ANNOUNCER: Russell Cronk of Largo, Florida, asks: Who was the first president to have a press secretary?</s>BRUCE MORTON, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Russell, nobody is quite sure who the first one was. Woodrow Wilson had a man named Joseph Tumulty who helped him. Herbert Hoover had somebody, imagine trying to spin The Great Depression. Maybe the first real full-time press secretary was Steve Early, who worked for Franklin Roosevelt. Probably a different job back then, of course. Just a handful of reporters. Dwight Eisenhower had Jim Hagerty. Reporters liked him, even when the daily briefing consisted of "Nothing today, boys," and they wouldn't write anything. Then when Eisenhower had his heart attack, Hagerty offered four, five detailed briefings every day about the president's condition. There are really two kinds of press secretaries; those like Hagerty, who go to the meetings, know what's on the president's mind, and those like Kennedy's Pierre Salinger, who really aren't insiders, who mostly say what they've been told to say. And, of course, the job has changed out of sight, 24-hour news channels, spin, sound bites, all that plus the fact that reporters are a lot more cynical now after Vietnam and Watergate about presidents and their aides than they used to be. So, George W. Bush's Ari Fleischer probably has a much harder job than Steve Early did.
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