How has the White House press corps managed to keep up?
It’s very hard. There’s very little you can do when they control the information. But I think every once in a while the press knows enough to protest. It’s not their information; it’s ours. It belongs to the American people. What did you think about the White House press secretary’s announcement that the Obama Administration was going to adopt a sort of “take no prisoners” approach to pundits and media critics that they plan on singling them out specifically? Not more than any other President. Nobody likes criticism, and nobody likes to feel attacked, of course. But I think it behooves all Administrations to tell the truth as much as they can, to bring the people with them. You cannot have a democracy without informed people. It shouldn’t be a shock when the public finally learns things. You wrote in the book that the press corps routinely gossiped about JFK’s “extracurricular activities,” as you worded it, but you never wrote about it. Nowadays, though, that rulebook has been thrown o
