THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHTERY
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
DURING MUCH OF the Reagan Administration and all of the Bush years, Marlin Fitzwater presided over the rambunctious White House press corps.
He was a man whom Americans recognized from the evening news but never really knew: the paunchy, balding man with the red nose and the dark suit, behind the rostrum, hovering near the president.
The president's press secretary.
Fitzwater says he was the first press secretary to serve in two successive administrations. That makes ``Call the Briefing!: Reagan and Bush, Sam and Helen: A Decade with Presidents and the Press'' (Times Books/Random House, 379 pp. $25), his memoir of 1982 to 1992, an interesting look at recent history from the inside.
But in his account, Fitzwater - the man - remains an enigma. He briefly writes about his poverty-stricken Kansas childhood. And he mentions in passing that he married, had two children and divorced. Like the competent press secretary he was, Fitzwater deflects attention from himself in his book, focusing on his bosses.
And there were many.
Besides the two presidents he served, Fitzwater worked under seven chiefs of staff. He was a witness to the bitter departures of several embattled chiefs, including Don Regan, John Sununu and Sam Skinner.
Fitzwater gives a vivid account of the near impossibility of the task of constantly serving two masters - the president and the press corps.
At no time was that more of a problem than when George Bush collapsed from a heart problem during a weekend trip to Camp David in May 1991.
While the staff wanted to cover up the seriousness of the president's illness, Fitzwater says he argued for honesty.
``The history of presidential illness is replete with cover-up stories, from Roosevelt's paralysis to Kennedy's back medication to Eisenhower's heart attack. . . I was determined to do it right for President Bush. Sununu had to be reminded several times of the political ramifications if the public felt we were lying about the president's health.''
The Reagan-Bush years were not easy times for the official presidential spin doctor. Fitzwater faced the press daily during the Iran-Contra scandal, after Bush broke his ``read my lips'' pledge and during Bush's lackluster campaign for re-election.
Then there was the night when George Bush vomited into the lap of the prime minister of Japan and passed out.
It was up to Fitzwater to put a good face on the event.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Fitzwater's book is his deep affection for the quirky individuals who make up the White House press corps. He is particularly fond of Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas, the aging UPI reporter and dean of the corps.
``There is an internal barometer of performance in Helen that dictates how she covers the news,'' he writes, ``and what it means to be a journalist - no short cuts, no getting it secondhand. She is from the old school that has to `be there.' Rightly or wrongly I tried to follow her standard, to always be with the president.''
While there are several reporters who drew Fitzwater's ire - Mike Wallace, Dan Rather and Mary Tillotson - the villains in Fitzwater's book are members of the administrations: Caspar Weinberger and Sununu.
And Nancy Reagan emerges as a minor, but malevolent, character during the Reagan years.
``No one on the staff wanted to hear from the first lady because no one wanted to ever get in her sights,'' he writes. ``It had long since become a tenet of staff longevity that to offend Mrs. Reagan was suicidal. When I first went to Camp David in 1984 as deputy press secretary, Larry Speakes told me a successful weekend would be one in which Mrs. Reagan never learned my name.''
Throughout his book, Fitzwater remains the quintessential press secretary. Both presidents are portrayed as superb leaders, bedeviled by bumbling - sometimes sinister - staff and in Reagan's case, an interfering, vindictive wife.
And Fitzwater cleverly reveals little about himself - the person in the dark suit who watched in the wings during so much of history in the late 20th century. MEMO: Kerry Doughtery is a staff writer.
by CNB