The Kingdom and the Power (2 page)

Now, ten years and four sons later, Margaret and Clifton Daniel were enjoying the summer in Bedford, and Daniel was enjoying a new sense of being somebody other than Harry Truman’s son-in-law. Daniel was finally getting singular recognition as an important figure in journalism. Magazine articles had recently featured him, he had just made the new edition of
Current Biography
, and a speech he had delivered a month ago to the World Press Institute, a speech about a tense scene within the
Times
building prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, received nearly a full page of coverage in
The Times
itself. It had been a remarkable speech. It
told of
Times
editors fuming and disagreeing with one another over how the preinvasion story should be played on the front page on that particular evening in 1961. Originally, Daniel recalled, the story had been scheduled for the lead position on page one. But then the publisher of
The Times
, Orvil Dryfoos, following the advice of his close friend James Reston, ordered the story toned down, moved to a less prominent place on the page, its headline minimized, and any reference to the imminence of the invasion eliminated. It was in the national interest to withhold certain vital facts from the American people, including the CIA involvement, Dryfoos and Reston felt, but other
Times
editors strongly disagreed. One of them, according to Daniel’s speech, became so infuriated that he quivered with emotion and turned “dead white” and demanded that Dryfoos himself come down from the publisher’s office and personally order
The Times
’ self-censorship. Dryfoos did, justifying it on grounds of national security and concern for the safety of the men preparing to offer their lives on the beaches of Cuba. But after the invasion had failed, Daniel said in his speech, even President Kennedy conceded that perhaps
The Times
had been overly protective of American interests; if
The Times
had printed all it knew about the Cuban venture beforehand, Kennedy suggested, the invasion might have been canceled and the bloody fiasco avoided.

What was most interesting about Daniel’s speech was not the presumption that the mere printing of words in
The Times
could stop a military invasion, a notion acceptable to many people who respect
The Times
’ persuasive power in Washington; rather it was that
The Times
, in publishing the full text of Daniel’s speech, had inadvertently given new insight into itself. It had thus admitted for the first time the existence of discord among its editors, of fuming and fretting in the newsroom, and this undoubtedly was a startling revelation to many readers who had never before conceived of
The New York Times
’ offices in quite this way. They had probably imagined the interior of
The Times
to be closer to its prevailing image, a cathedral of quiet dignity, the home of the Good Gray Lady, and perhaps years ago
The Times
was more like this. But now, in the Nineteen-sixties, it was not.

On the surface things seemed fine—circulation was higher than ever, advertising linage was up, money was pouring in, the newspaper was expanding in prestige and power. But as the paper had grown it had become less manageable, office empires had flourished,
and during the last few years a quiet revolution had been going on within
The Times
, a revolution distinguished for its tactics and intrigue, and Daniel’s speech had hinted at only part of it. It was more than diversity of opinion, the vanity and taste of men at the top; there were also philosophical differences dividing older
Times
men who feared that the paper was losing touch with its tradition and younger men who felt trapped by tradition, and there was reappraisal and doubt even among members of the family that owned
The Times
, the heirs of the great patriarch, Adolph Ochs, who had come up to New York from Chattanooga before the turn of the century and had purchased the declining
Times
and revived it. When Ochs bought the paper in 1896 its daily paid circulation was down to 9,000, less than
The Times
had when it was ten days old in 1851. At Ochs’s death, in 1935, the daily circulation was 465,000. This figure now has nearly doubled, and there have been several changes for the better since the death of Adolph Ochs. But in many ways
The Times
remains Ochs’s paper, his shrine, his words of wisdom being reechoed by old sages still under his influence.

A photograph of Ochs, white-haired and imperious, hangs on Daniel’s office wall, as it does in the offices of all other top editors. A bronze statue of Ochs stands in the lobby and also up on the fourteenth floor where the stockholders and directors meet, and Ochs’s credo—“To Give the News Impartially, Without Fear or Favor”—is on display in various places around the building and in
Times
bureaus around the nation and world. Until relatively recent years the editors who had risen within the institution had been those most reverential toward Ochs fundamentalism, and the highest-paid reporters were those who were the most objective and accurate, aware of the weight of each word in
The Times
. This awareness often stifled their writing style. They might have written with lucidity and freedom on other publications but on
The Times
they felt the weight and became overly cautious, rigid, and dull. Dullness had been no sin during the Ochs era. Better to be a little dull than to dazzle and distort, the thinking went, and as long as they remained faithful to the principles of Ochs, a sense of responsibility and caution, the old morality, they need not worry. They were secure on
The Times
. They were paid well, treated fairly, protected from the sham and uncertainties of the outside world. Economic recessions and depressions did not cut off their income, and threats to world survival seemed not to disturb the
inner peace of the
Times
building.
The Times
stood apart, solid and unshakable. If it sometimes seemed a bit crusty and out of touch with popular trends, this was not so bad. It was, like Ochs, never frivolous. It was almost never caught out on a limb.
The New York Times
was a timeless blend of past and present, a medieval modern kingdom within the nation with its own private laws and values and with leaders who felt responsibility for the nation’s welfare but were less likely to lie than the nation’s statesmen and generals.
The Times
was the bible, emerging each morning with a view of life that thousands of readers accepted as reality. They accepted it on the simple theory that what appeared in
The Times
must be true, and this blind faith made monks of many men on
The Times
. Many. Not all. There had been
Times
men who were less than truthful, or truthful in their fashion, or not truthful in the journalistic sense, which is a truth that is limited but verifiable. Or they had perhaps been
too
truthful, so controversial as not to be in the national interest or the newspaper’s interest, which was often the same thing.
The New York Times
, after all, grew with the nation during the two great wars, prospered with it, and
The Times
and the nation were equally committed to capitalism and democracy, and what was bad for the nation was often just as bad for
The Times
.

And it was this thinking, Ochs’s ghost of caution, that had come filtering into the newsroom on that night in 1961 when
The Times
decided not to publish all it knew about the Bay of Pigs invasion. The decision had been debated, accepted in one corner of the newsroom, damned in another, but it had finally prevailed. Orvil Dryfoos,
The Times
’ publisher and husband of Ochs’s first and prettiest granddaughter, and James Reston,
The Times
’ bureau chief in Washington and star of the staff, had teamed up to tone down the story, and in so doing they had reaffirmed once again the bond between them, a personal and philosophical compatibility that was Reston’s main source of power in the New York office.

It was not surprising that Dryfoos would be so fond of Reston personally and so respectful of Reston’s judgment. Even before he had known Reston well he had admired Reston’s writing style, which was bright and informal, different from
The Times
’ and yet complementary to it. And not long after Dryfoos had left Wall Street in 1942, six months after his fortunate marriage, to begin his career on
The Times
, Reston had left reporting temporarily to
serve as an executive assistant to Dryfoos’ father-in-law, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the handsome man who in 1917 had married Ochs’s daughter and only child—and upon Ochs’s death in 1935 Sulzberger had assumed command of
The Times
, ruling it for the next twenty-six years, until stepping aside for Dryfoos in 1961, with a particular modesty and self-consciousness that comes from marrying into the Ochs dynasty and moving among senior
Times
men who had made it the hard way. But
The Times
prospered under Sulzberger, as it would under Dryfoos, because both men had the wisdom to guide
The Times
gently and the money to resist impropriety, and both men maintained enough of the Ochsian atmosphere to attract and keep employees who were dedicated and talented, and none was more dedicated and talented than James Reston.

A short, dark-haired man with a spry step and an air of self-assurance that was never graceless, Reston had been born in 1909 to poor and pious parents in Clydebank, Scotland. When he was eleven his parents immigrated to the United States, settling in Ohio, and Reston attended public schools but was undistinguished as a student, neglecting his books for the golf course. Soon he was scoring in the seventies and winning tournaments and he could have become a professional; but his mother, who greatly influenced him, was opposed—“Make something of yourself!” she cried—and with some financial assistance from a rich man for whom he had caddied, Reston got through the University of Illinois. Though he was a slow starter, his dream unfocused, he possessed tremendous energy and ambition, and when he finally concentrated on journalism he shot up through the system more swiftly and smoothly than any young man of his generation. But despite the success that would enable him to meet the great thinkers of his time, and would eventually make them as eager to meet him, Reston never forgot his impoverished past and the circumstances that allowed him to be where he was. He was a poor boy to whom America had indeed been a land of opportunity, and out of this grew a gratitude, a patriotism that made him a better convert than a critic. He was clearly an American advocate and, even as he matured, he would never achieve the universal scope of a Walter Lippmann. Columns by Reston on national or foreign affairs often reflected the pardonable prejudice of the sportswriter he had once been. He was reluctant to condemn the home side, even when it made the errors, or to concede that the local heroes also played dirty sometimes when
they had to win. Occasionally he seemed almost naive, seeing only righteousness and never greed in American ambition, and somehow suggesting that there were probably more good guys in the CIA than in the spy ranks of the enemy. But he was at least never cynical and always readable, and this made him just right for
The New York Times
, where cynicism would not be tolerated, Ochs having detested it, and where readability was often rare. And there was finally in Reston’s style an element far more significant than his writing skill or wit, and this was his persuasive tone of moralism and idealism that brought to his readers the inner elevation of a good Sunday sermon—James Reston was something of a preacher. His strict Scotch Presbyterian mother had wanted him to become a preacher, and as a
Times
man he had become one, his column being the podium from which he could spread his Calvinist view of life throughout the land, thrilling thousands with his sound logic and clarity, influencing students, educators, and politicians, sometimes infuriating such presidents as Eisenhower, who once asked, “Who the hell does Reston think he is, telling me how to run the country?” Reston expected great things from the mighty, not only muscle and heart but also some piety and nobility of spirit; and yet when they failed him, as they most often did, he did not damn them but rather foresaw signs of redemption and hope. This was Reston’s special appeal. He communicated hope. The front-page headlines were overcast with gloom and doom, but turning to Reston’s column made the world seem brighter. Or, if not brighter, at least less confused. He could somehow cut through all the complex facts and figures, the allegations and lies and illusions of daily life and put his finger on a central point that suddenly brought everything into sharp focus, making it clear and understandable. There was little negativism or doubt in his vision, and thus his America was a positive place of right-thinking people, and God was on our side—it was as it had been during World War II.

In those days, twenty-five years ago, Reston had been a young political reporter in Washington, and before that a war correspondent in London during the Blitz, living with his Midwestern wife and baby son on the edge of destruction and rubble, working among a generation of American journalists profoundly influenced by the spirit of that time and place. There was then a purity about the Allied purpose, and the characters in the war drama were well defined, it was the Virtuous versus the Huns;
and there was great adventure, danger, and commitment to being a newsman then, and London left a lasting mark on many of these men, giving to Edward R. Murrow a voice, giving to Clifton Daniel a style in manner and dress, and giving to Reston such a deep conviction about the war as a holy crusade that he wrote a book about it, and this book was his first big step to fame. Entitled
Prelude to Victory
, and published in the summer of 1942, it introduced for the first time the spark and patriotism of Reston’s prose. The theme of the book was that “we cannot win this War until it ceases to be a struggle for personal aims and material things and becomes a national crusade for America and the American Dream,” and the voice of Reston from the pulpit could almost be heard in such passages as: “We must defy the danger and welcome the opportunity. We must strengthen the things that unite us and remove the things that divide us. We must look forward to the future with faith in each other and in the rightness of the American Dream. For that is the Prelude to Victory.” Rave reviews greeted the book’s publication both in America and in England, and the movie producer Walter Wanger was so inspired by it that he arranged for a Hollywood bookshop to refund the money to any reader who did not share his view of the book’s importance. The book also expressed great loyalty to
The Times
, and this fact, together with Reston’s general philosophy and the acclaim it received, did him no harm with
The Times
’ publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.