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despite television's portrayal, the presidency is not endowed with virtu-
ally unlimited power. (There are no buttons to push or levers to pull in
order to make the economy run as people think it should!)

The constraints that inhibit presidential action are formidable, and
citizens need to be made aware of them. Likewise, if citizens had a
greater appreciation for the power of Congress, interest groups, and
the bureaucracy, there would be less incentive for the networks to
focus as much attention as they do on the affairs of the presidency at six
o'clock each evening.


NOTES
1 Speakes, Gergens, and NBC News report quotations about the state of the
press conference were taken from Marvin Kalb and Frederick Mayer ( 1988: 10).
2 The Harvard report recommended that the president "should meet with
the press on a regularly scheduled basis, twice a month, during daytime hours.
In addition to the daytime news conferences, the President should hold a mini-
mum of six televised news conferences a year during evening hours" ( Kalb and
Mayer, 1988:8-9).
3 Of course, far more people hold credentials than actually cover the presi-
dent on a daily basis. The official figures allow comparisons to be made across
time. Official figures were acquired from the Secret Service and other sources
for the following years: 1949, 550; 1961, 1,000; 1969, 1,358; 1972, 1,438; 1973,
1,495; 1975, 1,547; 1977, 1,605; 1978, 1,642; 1980, 1,664; 1984, 1,696; 1986,
1,779. The figure for 1949 come from Phillips et al., ( 1949:148, caption to pic-
ture). The figure for 1961 comes from Pollard ( 1964:97). Figures for 1969
through 1984 were provided by the Secret Service, Department of Public Af-
fairs; 1969 is the first year that records are available from the Secret Service.
4 Newspapers did not print pictures of Franklin Roosevelt when he was
using his wheelchair.

-126-

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: The Six O'Clock Presidency: A Theory of Presidential Press Relations in the Age of Television. Contributors: Fredric T. Smoller - author. Publisher: Praeger. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1990. Page Number: 126.
    
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