The Once to Future Worlds of Presidents Communicating
1998; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1741-5705
Autores Tópico(s)Social Media and Politics
ResumoThe question I ask myself is how did we ever get from there to here? From those halcyon days of 1958 when I joined the White House staff as a twenty-five-year-old speech writer for President Dwight Eisenhower to forty years later awaiting the next shock wave to hit the bunker of President Bill Clinton. Social scientists and historians can help us make this journey when they explain differences in rhetorical styles and abilities of presidents, when they chart changes in organizational arrangements relating to media relations, when they detail the strengths and liabilities of press secretaries and other aides, when they explain the circumstances of events. But what if we could move the Eisenhower presidency to the present? Imagine a 1998 White House inhabited by a president of sterling character and limited rhetorical skills, six years in office, with a staff of modest size and deep experience, and a scandal involving top presidential aide Sherman Adams giving favors and taking gifts from New England industrialist Bernard Goldfine. Such alterations in science fiction always produce profound changes. Yet, the media respond to the transposed Adams crisis with overheated debate on CNN's Crossfire, shouted predictions from John McLaughlin's gang, exhaustive critical analysis on MSNBC, hard-edged comments from Rush Limbaugh, and behavior that Larry Sabato calls feeding frenzy. In short, journalists are responding to their own drummer, not the president's. Moreover, the response is determined by the characteristics of the dominant news medium. During the Eisenhower presidency (and previous twentieth-century presidencies), coverage largely reflected the traditions of print journalism, especially of the elite eastern newspapers; news of the presidency from John Kennedy through Ronald Reagan's first term was shaped by the three broadcast television networks; the second Reagan term ushered in the era of cable television. The older news operations stay in business, of course, but are forced to make competitive adjustments. Presidents also are forced to make adjustments. How Americans perceive their presidents, and how these perceptions change, may be better understood when viewed through the lens of each era's dominant medium. The Newspaper Era (ending with Eisenhower) Television households in 1952 were 39 percent; morning and evening newspaper circulation, 53.8 million; U.S. population, 151.3 million. The newspaper era in Washington focused on information rather than entertainment. Its style was wire service neutral. Reporters were faceless; no bylines, for instance, appeared in the weekly newsmagazines. The power-broker publishers had been replaced as journalism's celebrities by a few columnists--Walter Lippmann, Joseph Alsop, James Reston--whose fame rested on analysis (as when in the Rogers and Hart musical Pal Joey a stripper sang, Walter Lippmann wasn't brilliant today while removing her garments). Political scandals were about money. Presidents communicated largely through set speeches and press conferences. Franklin Roosevelt met the press twice a week, Harry Truman once a week, Eisenhower once a month until his illness. Press conferences were controlled by the president. FDR could not be quoted without his permission; Eisenhower's appearances were eventually filmed, but the film was not released until after the conference. These sessions were considered so important that the New York Times hired a limousine to transport its reporters back to the Washington bureau. A press office of three professionals was exclusively concerned with the care and feeding of about fifty reporters representing major (mostly print) news organizations. If space is an indicator of importance around the White House, journalists did not rate high; squeezed into a tiny press room no bigger than a standard-size hotel room, they spent most of their time lounging on worn leather couches around the perimeter of the west wing lobby, their unsightly fedoras stacked on a large round table with elephant legs that William Howard Taft had brought back from the Philippines, waiting to be summoned into Press Secretary James Hagerty's commodious office for an announcement. …
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