Pierpoint rates pre:Jidertts ort style, rap_llOrl tvith .reporters and substance 1\;~ K.\ THY SilOI\ ES In his "View from the White House Steps" last :1ight . CBS newscaster Robert Pierpoint said he rated highest Dwight D. Eisenhower's style, John F. Kennedy's rapport with repor– ters and Lyndon B. Johnson's substance. In describing each of the five Presidents whom he has covered to the American Studies Program audience in Harding College's main auditorium. Pierpoint applied the style– rapport-with -reporters– substance criteria. He illustrated what he called Eisenhower's ''high degree of m·oral integrity" with Ike's duty– bound constitutonal support ·o( the Supreme Court's 1954 in~ tegration decision although "the whole scene troubled him" . The military man combined this integrity with physical courage when he attended a NATO conference in Pa~is 10 days after suffering a stroke and then returned to hold a press conference on the trip although he had n(lt recovered from pronunciation problems and partial face paralysis induced by -the stroke. ; "He did it because he wanted to show the American peoole that he was capable o-f ~i~g their President by meeting with those heads of state and returning to report to them. He would ·have resigned if he could not have done that," Pierpoint stated · Tile veteran ~ewsman.said that K~nnedy 's "new sense of vi ::ah '' pervaded the · White H~use making it "a much more exciting place to work". Pierpoint said th~re was ··easy access to the administration 's policymakers" including the President who "liked the give-and-take of press conferences and intellectural discussions with reeorters about the na lion's problems". Even so, Pierpoint noted that he would leave a live, televised Kennedy press conference realizing that "he managed to tell me exactly what he wanted to and no more like any politician". He added that the moods of the 'Camelot era's" Firs! Lady 6•.ernated between warm charm · 4/Jd "dead silence" but that " this country owes Jackie Kennedy Onassis our united thanks for her actions after her husband's assassination ... If thatlady could stand up under all the pressure on her, then I felt I could too ... She kept the country going those three to four days when his body was lying in state". Lapsing into an imitation LBJ drawl, Pierpoint , a native Californian, stated that Johnson as a veteran Congressman "knew how to manipulate the government and the system to get things done". "No name will t be written in larger letters in our history than Lyndon Johnson who accomplished vast domestic reforms during the first half of his . presidency," the newsman said . Regrettably though, it was Johnson who. made "the tragic na tiona) error-of getting us into \'ietnam'' - -:a decision which divided the country and ruined the President's plans for a second full term, Pierpoint said. After telling a hilarious anecdote about his private luncheon and ensuing afternoon with LBJ. Pierpoint said the story's moral was, "Although we tend to think of our Presidents as lofty men. they are just plain folks . And I think Johnson was trying to show me that Presidents take off their pants and put on their pajamas just like the rest of us." Pierpoint noted a good omen at the beginning of Richard Nixon's first term when the "anti– intellectual, ordinate Reoublican was talking about Democrat Woodrow Wilson <c college professor l as his favorite President". "It was as if he no longer feared to say what he believed," he stated. But the newsman observed that Nixon's ''real problem was his own strange personality which instead of flowering in the White House retreated and he became almost like a fortress". Stating that "proximity to power is power itself", Pierpoint attributed Nixon's hermit ad– ministration to H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Nixon's convicted lieutenants . When asked when he first suspected that l\'ixon was in· valved in the Watergate breakin, QUESTI ONER QUESTIONE D - CBS newscaster Robert Pierpoint last night put himse lf in the reverse– position of questionee in an informal "press con– feren~e" after h's Ameri an Studies Pr~gram presentation. ( Photo by Mike James - Harding PR) Pierpoint rephrased the question The newscaster said he did not to when he first suspected Nixon believe in the "conspiracy theory was a crook and <Jnswered that of history or the conspiracy the man's first California theory behind the assassination campaigns were ugly smears. of John F . Kennedy and the Pierpoint added that when recent assassination attempts on press secretary Ron Ziegler the life of President Ford". All retorted to a Key Biscayne have been the work of "one assemblage of reporters that deranged individual", he stated. l"ixon did not comment on "thirdrate burglaries" there wasn't ·•a reporter in the room who did not suspect that President Nixon was.. behind it". Tagging Gerald Ford as a "decent, pleasant, moral, hardworking individual, the kind of guy you'd like to have for a neighbor or friend", Pierpoint opined that former California Governor Ronald Reagan would pose a great threat to Ford's possible Presidential nomination in 1976. Searcy Daily Citizen Searcy, Arkansas = Robert Pierpoint, CBSW~House corrapond.ent, will speak on '"l'be View from the White House step " during the Amepcu Studi tipOnSOI program Delrt Tbunday rugbt. i'~ /; Pierp "nt will addr~Ss students·;,Arkansan·s Robert'Pierpoint, White Bouse correspondent for CBS television will speak Oct. 2 at 7:30 p.m. in the main auditorium in a ~tation s~ by the American Studies Program. , As CBS White House correspondent since 1957, Pierpoint has traveled more than one Dilllion miles withPresidents Eisellbower, Kennedy, Jolmson Nixon andForc:l. He &as beeD an eye witness to every major national and international event from tbe 1960 Paris Summit Conference with Eisenhower, President Kennedy ' s assassination to this week's attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. An honor graduate in ecooomics from tbeUniversity~ Redlands, Pierpoint was a freelance broadcaster in Stockholm, Sweden before joining CBS in 1M9. He covered the Korean War and was Far East Bw-eauchief for CBS before be~ appointed White House eorrispo~Jdeol. Tickets fer Thursday nigbt's program are free and all seats are reserved. Tickets can be picked up at Vice-presiaent Billy Ray Cox's office ib American Studies 118 starting Mmday. Pierpoint's presentation· Will be one of a series of nationally known speakers who will be brought to cam(& this year in coonection wilb tbe American Studies Program. BobAnderson; from the Foundation fol' EConomic Education, will ad– dreas the group No.v. 3. Speakers sebeduled .for oext semester are Ralph de Tolando, national syndicated columnist; Dr. Walter Judd, intemational expert 011 China and Russia ; General WUHam Westmorelaod. Otben that are tentltlvely scheduled are Z. D. Bolmer, ,;Jresident of Gulf Oil Co.; Dr. W. Phillip Gram, professor or economics at Texas A & M University; John 'Gardner, chairman for the booklet "Common Cause;" .and Congressman John M. Ashbrook from·Ohio. · , ....
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