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Prisoners of the White House Also by Kenneth T PRISONERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE ALSO BY KENNETH T. WALSH Family of Freedom: Presidents and African Americans in the White House From Mount Vernon to Crawford: A History of the Presidents and Their Retreats Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes Ronald Reagan: Biography Feeding the Beast: The White House versus the Press PRISONERS OF THE WHITE HOUSE THE ISOLATION OF AMERICA’S PRESIDENTS AND THE CRISIS OF LEADERSHIP 8 BY KENNETH T. WALSH &IRSTPUBLISHEDBY0ARADIGM0UBLISHERS 0UBLISHEDBY2OUTLEDGE 0ARK3QUARE -ILTON0ARK !BINGDON /XON/82. 4HIRD!VENUE .EW9ORK .9 53! 2OUTLEDGEISANIMPRINTOFTHE4AYLOR&RANCIS'ROUP ANINFORMABUSINESS Copyright © 2013 4AYLOR&RANCIS !LLRIGHTSRESERVED.OPARTOFTHISBOOKMAYBEREPRINTEDORREPRODUCEDORUTILISEDIN ANYFORMORBYANYELECTRONIC MECHANICAL OROTHERMEANS NOWKNOWNORHEREAFTER INVENTED INCLUDINGPHOTOCOPYINGANDRECORDING ORINANYINFORMATIONSTORAGEOR RETRIEVALSYSTEM WITHOUTPERMISSIONINWRITINGFROMTHEPUBLISHERS .OTICE 0RODUCTORCORPORATENAMESMAYBETRADEMARKSORREGISTEREDTRADEMARKS ANDAREUSED ONLYFORIDENTIFICATIONANDEXPLANATIONWITHOUTINTENTTOINFRINGE Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. )3". HBK )3". PBK Designed and Typeset by Straight Creek Bookmakers. For Barclay This page intentionally left blank 8 CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction Trapped in “The Bubble” 1 PART I FOUR WHO LOST THE PEOPLE Chapter One Lyndon B. Johnson From Outreach to Isolation 17 Chapter Two Richard Nixon In the Bunker 33 Chapter Three Jimmy Carter Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes 45 Chapter Four George H.W. Bush Missing the Obvious 53 PART II TWO DEFIANT PRINCES Chapter Five John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush Strange Bedfellows 65 VII VIII ACCKNOWLEDGMENTSONTENTS PART III FIVE WHO STAYED CONNECTED Chapter Six Franklin D. Roosevelt Reading the Nation’s Pulse with Eleanor 83 Chapter Seven Harry Truman Connected to Everyman 97 Chapter Eight Ronald Reagan Middle-Class Roots 107 Chapter Nine Bill Clinton Escapes from Disaster 125 Chapter Ten Barack Obama Beyond the Beltway 143 PART IV FROM WIZARDS TO CHICKEN PEDDLERS Chapter Eleven The Wizards of the White House 167 Chapter Twelve Breaking Out of the Bubble 203 Notes 213 Bibliography 231 Index 235 About the Author 244 8 PREFACE This book is a work of history, but it is also the logical extension of my quarter century of covering the presidency as a journalist. Being a White House correspondent for so long has amounted to an extended course in American leadership, politics, and government, with a special emphasis on the lives and philosophies of the five men who occupied the world’s most powerful office for the past three decades— Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. One lingering question is how any president, with all he has to do, all the pressures he is under, and all the security restrictions that are imposed on him, can stay in touch with our ever-changing, amazingly diverse country. Some (notably Reagan, Clinton, and Obama) have done it better than others (such as the two Bushes). But in every case, the president has struggled to stay in touch through various means, whether by never losing sight of his roots, by having a sixth sense or intuition about what the country wants, by developing networks of family and friends, by keeping in touch with popular culture, and by utilizing polls and other forms of public-opinion research. In preparing this book, I was given exclusive access to a remarkable ar- ray of confidential information, including internal polls, strategy memos, and reports on meetings at the highest levels of different administrations. They are most evident in the chapters on Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, known for their extraordinary efforts to avoid isolation. Such documents make this book richer, more detailed, and, I believe, more insightful. I hope many scholars will find this material useful in the future. IX X APREFACECKNOWLEDGMENTS My contention is that the presidents who did the best job of staying in touch had the most successful presidencies. I focus only on the modern presidents—from Franklin D. Roosevelt onward—because the country has grown and the culture has changed so much that staying in touch is a much different process today. It’s also a more urgent requirement than in the past, when the job of the president was less demanding and less confining and the role of the political par- ties was more important. In short, presidents have more of a need today to stay in touch with the ever-changing lives of those who elected them, and they have more tools with which to do it. It’s a real challenge, but in assessing how the presidents fight isola- tion, one of my main conclusions is that no method is foolproof, and the main goal should be for presidents to try as hard as they can to remain connected to the lives of Americans outside Washington, D.C., using all the means at their disposal. This is vital to governing and to persuading Americans that the president is truly their advocate. 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks first of all go to Barclay Walsh, my wife and partner in life. Without her, this project would not have been possible, not only because of her superb research skills but also because of her understanding and unstinting support. Barclay is a very talented writer, and she improved the manuscript and frequently clarified my thinking with her suggestions, as she has done with my previous books. Mark Penn was instrumental in shaping my first thoughts about this book and provided many insights into the era of Bill Clinton. Stan Greenberg and Doug Schoen were also generous in sharing their insights into the Clinton era, as was Joel Benenson in discussing the presidency of Barack Obama and the remarkable strides that have been made in keeping the president in touch since 2008. I was given access to an extraordinary range of confidential materials for the Obama and Clinton polling and political operations. This allowed me to illustrate some of the major points in the book with real-time ex- amples, ranging from the “ethnography” study conducted for Obama to polls on presidential vacations done for Clinton. Other pollsters who were of great help included Cornell Belcher, Geoff Garin, Ed Goeas, Lou Harris, Peter Hart, Frank Luntz, and Bill McInturff. These names, along with those mentioned above, represent a who’s who in American survey research, and I am deeply grateful for their assistance and their friendship. I want to also note the invaluable contributions of two other presi- dential pollsters who helped me understand the themes of this book and the inner workings of the White House—the late Robert Teeter, whom XI XII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I got to know when he advised George H.W. Bush, and the late Richard Wirthlin, whom I got to know when he advised Ronald Reagan. The Society of Presidential Pollsters at George Washington University was a valued resource, and I want to thank them for starting the develop- ment of an important archive on presidential pollsters for future historians, political scientists, and journalists. Barbara and George Bush provided their perspectives, for which I am most grateful. Thanks also to the many other people who helped with interviews, ad- vice, and guidance on the themes of this book, recently and over the years, including David Axelrod, Howard Baker, Ross Baker, Doug Brinkley, Bill Burton, Jay Carney, Bob Dallek, Dave Demarest, Frank Donatelli, Mat- thew Dowd, Ken Duberstein, Josh Earnest, Marlin Fitzwater, Ari Fleischer, Don Foley, Bill Galston, David Gergen, Mike Gerson, Robert Gibbs, Ed Gillespie, Joe Lockhart, Ron Kaufman, Kevin Madden, Scott McClellan, Mike McCurry, Mack McLarty, Dee Dee Myers, Leon Panetta, Dana Perino, Roman Popadiuk, Reince Priebus, Larry Sabato, Jake Seiwert, the late Tony Snow, Sean Spicer, Fred Steeper, George Stephanopoulos, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Brad Woodhouse, Julian Zelizer, and the archivists at the presidential libraries who were so helpful with their time and resources. Several books were particularly valuable, including George Reedy’s The Twilight of the Presidency, Diane J. Heith’s Polling to Govern, and Robert M. Eisinger’s The Evolution of Presidential Polling. And a special note of thanks to Jennifer Knerr, Candace Cunningham, and the staff at Paradigm Publishers. They are true professionals, and any author would be proud to work with them. Jennifer believed in this book from the start and provided welcome encouragement throughout the research and writing process. My quarter century covering the White House as a journalist gave me an invaluable observation post and provided many insights into presiden- tial isolation, which I believe is one of the major challenges facing the American presidency. I hope this book shines some much-needed light on the problem. Kenneth T. Walsh Bethesda, Maryland, and Shady Side, Maryland 8 INTRODUCTION TRAPPED IN “THE BUBBLE” President Harry Truman famously called the White House “the great white jail,” and Bill Clinton referred to it as “the crown jewel of the fed- eral penitentiary system.”1 Barack Obama says one of the biggest mistakes he made during his first term was confining himself in the White House too much, which limited his understanding of the real America beyond official Washington. They have a point. One can scarcely imagine an environment outside the nation’s penal system that is more isolating than the presidency, which is almost guaranteed to keep America’s commander in chief far removed from his fellow citizens. And it’s a problem that modern presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt onward have been acutely aware of. In fact, breaking free from the White House “bubble” of isolation is one of the fundamental challenges of the modern presidency. How can the nation’s leader solve the country’s problems and help everyday people if he is distant from American life and its constant permu- tations? This was one of the biggest concerns of voters in the 2012 elec- tion, and it was one of the reasons that President Obama was re-elected.
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