With this question that plagued nixon his whole career, who was the real nixon . Nixon as some of you may recall was always being trotted out in a new version. There was always talk of the new nixon, the old hatchet man being left behind for the statesman, then it was nixon the man of the people. There was always a new image been brought out, sometimes by nixon but sometimes torched in fabricated by his audiences. This led me to think about image making in National Politics generally, and this became a central critique of nixon certainly, were our politicians only, manufactured drugs politicians tony politics in the 20th century in our age of media where it seems so possible for politicians along with the consultants, spin doctors, handlers to present images and messages designed to give us what we want rather than perhaps what they really were, a concern with authenticity you might say. A theme we have been hearing a lot on the campaign trail the season. I began to realize that this story, even though ive just written in this book about nixon was not just about nixon. It was will about 20th century politics. I want to start just by reading a short passage, and despite what erik larson said last night, for those of you hard, i do think audiences, i hope audiences like, to your own bit of the style of an author. I wont go on and on but i think getting a sampling of the book is partly what audiences want as well as an understanding of the book that comes through a more informal talk. Let me just start with a short paragraph from the very beginning of the new book, republic of spin. Our political world is awash in over. Over many decades now electedcil officials and their age have t forged aheir huge arsenal of tos and techniques to shape their messages, their images and our d thinking. From the white house on down virtually every politician thos the brigade of speechwriters, press secretaries secretaries, campaign consultants, media gurus, handlers, pollsters, hucksters, flax, pacs and other assorted spin meister is to assure that each utterance is rendered in the best achievable light. Sometimes our politics seem to be nothing but skin. A dizzying cacophonous world of claims and counterclaims, each side charges the other with spin while asserting for itself a purchase on the truth. The growth of spin has given rise to a series of now familiar complaints. We hear that our politics are phony and corrupt, that our leaders are packaged and and principles, that their rhetoric is shallow and poll tested and even the most important political event, debates, conventions, speeches, interviews, press briefings are scripted, staged and choreographed. Spin, we hear, mislead or deceive such us and chokes off the honest and open discourse our democracy needs. This, i think, is at the heart of what worries us about the prevalence of political spin in our political life today and it was a question i wanted to get to the origins of. Where did this come from . Not just the tools and techniques politician by using that this anxiety that is adversely affecting our democracy. I realize nobody had written a history of the white house spin machine. Bits and pieces of it had been written about, talked about in many different ways but there was no single comprehensive history the told the story throughout the 20th centuries ago that is what i set out to do with republic of spin. This book has three narrative stories and i hope berated rather seamlessly, the intention was not for you to jump back and forth but for the characters and this seems to overlap among the three. The first of course is of the president s themselves who over the last hundred years have built up this machinery and in particular the specific innovation each one developed, specific struggles each one faced, specific challenges that each one confronted as they use these new tools to speak for the American Public and try to put across their agenda. A second story confirms less wellknown figures, spin doctors, information managers as they may be called more neutrally, experts who are trained in journalism comment advertising, Public Relations and other fields who in the course of the 20th century develop and expertise in words and images, they often come in to politics, sometimes on the campaign, sometimes in the white house itself, to work with president s to seek how they can best put across the message and then the third group of characters who are intertwined in the story are the critics, this is an intellectual history as well as a political history. It is supposed to tell the story not not just a house in evolve but what americans thought of it, how we assess its implications for democracy. There were some who were very bullish who felt new innovations, radio or Public Opinion polling could help us forge a stronger democracy where opinions could be exchanged freely, politicians could know what the public believed and this would help us to develop a democracy in which politicians were responsive to the public. There are others who have been very critical, felt the tools of spin were not used for leadership but for misleading, and powerful National Officials kind of an unfair advantage to put across their messages over the American People who would be fooled and lack the resources to know better and there is a third group called the realists who took a source of middle position, recognized the spin or publicity, propaganda in other eris was here to stay, and to educate the public. And how it worked in the hopes that the democracy could continue to be strong. I want to say about each group this morning. The story of the president s begins in my account with the roosevelt. This is not to say, in 1901 when Teddy Roosevelt became president. On the contrary argument the book that spin is as old as politics. And argue about the place of rhetoric in athenian democracy. In all year rounds leaders have superintended their images and try to make sure they were held in esteem by the public when they derive their power. For the american presidency there was the transformation at the start of the last century. There is the reason we dont know too much about most Nineteenth Century president s, we dont even know their names, they didnt do that much. Congress according to the constitution was the first branch of government listed in article 1, the presidency was article 2. It surprises my students who are used to thinking of the president as the big enchilada. What changed . How did the president become the one who drives the agenda to put his program across rather than implementing what congress thought best. Changes in large part because of the Industrial Revolution and the great social and economic problems that are introduced by the huge transformation and the nature of American Life and progressives, Theodore Roosevelt among some thought it was the place of the government in washington to tried to address those big challenges, and is not just the federal government roosevelt believed the president in particular, roosevelt had his own theory of the presidency basically saying instead of confining his role, the constitution said he could do, he was free to do anything except what the constitution said he couldnt do. He enormously expanded the field of president ial power but he knew he couldnt just do that by fiat. He wasnt a dictator. He felt he had to have Public Opinion on his side and the public was growing, the number of educated, literate americans were participating in politics was growing so marshaling Public Opinion was key to his political success and to do this, the public presidency, had to galvanize the public through the media. He toward wisely, took trips as no president before him had done, went out west, came down south, not just in a ceremonial role, and to advance a particular agenda weather was regulation of the railroad or the meat packing industry, all these progressive reforms that helped create a safer and fairer america. He also hired the first government information officers, press agents as they recall that the time when he decided to start his panama canal project, he put a journalist in charge of handling the oppressed for that project because there was so much interest in it. The great outcry from congress and why should taxpayer dollars be funding the aide who is going to give us Theodore Roosevelts propaganda and there was a big puzzle back and forth between the president and congress and he knew the value of commanding the headlines. Newspapers were changing. In the Nineteenth Century newspapers were partisan and champion the line of one party or the other. Now newspapers were becoming objective. They still had their editorial pages but readers cared less about the editorial pages than the news, what was happening and roosevelt recognized this and saw that his success depending on staying in the headlines, getting the news stories written the way he wanted so he would do things like descends to the bottom of Long Island Sound in a submarine, one of those oldfashioned with the circular portal door that closes, this was to demonstrate the navy needed to invest in submarines and develop into a modern navy. He once wrote 98 miles on tr would ask 5 reporters his quote newspaper cabinet, as he called them, or the fair haired as other said, to join him in the afternoon in a small room next to his office. There a Treasury Department messenger who moonlighted as the barber in chief going to roosevelt as he held forth politics, policy and gossip. Free willy in midshave the excitable president which bring out of his armchair, lab are flying off his face, to lecture the newsmen on a particular issue. Walter clark a reporter for the new york sun writing to a colleague of his quote only long confab with teddy gushed i wish id done because of all the funny things he said. He talked a blue streak wont even while the barber was shaving him. Barely able to squeeze in a word let alone the question, the journalist asserted themselves. That great muckraker attended many of these sessions would let roosevelt ramble until the barbers razor in his lower lip forcing it shut. Then the journalists fired off his queries as the president wriggling in his chair would be billed by the barbers admonition, steady, mr. President or a more skillful barber never existed declared a young reporter would later work for fdr. So that gives you just a flavor of Teddy Roosevelt style of spin and Media Management of which i think he was truly the first modern master. Without summarizing too much ive been in the course of the book talk about just about every subsequent president , each one brought his own innovation to there. Last night we talked about Woodrow Wilson a little bit. Woodrow wilson gave the first spoken state of the Union Messages to congress, at least in 100 years. Thomas jefferson had discontinued the practice. There have been written messages, receiving relatively little attention. Woodrow wilson who also believe in the public presidency wind up to capitol hill, delivered the address in person to great acclaim, to great Media Attention and leveraged, passing one of the most ambitious agendas. If you look, wilson, fdr, Lyndon Johnson were sort of the three great periods of reform activity in the last century. All president s sort of use of the medium to help accomplish that. Even some more less wellregarded resident contributed in their own way to the development of the spin machine. Herbert hoover i write about in 1928 campaigning for president pioneered a Campaign Film in a big way. You can find on youtube this film called master of emergencies. Who were of course have been commerce secretary during the Coolidge Administration where hed been tasked with addressing the relief and rehabilitation efforts after the great mississippi flood which was the worst Natural Disaster in American History until Hurricane Katrina a few years ago. And so the film shows hoover down by the river pulling forces out of the water, feeding poor dispossessed children and generally portraying this incredibly heroic image of hoover as a man who was there on the scene whenever challenges or crises arise. Who was also media savvy. He knew to give his speeches from the Mississippi River from a perch where he could hear the water roaring come rushing in the background so that audiences that dont have a sense of him as a man on the spot. And National Geographic and other magazines ran these lofty spreads of them in action with photos from the disaster scene. Of course, win as president hoover did have an emergency, he proved not to be such master. Theres a little irony in that title and thats another theme of the book is that spin stehr lake and helps only candidate running for president but spin cannot save bad policy or failure of policy. Thats a theme that recruiters throughout. More recently or ar getting inta later part of the century, i discovered even some minor bureaucratic elements of spin, or the development of the spin apparatus that turned out to be very consequential. During the vietnam war Lyndon Johnson organizes the Vietnam Information Group which has a rather benign sounding title but it was the first Interagency Group designed to sell the war, the vietnam war was going badly. People worried that the problem was the messaging from the white house. It wasnt. It was the war. But nontheless, johnsons aides and the state department, defense department, National Security council would gather on a weekly basis to make sure that theyre putting out the right message, their messages were coordinated. At one point in the fall of 1967 they did start in what they called the Progress Campaign to see an uptick filed in Public Opinion in how the war was going. That group became the template 14 a Big Policy Initiative that subsequent president would roll out where they would play in advance of the messaging. A few years back some of you may recall newspaper reports of the White House Iraq Group which did something similar for the George Bush Administration and came up with lines such as we dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud, and other sort of memorable lines that helped drive home for the nation the danger of saddam husseins acquiring nuclear weapons. And then, of course, i come up to the present with barack obama who has given us such innovations such as the white house videographer at the white house twitter feed. Everyday, every year there are new innovations in Communications Technology and spin that president s have to adapt to. So thats the first story. The main characters, the president , you like reading about president s and what they are doing behind the scenes, thats all in here. But its rated together with the second story of the spin doctors who insisted the president really at every step of the way. Its surprising even going back to the teens and \20{l1}s{l0}\20{l1}s{l0} are deeply involved they are. This is not a recent phenomenon. Summer people you might have heard of. L. Moyers working for lbj, michael deaver, Ronald Reagans image master, roger ailes, of course Richard Nixon and george bush seniors media guide who then goes on to found fox news. But there are also all these obscure figures who i found just deliciously fascinating and who also played a really historic part in the development of this vast machinery that president s now have at their disposal for trying to influence Public Opinion. One of these figures was johnsons jetson welliver who was the First White House speechwriter. That title didnt come into use until the eisenhower years but thats effectively what welliver did for warren g. Harding. Harding as some of you know was kind of known as a bombastic speaker. He was often mocked by the likes of h. L. Mencken who compared his speeches to scale bean soup and hogs barking at the laundry on the line. [laughter] and other same time and harding because of the rising visibility of the president in the new mass media, in the newspapers and israel was being called upon to give many more speeches than his predecessors had to do. So Judson Welliver is illiterate clerk, the official, who helps out and even curmudgeonly h. L. Mencken right at home recess i think welliver is having some positive effects on harding. I write about Robert Montgomery in the eisenhower years. Robert montgomery was a movie and tv actor who by the 1950s was kind of stalling his career a little bit, but he had gotten involved much like his friend Ronald Reagan had parallel tracks in hollywood. So we got involved in republican politics. In 1952 he is watching Dwight EisenhowersTelevision Debut in abilene, kansas, in june. It sort of is first speech. But what is supposed we disagree and a, theres a downpour and i started reading his script through fogged up glasses. There are bleachers behind it and people are sort of traipsing back and forth like nothing important is happening. The optics are just terrible. Montgomery places a call to the campaign saying you need emerge