History repeats: NPC member Sergent recalls grandmother's unceremonious booting from the White House press corps circa 1972

As CNN challenges the White House over its banning of reporter Jim Acosta following his combative exchange with President Donald Trump, imagine a different scenario: What if Trump instead chose to ban Kate Bennett, the CNN reporter who covers the first lady?

Forty-six years ago, that’s exactly what happened to my grandmother at The Washington Post. As the 1972 holiday season got underway, there was nothing too small President Richard Nixon wouldn’t try to hamstring the Post in the wake of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate reporting. This time, the target was Dorothy McCardle, who had covered first ladies and East Wing entertaining since the Truman administration. A familiar and beloved figure, the 68-year-old reporter was described at the time as white-haired and grandmotherly, delightful and perky.

McCardle arrived at the White House on Dec. 15, “all set to do my best to chronicle the reception for the 'great majority'” that had just re-elected Nixon in a landslide, she wrote in her unpublished memoirs. But “officials there had different plans, and the Post social reporter was not included in them.”

Under the guise of a new pool policy that sought more inclusion of newspapers beyond Washington, my grandmother would spend the next month sitting alone in the press room, shut out of that year’s holiday parties and events (but getting the story anyway from the pool reporters who let her in on every detail).

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler recruited newsmen who covered the West Wing to try their hands at party coverage, an experiment that didn’t go over so well.

“Mr. Nixon was wearing sort of a blue-gray suit. I think the shirt was white. I forgot to notice his necktie, but I’m sure he had one on,” wrote Jerry terHorst of The Detroit News following one reception, adding, “I’d never get away with serving drinks that weak at a party at my house.”

Other West Wing reporters refused to file stories. “I usually leave all this to the girls,” the Nashville Banner’s Frank Van der Linden told the Post. “It means a lot more to them than it does to us.”

“I could just die over this,” said Helen McCain Smith, Pat Nixon’s press secretary, as McCardle recounted in her memoir. “This is not against you, because you have been so good to everyone here. But for some reason, it has been decided that all Post social reporters shall be barred from all White House social events.”

What followed was far more coverage of the shutout than the social season, including this pointed critique from Nicholas Von Hoffman for the King Features Syndicate: “Granny has been given the boot,” he wrote. “You could argue that Ziegler has set a salubrious precedent. Maybe he’ll lock some more of us out. What a delight it would be to be barred from the White House press room and never have to listen to Ron grind out his insipid fiction again.”

The coverage was so intense that the first lady was forced to defend her innocence. “I am not an ugly person,” Pat Nixon told Washington Star-News reporter Isabelle Shelton. “I don’t discriminate against anyone; there is nobody in the world I dislike. I did not have anything to do with the pool.”

Ultimately, McCardle's access was restored without explanation, she wrote, just in time for the inaugural balls, where Ziegler was “most attentive” and saw that she got whatever she needed. Apparently, Nixon realized it was in his and the first lady’s best interest to have at least one side of the White House covered in a positive light.