Published: November 11, 2008 10:59 pm         

Secret Service men counting his snores

We have just come through what can best be described as a historic presidential campaign and election — historical in its length, its participants and its outcome. There is not much we don’t know about the background of our 44th president-elect. What we don’t really know is if he will keep his campaign promises. We don’t know how he will react in a crisis, and we don’t know if he is tough enough or skilled enough to deal with hostile world leaders and the U.S. House and Senate.

We do know his mother was white and his father was black, and he was raised by his white grandmother, and he has a funny name. We also know he has a sense of humor — he is not afraid to poke fun at himself. He was at a white tie and tails dinner late in the campaign — a dinner also attended by John McCain, as well as prominent leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. At the beginning of a short speech, Obama chuckled and said he wanted to dispel any rumors he was born in a manger. So, he can laugh at himself.

But, that’s not the point, here. The point is our candidates for public office have almost become transparent. There is just not much we don’t know about them. Needless to say, anyone running for public office can expect to find all of his dirty laundry — hanging from the clothesline right there — on the front page of the daily newspaper.

News people here in the 21st century are relentless in their search for and the airing of anything that even remotely resembles what might be even a slightly soiled background.

It hasn’t always been that way. In the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, reporters were not allowed to even quote the president without his permission. There weren’t many — if any — newsreel movies of Roosevelt walking. He was a polio victim, wore heavy braces on his legs and required either a wheelchair or a lot of help moving around.

We know all that and talk about it now, 63 years after his death, but in July 1938 the extent of his physical disability was hardly — if ever — mentioned. In fact it was treated almost as a guarded secret.

In 1938, Ike Campbell was a News-Eagle reporter and photographer and was assigned to cover the visit of the president to Oklahoma City.

President Roosevelt was in Oklahoma City beating the drum for the return of Sen. Elmer Thomas to the U.S. Senate. Campbell discovered there were a number of no-no’s in covering the commander in chief (remember, this was three years before Pearl Harbor and World War II).

Here, in Campbell’s own words, is his report on the visit of Roosevelt to Oklahoma City:

“I saw an incredibly tired, limping and rapidly aging man — Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States — keep several thousand people seated in the hot afternoon sun and in minutes make them glad they were there to see the first president to ever visit Oklahoma.

“And I also saw — and met — what seemed to be 4,453 Secret Service men, all of whom wanted to know who I was, where I was from and why — mostly why.

“The first sight I have ever had of the president was a distinct shock. I had seen his picture hundreds of times in the past few years but never before realized he was as physically disabled and tired as he was yesterday in Oklahoma City.

“And as he ascended the platform, painfully leaning on the arm of his son, Elliot, I learned my first lesson about when and how to photograph the president.

“Have you ever seen a picture of him walking?

“Neither had I but I was going to get one just as he mounted the platform. And I hadn’t any more than gotten my camera even with my eye when a Secret Service man (No. 1,789) who certainly hadn’t been there 10 seconds before said: ‘No you don’t. You can take pictures of the president all you want to when he has stopped or is near the speaker’s rostrum but don’t try to take any while he’s moving.’

“I didn’t.”

And that was the least of his difficulties in photographing the president.

“When I arrived at the city, I obtained my press card,” he wrote, “and sailed off with high spirits to the union depot to get pictures of the chief executive on the train. Ah me, the optimism of youth.”

To make a long story short, Campbell had a heck of a time getting close enough to the president. It seems a photographer from the Daily Oklahoman was the only one allowed close enough to get a picture of Roosevelt. Finally with the help of someone from the wire services he got to see the president, photographed him and in his own words Campbell wondered, “if he ever goes to sleep at night without a Secret Service man counting his snores. I doubt it.”



Brown is a former managing editor of the Enid Morning News