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were a few times during his term in office, he would almost, I would say invariably, start out by jumping all over me, in that wonderfully pleasant way that he had, about an editorial position that we had had. He knew all the answers, he would argue about it, for example, on the question of greater federal aid to education which we were jumping on him and the administration for not fighting hard enough for, and he was very, very alert to what we had said and he would snap right back on giving his side of the case.

Did you ever find the president influencing you in this way?

Well, in a sense, yes, not on this particular issue, but one time that I saw him, for instance in answer to a criticism we had made of him, he pointed out that he felt it was quite unfair for us to take this position - precisely what subject this was on I'm not sure; it may well have been on the educational issue which we were very excited about and he of course had made a great thing of it but then had not, in our view, fought through to the finish. He made the point that instead of jumping on him and on the Democratic Administration for not insisting on the full program as originally proposed, it would only be fair to point out that a number of Republican votes were needed also on the given issue that was under discussion, and it was very unfair of us not to point out that the Republicans were also responsible because the president could command only a certain number of Democratic votes and needed some Republican help and, therefore, it was unfair just to blame the Democrats for failure to carry on their original position. All he needed was a few Republican votes but he was unable to get them. I felt that he was making a perfectly valid point. We are not either a Democratic or Republican newspaper. God knows we're not a