservative Southern comfort in the new first team: "So far, the Advertiser couldn't be more comforted were Nixon the President-elect and making the Cabinet appointments. Which statement is a horse laugh at the officious, twittering host who self-righteously wear the badge stenciled liberal. Kennedy has fled this loose company." Said the Detroit News: "For good team-picking, we cannot remember an incoming President who has done as well as Kennedy." And Columnist Joseph Alsop almost flung his Cassandra robes into the flames: "Unless the signs deceive, a new Administration with an exceptional level of human competence will be the final result of the methodical manhunt that President-elect Kennedy has been conducting."

"Call It Trivial." Where the pundits of the press have long underscored the importance of ideas and idealism in U.S. Government, now they praised Kennedy for his grasp of parochial politics. Glowed Columnist Doris Fleeson: "Kennedy is yielding every minor point to Vice President-elect Johnson and the Rayburri-Mansfield leadership of Congress as the New Frontiers approach. His apparent strategy is to give them enough rope, which is the classic maneuver of power politics. They are being consulted and shown every deference." Wrote the New York Post's liberal Columnist Max Lerner: "Call it a trivial item, but it is not without its meaning: I am speaking of the ritual President-elect Kennedy has established of meeting the press out in the open with each of his Cabinet appointees, hatless and coatless, in sunshine or frost. It could easily become a fetish. But it is one way, and an elective one, of counteracting the world image of Western decadence that the Communists have tried to spread."

Press approval extended to the President-elect's personal life. After word got out that Kennedy bought suits tailor-made in London, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram clucked reprovingly over criticism of such practice. When Kennedy forswore golf except while on official vacations, the New York Post, which for years had been needling Republican Dwight Eisenhower for his golf, professed itself "dismayed." And the New York Times indignantly blamed the U.S. for this presidential sacrifice: "The nation might well worry its conscience over whether it has been having so much uncharitable fun with presidential golf that it has made a trip around the course a political liability too great for a President to bear."