OUR TIMES, WITH DAVID BRINKLEY

THE SAGE OF SUNDAY MORNING, WITTY, LOW-KEY-AND TO THE POINT

To increase respect for his newspaper, Charles Foster Kane recruited nine correspondents from a rival. That was in the movies. In real life, when ABC News President Roone Arledge wanted to boost the prestige of his organization five years ago, he only had to hire one man. David Brinkley.

Since then, "This Week With David Brinkley," the show Arledge used as bait to land the acerbic veteran, has become the dominant and most widely admired of the Sunday morning news-talk programs. And though Brinkley has brought ABC ratings success as well as enhanced respect, he confirms that there are still those in the news division who grumble about his low-key, nonchalant style on the air.

"I've heard it for 30 years," Brinkley says, combining a sigh with a shrug. "It's just the way I am. I can't change. I don't want to change. I couldn't change if I wanted to. I don't try to put on a show on the air, be bright and vivacious, because it's just not my nature."

He has reached a status in broadcasting that hovers between eminence and legend, but in the earlier days producers persisted in trying to pep him up. "I was doing something at the White House one time," he recalls. "It was an interview with Lyndon Johnson. The producer was what's-his-name, Ed Murrow's friend -- Fred Friendly. He came over and said to me, 'I want you to be more lively.' And I said, 'Shut up.'

"That was the end of the discussion."

To show its appreciation for Brinkley, ABC threw him a big party this week at the Willard Hotel, another longtime Washington institution, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of "This Week." Twenty senators showed up, including Ted Kennedy, Robert Dole, William Cohen and Christopher Dodd; the Ed Meeses were there, the Bushes, Pamela Harriman, Elizabeth Dole and Mitch Snyder, who was given the leftover food to take back to a shelter for the homeless. The top brass from Capital Cities/ABC Inc., Chairman Thomas S. Murphy and President Daniel Burke, also came forth to pay homage.

Fortunately Brinkley is impressed by nothing so he took it all in stride. Asked if he can conceive of anything that, at this point, would knock him for the proverbial loop, Brinkley laughs and says, "I wish to God there were." At 66, Brinkley has held onto his youth by remaining brash and irreverent; he's as smart-alecky as a frat house wag, though incalculably more sophisticated. If the best journalists are the ones it's hardest to put anything over on, Brinkley is peerless.

He is pleased about the success of "This Week," but don't expect him to leap up and twirl a baton. "I'm very happy with it," he says. "ABC's been very good, supportive, appreciative, and it's been fine. They don't want much. They just want a program that does well, wins ratings and makes a little money. We're able to do all that, so they leave us the hell alone. Which couldn't be nicer."

The program gets the best guests, makes the most news, earns the highest ratings. For the fourth quarter of 1986, "This Week" averaged a 4.0 rating and 12 share, as compared with a 3.0/10 for "Face the Nation" on CBS and a 2.7/9 for "Meet the Press" on NBC, the network that Brinkley called home for more than three decades. Disputes with a former news division president, William Small, drove him into Arledge's waiting arms.

The Brinkley show is well produced, and the supporting cast -- including White House correspondent Sam Donaldson and commentator George F. Will -- is top notch, but when Brinkley takes a week off, the show is simply not the same. It lacks that abiding wiseacre sensibility that Brinkley brings. He is a kind of walking, enlightened smirk. Actually, more sitting than walking. When he looks bored on the air, it well may be because he is bored. How much fresh bull is there in this town on any given Sunday morning, anyway?

"When you get the congressional leadership on, you already know everything they're going to say, you know everything they're going to evade, and I know there will be no surprises," Brinkley says sulkily. "And it's not really interesting to me, and I'm not sure it's interesting to the audience. I don't really look forward to that much."

Everyone wants to be on the Brinkley show since it is the most potentially advantageous exposure. This acceptance has its drawbacks. "One little problem we have," Brinkley says, "is when a medium- to lower-level foreign dignitary comes into the country and his embassy here hires a PR agency to handle his visit. And very often, they will send to him through the embassy a schedule, and the schedule includes an appearance on our program, without asking us or telling us a thing about it.

"And then suddenly on Friday, the prime minister of something calls and wants to know where to go and when, and we don't know what he's talking about. The PR firm wants to show it's well-connected in Washington and can get the best Sunday talk program. And so they have booked the guest on it. Then when he doesn't get on, they blame it on us. They say we're liars and thieves and backed out at the last minute and dah dah dah."

Another headache for the show is a guy called Sam. Asked if he gets a lot of flak about the contentious, irrepressible Donaldson, Brinkley smiles and says, "Yes, yes. I give all the mail to him. They say {he whispers} , 'How come you have that S.O.B. on the program?' I say he is there and he is lively and he is interesting and he is provocative and that's exactly what we want.

"He is also very intelligent. Before I came here, I didn't know Sam very well, and I didn't have a terribly high opinion of him, I must say. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he is extremely bright, very quick, and has an excellent memory. Better than mine. He remembers what somebody said to somebody 3 1/2 years ago about whatever is being discussed. He's very good at that."

The combination of Donaldson and Will is, says Brinkley, "like vinegar and bicarbonate of soda. Sometimes they shock me with what they say." Brinkley has limits on fondness for video provocation, however. He dismisses the syndicated and highly combustible "McLaughlin Group" by saying, "Too many people talking at once. I'm never quite sure what they've said. It becomes incoherent."

Insiders say that while Brinkley may appreciate Donaldson's pyrotechnical displays, he is closer to Will, the other round-table regular. "I wouldn't say we were intimates," Brinkley says. "I don't see him much outside the office. We laugh at the same things, which is important. I think a literate, articulate conservative is a rare find. George is able to look at himself, laugh at himself, joke about himself. Anyone who can do that can't be all bad."

As for his own political complexion, Brinkley says, "I have spent my entire life avoiding being a liberal or conservative 'cause I think it's a waste of time." Has he felt closer to one than the other? "Yes. I felt more liberal than anything else, and I am, but I don't make a big show of it. It doesn't help. It really doesn't help."

If you describe him as a member of the eastern liberal media establishment, however, Brinkley will plead guilty only to the words "media" and "eastern," he says. He realizes the press is under attack more in recent years but hasn't been in the forefront of those rising righteously to defend it. "To answer it, you have to go to tedious lengths explaining what the press is and what its job really is, which is a problem -- people don't really understand what our job is -- and to say we are all nice boys and girls. I don't want to do all of that. I don't find it attractive at all. So just let it ride. We'll survive it."

As happy as ABC and Brinkley are with "This Week," things haven't been as harmonious when Brinkley is prevailed upon for other duties. During convention and election coverage, he has looked uncomfortable and grumpy playing second fiddle to anchor Peter Jennings, and the network seems to want Brinkley there more as a symbol or a good luck charm, something to dangle, than as a participant with singular broadcasting talents.

Asked about these problems, which have led to internal territorial skirmishes, Brinkley smiles broadly and laughs, as if to say, "Oh no you don't." He earlier had said, "This is now Peter Jennings' news operation, and that's fine." Brinkley seems to blame Arledge more than Jennings for the messy way the convention and election coverage has gone.

"Well, I grew up doing elections and conventions -- if I grew up -- and have been able to do them pretty well," Brinkley says, "because there are long gaps between anything happening, and it gives me a chance to talk about politics, which I happen to know about as well as anybody, dead or alive. I know a lot about it. And it gives me a chance to tell stories and who people are and so on and so on.

"The way we all do it now, it's all about the same. It's hurry up rush, hurry up rush, hurry up you got eight seconds. And you don't really have time to do anything but read numbers and recite facts. So that's not what I do best. Anybody can do that."

Last November, when the offyear elections came around, ABC and NBC pulled back on coverage, opting for shorter reports interspersed with regular programming instead of the traditional marathon approach. Brinkley defends the decisions (not rousingly, mind you) but clearly misses the days when the network went on at 8 o'clock and kept you in a state of amused anticipation waiting for the results to start trickling.

"Mostly what we did is talk to each other and switch around the country," Brinkley recalls, "and there'd be somebody in the Starlight Ballroom at the Howard Johnson's out on Highway 14, and he'd show you the bar being set up and the Ritz crackers being laid out." He laughs. "We mostly just had a good time and played, and we all enjoyed it. I enjoyed it."

The new approach doesn't allow for the idea that, in addition to everything else, politics is fun. This is in large measure what has kept David Brinkley interested for all these years. "It's essentially insane," he says. "I just love it."

There always having been a shortage of wits in Washington, Brinkley is a sought-after dinner guest. He says he is social, but not all that social. "I do not like big parties. Don't go to 'em. Will not go to a cocktail party. For any reason. I mainly like small parties where I already know everybody." A Washingtonian since the '40s (he was born in North Carolina), Brinkley knows a number of rules for taming, if not beating, the system. For instance: "Never take any shuttle later than the 3 o'clock. It's the last semicivilized shuttle of the day." But then he would rather not leave town anyway.

As for navigating at dinner parties, he has other practical hints. "I worked out one little trick," he says. "Somebody will sit next to me or near me and take it for granted I know who he is because he's the assistant secretary of labor. I do not know who he is. So a little trick I use is to say to him, ' What are you doing?' He'll say, ' Why, I'm the assistant secretary of labor|' And I will then lie to him and say, 'Oh yes, I know that; what are you working on at the moment?' It works."

Brinkley lived in Georgetown with his first wife, but doesn't like Georgetown anymore -- too noisy, too crowded, no place to park. At the moment he is between houses, about to build a new one in Chevy Chase for himself and his wife Susan. An amateur but, he says, accomplished architect, he designed the house himself and speaks enthusiastically of seeing it to completion. He is also a part-time cabinetmaker, he says. It's easy to see how things requiring patience and precision would appeal to him. He's a patient and precise kind of guy.

Brinkley's three sons are grown now. One is a Harvard professor, one works for The New York Times and one works for Scripps-Howard in Washington. Outside interests are important to Brinkley's equilibrium. He loves music, for instance, and is a more-or-less avid concert goer.

"This," he says, leaning back in his office chair at ABC News, "is not the only thing in my life. This is a job. I have other things that I like a lot, other people that I like a lot. You go to work and do your job and then you leave." Some who have worked with Brinkley find what they consider a lack of zeal to be exasperating, but if he has been able to dictate his own terms all along, more power to him. In television, they'll bend you and shape you as much as you let them.

Reuven Frank, who produced the trailblazing and long-running "Huntley-Brinkley Report" at NBC (it ended when Chet Huntley retired in 1970), says of Brinkley, "He's occasionally gotten away with murder in terms of ergs of energy expended," but also says, "He never did anything cheap," and professes gentlemanly admiration.

"David's got plenty of credit for being a great writer, but not enough credit for being a master of television," Frank says. "He's very good at handling a picture. He's one of the few who will tell you what you can't already see on the screen."

Brinkley's writing style is considered by many who'd know the best of any broadcast journalist ever. It doesn't impress him because it is him.

"It's the way I've written all my life, since I was 16 years old working part time at a local newspaper," Brinkley says. "I write the way I talk. And occasionally, rarely, because something happened while I was already on the air, and I couldn't write it myself, somebody's written something and brought it to me. Cannot read it. Cannot| Simply cannot. I mean, physically I cannot do it. And it's not that the writing is so terrible. It's just that it's not mine and I can't do it. I can't read anything that isn't mine."

It comes naturally but not always easily. Brinkley says his closing brief commentary on the show each week is the hardest part of the program for him. He comes in Sundays at 5 a.m. to start preparing for the show. The closing piece is always the killer. Sometimes it's so funny that he breaks up laughing on the air, and since Will and Donaldson are still sitting nearby in the studio, he can hear their laughter and they will really set him off.

That is one of the endearing things about David Brinkley: how close to his surface laughter usually is, so that he'll be talking along and, suddenly, sobriety will crumble and fall to the floor. He's a lot less enamored of himself and a lot less concerned with his own dignity than many of his colleagues in the TV news business, right down to the goofiest weatherman on the smallest pipsqueak station in greater Lesserville.

A man who writes this well should write books and for the past six years, off and on, David Brinkley has been. He's putting together a book about life in Washington during World War II -- "the crush and crowding and craziness and the fumbling and bumbling in what was then a small town, suddenly the capital of the world. I'm the only one who covered the White House during World War II who's still alive, I think. So I thought I'd get it all down before I die." He's hoping it will be published (by Knopf) in the spring of 1988.

Brinkley has received many entreaties to cooperate or collaborate on a book about the early days of television. He shies away from images of his much-younger self on TV and isn't given to indulgent reminiscence. Besides, if there's to be such a book, he'd rather write it himself.

He does remember the days when a print journalist going into television felt a bit like he'd signed on as resident geek at a local carnival. The good part was, nobody told David Brinkley how he ought to behave on television because when he got into it, who knew?

"Television was just beginning, and there wasn't anyone who knew how to do it," Brinkley says. "I don't know anyone who's been on television longer. They couldn't because it wasn't there. I just sort of worked my way on it and did on television what I was already doing on radio.

"People would call and say, 'Gosh, we've got a good picture out here in Bethesda.' Never a word about what you did. It was the fact they got a picture that mattered."

Asked to peer into his own television future, Brinkley says, "I don't see any particular stopping point." Retirement? "It has never entered my head. I'll work until I cannot work anymore."

Then he'll step aside and let the younger David Brinkleys take over. Except for one thing. There are no younger David Brinkleys. There are no older David Brinkleys. There is only one. He is not impressed. Those who know better are.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.