Since Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he has issued tens of thousands of tweets — some positive, some angry, some serious, some bonkers. Invariably, the media reacts, as do we, the public. We might write a letter to the editor, post a reply, retweet, like, dislike or shake a fist at the screen.
This may seem like a dynamic peculiar to our current moment, but while the technology may be relatively new, the underlying human story is as old as the Republic. We U.S. citizens are obsessed with our presidents — always have been. We have an insatiable desire to read about what they say and do, watch them, rate them and pass judgment on them.
The vigour of this ongoing obsession is well reflected in a raft of new books, from “best of” lists (Jason Stahl’s “America’s Presidents: Ranked From Best to Worst” and Robert Spencer’s “Rating America’s Presidents”) to biographies (David S. Reynolds’s “Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times”; Fredrik Logevall’s “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956”; Jonathan Alter’s “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life”; and more).
But all these recent releases and our compulsive monitoring of presidential news reflect only part of the picture. What often escapes notice is presidents’ equally intense obsession with how they are viewed by the citizenry and their unrelenting efforts to influence public opinion, working both through the press — from the 18th-century broadsheet to social media — and around it.
Trump’s hot war on the “lamestream” media tests the boundary between freedom of the press and presidential power in a way that may feel uniquely combative. But in “The Presidents vs. the Press,” scholar Harold Holzer reminds us that this has happened before. Although George Washington enjoyed “the longest-ever press honeymoon in the history of the American presidency,” baldly partisan newspapers eventually went on the attack. In response, Washington, aided by Alexander Hamilton, backed John Fenno’s Gazette of the United States to act as the “quasi-official administration mouthpiece.”
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln shut down anti-Union papers and seized control of the North’s telegraph lines. Lincoln saw his aggressive suppression of the press as a war power crucial to preserving the Union. As Holzer writes: “The leader who later gained fame as the ‘Great Emancipator’ began his presidency as the ‘Great Censor.’”
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In the 20th century, Franklin Delano Roosevelt emerged as a brilliant communicator, hosting a whopping 998 news conferences during his 12 years in office. His innovative “fireside chats,” via radio, signalled a revolution in presidential communication, allowing him to reach into Americans’ living rooms, assuage their fears during the Great Depression and, not incidentally, circumvent the print media. Presidents have mastered the press milieu of their time in various ways — Theodore Roosevelt with his indomitable energy, Ronald Reagan with his affability and actor’s polish, Bill Clinton with his empathy — but the true communication pioneers were the ones who recognized the power of new technology to connect directly with citizens and shape public opinion. John Kennedy’s use of televised news conferences qualifies, as does Barack Obama’s embrace of the internet and social media, which allowed him to vastly expand and personalize his messaging.
President Trump is a pioneer in his own right. He sees most media organizations as adversaries and so works against and around them with instinctive skill, often in ways that many find disturbing. It’s strange to think of his tweets as somehow equivalent to FDR’s fireside chats, but they are. Holzer makes a powerful case that, “love him or loathe him,” Trump is “one of the most effective communicators in White House history.”
Of course, he has been helped by a highly partisan 24/7 cable news cycle and the social media platforms that carry his sound bites, often unmediated. In “Terms of Disservice: How Silicon Valley Is Destructive by Design,” Harvard researcher Dipayan Ghosh argues that companies like Facebook (his former employer), Twitter and Google have caused “widespread damage” to “the American media ecosystem” by favouring profit over the public good. He points to social media firms’ reluctance to mediate content posted by the current president as a central force undermining political discourse.
Not surprisingly, Ghosh thinks these platforms should be regulated like media companies. He calls for a new social contract for digital business that prioritizes the security and interests of consumers and articulates and acknowledges the civic responsibility of owning such vast information networks. The final chapter of the book provides a usefully detailed, if radical, blueprint for a regulatory framework that is sure to spur debate and, hopefully, progress.
In the new-media age that Ghosh describes, the idea of long-form presidential writing — and books in particular — as an effective image-shaping tool may strike some as overly analogue, even quaint. However, in “Author in Chief” and its follow-up, ”The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present,” journalist and historian Craig Fehrman draws on more than 10 years of research to make a compelling contrary argument.
He explains that John Adams was the first president to write a memoir, and traces the many others who followed suit: Andrew Jackson, with the first campaign biography; Ulysses Grant, with the brilliant and moving “Personal Memoirs”; and Calvin Coolidge, whose intimate autobiography, published soon after he left the office for maximum legacy impact, was hugely popular in its day. JFK wrote “Profiles in Courage” (with a ghostwriting assist from Ted Sorensen) before he was in office, a tradition continued by Obama, with his revealing, authentic “Dreams From My Father,” and by Trump, with the self-aggrandizing “The Art of the Deal” (also ghost-written). Fehrman’s engaging and learned narrative reminds us that, with some exceptions, these longer presidential communications let us see presidents “at their most human … their most ambitious and their most reflective.”
While the mutual obsession between us and our presidents will no doubt continue — the onslaught of communications, whether mediated or not, will only intensify as digital platforms gain power — it’s important to remember that, ultimately, it is we citizens who determine our political leaders’ fate and legacy. Lincoln once said: “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” He was right. When presidents communicate, well or badly, our response is what matters. As long as the United States remains a democracy, we — not our elected officials — are the ones in charge.
