Boxing the Kangaroo: A Reporter's Memoir by Robert J. Donovan
© Michelle Troutman
June 2000
ISBN #: 0-8262-1281-6
$25.00, hardcover
141 pages, illustrations
Throughout Robert J. Donovan's newspaper career he covered Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson. His memoir Boxing the Kangaroo features lively facts and anecdotes about each man in office, on presidential trips, and campaign stops.
The title refers to an incident when President Johnson urged Donovan (during Johnson's trip to Australia) to box a kangaroo. Donovan recounts, and in the process, points out the way politicians and the press often spar: "Obviously, the animal was well trained, because he confronted me at once, but not in the way I expected. He was not a puncher, which might have hurt an opponent, but a pusher. To my surprise, each of his arms was only about twelve inches long. He could not, as far as I could observe, protect his jaw, but neither could his boxing gloves hit my jaw. Since this was supposed to be a boxing match, I tapped his nose a couple of times. He just kept pumping up with his glove, against mine, pushing me backward. I had no intention of punching his defenseless face. I rather liked the old boy, who kept pushing his nose toward mine in the manner of Lyndon Johnson's famous 'treatment' of shoving his nose toward another man's as a way to dominate him."
Except for this, a chapter about his service in World War II, and other anecdotes such as when Vice President Richard Nixon thought Donovan had taped his speech upon his resolution of a 1959 steel strike because a verbatim copy was printed in the The New York Herald Tribune (Donovan quoted the speech in shorthand), the rest of the book is a fairly dry record of Donovan's career from Buffalo Courier Express copyboy, Tribune reporter and later Washington bureau chief to Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief.
Still, it's not without its interesting passages, for instance, his account of President Kennedy's assassination ("The drama in the second press bus, in which I rode in the presidential motorcade in Dallas, is unforgettable."). Also noteworthy is his research for his books Eisenhower: The Inside Story and PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II (he traveled to the Pacific to retrace Kennedy's PT 109 and little-known PT 59 rescues). His use of classified documents as a source for Eisenhower: The Inside Story's research nearly doomed the project -- "The book was a threat to national security." At a critical decision involving the classified documents, Eisenhower's Chief of Staff Sherman Adams told Donovan President Eisenhower had decided he could continue writing and researching his book. Donovan isn't sure Adams ever asked
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