Helen Thomas - Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times

A great story, even better because it is probably true: When Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States, he hosted a dinner party at the White House. Bill Moyers, who was Johnson's press secretary, said grace. Annoyed, Johnson commanded, "Speak up, Bill. I can't hear you." Moyers responded, "Mr. President, I wasn't talking to you."

And this one: Ronald Reagan impressed many people when he used his pocket change to to illustrate how his proposed tax cut would affect an average American family. Bob Dole, who was Senate Majority Leader, was impressed with how deftly the former actor handled this bit of political theatre. Dole is certain that none of Reagan's immediate predecessors could have pulled it off. "Carter would have mumbled the explanation. Ford would have fumbled the coins. Nixon would have swiped them."

The American presidency has been the subject of much wit and wisdom. Presidents have said interesting and insightful things, and others have said such things about the presidents. Unfortunately, Helen Thomas has included very little of that wealth in her Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom from the Front Row at the White House. Thomas undoubtedly knows many stories that are much more entertaining or informative than any she presents here, but your chances of hearing them are much better if you take Thomas out to lunch. That would almost certainly cost more than the $24 price of her book, but the payoff would have to be greater.

Thomas has been called the dean of the White House press corps because she has reported on every president from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush, working for most of those more than 40 years as a correspondent for United Press International. In Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President, Thomas adds to her reporting by including accounts provided by other reporters and by some of the White House staffers who have seen what the journalists have not. But she makes little use of the material.

Take for instance her chapter on John F. Kennedy, who is widely acclaimed as the wittiest president in the nation's history. Thomas' selections about him range from the familiar ("I'm the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris") to the not-very clever (when reporter May Craig asked him what he'd done for women lately, JFK responded, "Well, obviously, Mrs. Craig, not enough"). Nothing in Thomas' book reflects the intellectual spark and charisma that made JFK loved.

And there is little of interest about the other presidents Thomas has known, either. The samples of their wisdom that she cites are exclusively of the "America is a great country" and "Being President is a challenge and an honor" variety. This stuff is boilerplate in political conversation. The humor she recalls is unfailingly the sort that elicits only forced laughter of the chuckle-because-he-is-the-president sort.

The best of Thomas' material comes from the late comedian Mort Sahl and from Jimmy Carter. In the late 1960s Sahl said, "When the nation was founded, we had about two million people and yet we produced Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Lee, John Marshall, so many others. Now we've got two hundred million people and the best we can do is Nixon and Agnew. What can we learn from this? Darwin was wrong."

Carter talked in 1973 about a stopping at a restaurant during his first tour of Georgia after winning the governorship. He asked the server for more butter for his pancakes.

"She turned around and walked away and said, 'No.' I figured she didn't understand what I meant, so the next time she came by, which was quite a while later, I said, 'Young lady, would you come over here a minute please; I'd like to have another pat of butter.' And she said, 'No,' and left again.

"Finally, I asked the security man who was with me to get her and bring her back. When she walked over, I said, 'Listen, I don't want to make an issue of this, but I want some more butter.' She said, 'You're not going to have it.'

"I said, 'Do you know who I am?'

"She said, 'Who?'

"I said, 'I'm the governor of Georgia.'

"She said, 'Do you know who I am?'

"I said, "No.'

"She said, 'I'm the keeper of the butter.'"

That's it. Thomas' distinguished career would lead one to expect more, but expecting more of Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President is only disappointing. It is a mystery why Thomas did not make her book more interesting. If she is saving the good stuff for her sequel, that's an unwise strategy. Nothing here warrants a follow-up.

Also mystifying is why Thomas includes so much that Gerald Ford presented in his 1987 volume Humor and the Presidency. About 10 percent of her material was in his book first. It's not plagiarism, but it is ill-advised, especially because Thomas doesn't repeat some of the former president's best gags.

For example, she includes Donald Rumsfeld's response when Richard Nixon asked him to run U.S. wage and price controls. "But I don't believe in wage and price controls," Rumsfeld said. Nixon said he knew. "That's why I want you to run them."

But Thomas leaves out Ford's recollection "about the time I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech, I went to a reception that was being held elsewhere in town. A sweet little old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, 'I hear you spoke here tonight.'

'Oh, it was nothing,' I replied modestly.

'Yes,' the little old lady nodded, 'that's what I heard.'"

And Thomas ignores one of the few funny things Ford recalls Richard Nixon saying: "It seems that on the day following President Kennedy's famous inaugural address, Nixon approached [Kennedy speechwriter Ted] Sorensen and said, 'Ted, I have to admit that I listened to that inaugural address yesterday, and there were some words that Jack Kennedy said that I wish I had said.'

'Well, thank you, Mr. Vice President,' Sorensen replied. 'I guess you mean the part about asking not what what your country can do for you.'

'No, no, no,' Nixon shot back. 'I mean the part about 'I do solemnly swear . . .'"

There are many sources for presidential humor, among them The Mocking of the President by Gerald C. Gardner, Arthur Sloane's Humor in the White House: The Wit of Five American Presidents, Pardon Us, Mr. President by A.S. Barnes, and Mo Udall's Too Funny to be President. Any of these or many others would be a better choice than Thomas' tedious compilation.