Hello and welcome to Whistle Stop season two, the presidency.

I'm John Dickerson of Face the Nation.

103 years ago this week, President Woodrow Wilson held the first on the record

presidential press conference.

It was a mistake.

Every president since then has probably felt this way after having to stand and take it with a

smile as dim-witted reporters

fussed about irrelevancies and poked their sides with dull sticks. How did this

mistake happen and come to be a permanent part of our democracy and why can't someone fix it?

On March 15th, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson's private secretary, Joseph

Tumelti advised newspaper men in Washington that at 1245 the governor

he still called Wilson by his former title would look them in the face and chat with them for a few minutes.

It was 11 days into the Wilson administration.

The inauguration was held on the 4th of March back then.

President Wilson had come into office with the promise of reform.

He was considered cold and aloof.

One reporter said shaking his hand was like shaking a dead fish.

This, of course, apparently reporters back then shook dead fish regularly and this was a metaphor easily at hand.

This of course was a great contrast to candidate Teddy Roosevelt who was one vigorous man

of action back slapping and more at home in a boxing ring than the

halls of academia. Wilson had crisscrossed the country though as a candidate

promising a new freedom designed to help with what he called the man on the

...