Editorial: ‘Dunce’ – ‘Picayune’
At a White House press conference some months prior to the 1940 conventions, Fred Perkins, Pittsburgh Press Washington correspondent, asked the President whether he would be a candidate for a third term. Mr. Roosevelt told Fred to put on a dunce cap and go stand in a corner.
This week, at another White House conference, after the President had boasted of the accomplishments of his administration and enumerated reasons why he wanted to abandon the “New Deal” label in favor of a new “win the war” slogan, Bert Andrews of the New York Herald Tribune asked if all that added up to a declaration for a fourth term. Mr. Roosevelt replied that the question was “picayune.”
It’s too bad, Mr. President, but good reporters are just made that way. They are curious and inquiring fellows. They are interested in the same things newspaper readers are interested in – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be good reporters. So, they go about their job day by day asking questions, some of which may be embarrassing to those questioned, but all of which are designed to obtain news they think will be interesting to people who read.
Before 1940, and now again with 1944 approaching, Mr. President – though it may seem strange to you – reporters have thought that rank-and-file citizens who read the papers and vote in elections had, and have, a lively curiosity about your intentions.
It may in your view be dunce-like and picayunish of them, but reporters and the people they serve are interested in you as a personality and as their President, and they just can’t help wondering how long you want to stay in that White House. So, it is altogether likely – to borrow one of your phrases, Mr. President – that the question will pop up “again and again.” But the reporters don’t intend to be rude or to break the rules of lèse-majesté – they’re just curious.