Helen Thomas: Obama's one-day pardon

by Mark Silva

If Helen Thomas holds the only chair in the White House press briefing room named for an individual rather than an organization - a front-and-center seat at that - it may have something to do with the barriers that the 88-year-old columnist has broken in her long career.

She has returned to that seat, after recovering from an extended illness, as our versatile colleague Ken Herman of Cox Newspapers notes in this video he made of Helen Thomas' triumphant return to the White House.

From this seat, the Hearst Newspapers columnist has asked some of the toughest questions of the sitting president - "You'll be sorry,'' she once warned President Bush when he called on her in her front-row perch - and she suggests that President-elect Barack Obama won't get much of a honeymoon.

"No way,'' Thomas says. "He asked for it.... He'll get one day, maybe.''

Thomas, who allows that the historic election stirred a certain chord for her - citing Bobby Kennedy's prediction that Americans might elect a black president in another 30 years - also questions why the self-styled change-agent who has won the White House has turned to so many characters from the Clinton administration for his own team.

"I'm already after Barack for... going after the old Clinton faces,'' she says. "Why -- doesn't he know anybody?''... I don't understand falling back on all the old faces.. it seems to me that if you want to have a fresh start, you really ought to have a fresh start.'' And these are tough times, she notes: "The economy is in the toilet.''

The Kentucky-born Thomas started at United Press International in 1943, hired to write stories of interest to women. In the 1960s, she put politics through her typewriter - filing dispatches about the Kennedy administration. In 1970, she became UPI's White House correspondent and in 1973 the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service - she also became the first female member of the once exclusive Gridiron Club.

After 57 years of wire service correspondence, Thomas left the UPI in 2000 when it was bought out by an affiliate of the Unification Church, and has served as a sharp-penned columnist for Hearst for some time now.

She has been a vocal critic of not only sitting presidents, but also the working press -- for not pressing as hard as she believes reporters should press for truth.

She is the author of a few books, including Front Row at the White House, where she has returned to claim the most prominent seat, at 88 and counting.

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