David Greenberg is the author of the new book Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency. His other books include Nixon's Shadow and Calvin Coolidge, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New Republic, where he was acting editor, Politico, and Slate. He lives in New York City.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Republic of Spin, and was
there anything that particularly surprised you in the course of your research?
A: My first book was called Nixon’s Shadow. It’s not a
biography of Nixon but a study of Nixon as a symbol…I came to see that although
Nixon exemplified that [focus on image], it didn’t originate with him.
Politics in the 20th century were consumed with anxieties about
authenticity, and the way the tools of image-making—spin—were threatening to
corrupt democracy.
No one had written a book about the White House spin
machine, and pulled it all together into a single narrative…
As for what surprised me, I found that the standard
narratives about certain historical episodes were wrong.
On an individual level, you could tell a story about how my
research [shows] revisionist portraits: George Creel, who ran the Committee on
Public Information, a World War I propaganda agency.
In the history books, Creel is made out to be a right-wing
monster, whipping up hatred of Germans. In fact, Creel was a liberal guy
attacked more by the right wing for being insufficiently jingoistic.
He was not wild and out of control. There were some
excesses, but the backlash against Creel was buyer’s remorse about World War I.
The war didn’t turn out the way we wanted, and people were looking for a
scapegoat. The story of Creel was told wrong, over and over…
In one chapter of history after another, I found significant
twists. Many historians suffer from propaganda anxiety. They’re not always
clear-eyed in assessing [this issue]. We have an ambivalent attitude toward
spin—we denounce spin doctors but deep down we like it if it’s wielded by
politicians we support.
Just today, there was an article about negative ads about
Trump. It was free of the scolding tone you get when you’re told about negative
advertisements against Obama. It’s not the negative ads that people are
against, it’s the negative ads against their candidates. If it’s deployed by a
candidate or president we support, we applaud it, and don’t realize it’s spin.
Also, one reason I read the sources differently is that I
don’t see spin as an inherently bad thing.
Q: I wanted to go through a few of the presidents you
discuss in the book. You write, “More than a tactic, publicity thoroughly
informed [Theodore] Roosevelt’s conception of the presidency…” Why did you opt
to begin with Theodore Roosevelt, and how did his approach to publicity differ
from those of his predecessors?
A: That sentence captures the reason I started with him. I
don’t suggest in the book that presidents before Roosevelt were uninterested in
managing their message or image. They were. It’s important in politics.
But what you see with Roosevelt is a new concept of the
presidency, where the presidency is the driver of social reform.
For most of the 19th century, excluding wartime
and crises, Congress was the seat of legislation and of reform. If you were a
Washington reporter in the 19th century, you didn’t go to the White
House, you went to Congress. That’s where the action was.
Presidents before TR started to arrogate more power to the
White House, but really Roosevelt wanted to do great things as president, and
realized he needed the public. It was not just publicity in terms of
self-aggrandizement, but making his agenda public—his use of the bully
pulpit…staging publicity stunts.
He had an eye on public opinion that his predecessors just
didn’t. It was tied to what he wanted to achieve in policy. It is now the norm
for a president. Look at [Supreme Court nominee] Merrick Garland with Obama—there are all kinds of
dimensions to a publicity campaign.
I feel a lot of that apparatus begins with Roosevelt—before
him, almost none of it exists.
Q: Let’s look at his cousin, FDR. In the book, you write
that “Franklin Roosevelt proved the equal to his late cousin in the arts of
modern communication…” What were some of the hallmarks of FDR’s success in
communicating with the American public and the world?
A: FDR is a master. There are several hallmarks. One, he
really seemed to enjoy and care about the public and what it thought, not in a
slavish pandering way but wanting public support to sustain him.
He was trying to make the call for a more aggressive posture
against Germany, and said, I can only go as fast as the public will let me.
There’s a fireside chats chapter, where I tried to convey his sense of
communicating with the public…
For Roosevelt, communication really was important. When he
did the fireside chats, he would visualize people from Dutchess County and
imagine them as the intended audience of his speech. He transformed
presidential speaking—he would [use a] very easy, conversational way.
FDR reinvented the form of communicating in a way that’s
suited to the media. Also, in his easy relations with reporters, in his use of
polling, one can look at that cynically, but he was just fascinated to know
what people were thinking, and felt that that’s part of what democracy is.
Q: Getting back to Nixon, you write, “White House image
making and message control—and concerns about it—reached full flower during the
presidency of Richard Nixon.” How did Nixon’s approach resemble those of
previous presidents, and how did it differ?
A: I think what Nixon does is he puts the White House on a
permanent spin footing. Certainly with Nixon--this had been gradually building
for some time—there is no initiative undertaken without a significant game
plan, pages on pages detailing who will talk to which reporters, a whole
strategy for everything he wanted to achieve.
After this, spin was never absent from presidential
considerations. It had been present since TR, but there were times when it was
not in the forefront.
With Nixon, it pervades White House operations. Even when
Watergate happened, his immediate response was to think of it as a public
relations problem. He couldn’t see it as a scandal, a moral or ethical error.
Q: How would you describe Barack Obama’s approach to spin,
and what do you see looking ahead?
A: I do have a section on Obama. It’s a little shorter. I
feel as a historian we’re still close to it. I describe Obama’s approach as the
spin of no spin. Like other candidates, he very deliberately tried to fashion
an image of “authenticity”—it’s a very problematic term. He operates at a time
when the public is fully aware of spin, and is sick of [it]. We crave
politicians we feel are going to give it to us straight. He was very good in
2008 in fashioning that image for himself.
The truth is…I don’t mean to say politicians are phony, but
there is a craft in their photo ops, Obama as much as anyone…The spin of no
spin is great in certain contexts, but didn’t serve him as well as he had
hoped….
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Promoting the book! I have a few other ideas in the
works…
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Another thing I tried to communicate is how much I’ve
tried to make this a narrative that contains analysis and understanding of
spin. The narrative is three stories: the presidents, the spin doctors, the
writers and thinkers who comment on spin and its implications for democracy.
The braided three strands give the book its forward propulsion.
I’m talking about democracy, propaganda, and the fact that
there are these characters. You see across the 20th century a new
political type, experts in words and symbols who are now dominant in American
politics. The rise of that type is what holds the book together.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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