VA Foundation for the Humanities | FirstDraft1_08_2018_MASTER JOANNE: Major funding for BackStory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis foundations. [MUSIC PLAYING] NATHAN: From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory. BRIAN: Welcome to BackStory. I'm Brian Balogh. JOANNE: I'm Joanne Freeman. ED: And I'm Ed Ayers. BRIAN: Each week Nathan Connelly, Joanne, Ed and I-- all historians-- take a topic from the headlines and try to understand how we got here. Today on the podcast, we'll discuss how presidents present themselves to the public and the use of slogans and activism. We'll wrap up the conversation with a segment we call "footnotes." this is when one of us shares something from the historical archives that caught our eye. Hey Ed, why don't you start us off? ED: Well, I'm happy to Brian. In the news this week, we've read a lot about President Trump and his tweets. And we started having kind of meta conversations about that-- not just about the substance of the tweet, but whether tweeting is a good idea or not. Is it a master strategy to control American public opinion? Or is it just an impulse that the president can't control? And it got me thinking, well, how have US presidents-- before Twitterdom and before Donald Trump-- presented themselves to the public? And a large part of their job-- it seems to me-- is to create a persona that provides a unifying story for that moment in American history. And I thought, if I just knew some historians who could cover the span of American history, I might be able to find out the answer. [LAUGHTER] [INTERPOSING VOICES] Well, at least I have Joanne who's going to help me understand the early stuff. Because certainly, your guys had to invent that. And you know, it seems to me they spent quite a bit of time and energy thinking about what sort of persona they wanted to project. JOANNE: Well, exactly. And "invent" is the right word because the republic was created in a world of monarchies. And everybody knew what a king was but what the heck is a president? Right? No one knew what that meant. What is a national executive and a republic? So one of the things I love about this early period Is that these first presidents were-- and actually everyone around them, as well-- were negotiating on a sort of ground level as to what they were supposed to look like and what they were supposed to act like, and as you put it Ed, what kind of persona they were supposed to present. So for example, Washington decided very early in his presidency, that he would not ever shake peoples' hands, that he would not allow the American public to touch him in any way. And that somehow or other, that to him represented some kind of a custom that would show that he was above the people, and yet that he was not so far above them that he was like a monarch. ED: They could look, but not touch right? JOANNE: Exactly. That's a little scary sounding, but yes. BRIAN: So did he have one of those velvet ropes around him? [LAUGHTER] JOANNE: No, but I'm sure that there would have been people who didn't like him who claimed he had velvet ropes around him. But the other side of that equation was he did worry that he would seem too removed. And so he took a walk in the street every day very publicly so that people would see he wasn't just riding around with his carriage and horses. He was a guy walking around in the street. And people noticed that too. And he got fan mail for the walks. You know, oh excellent! Good job really showing the public you're one of them. BRIAN: But could he chew gum at the same time, Joanne? JOANNE: Well not with those teeth actually, probably not. Even in New York at the beginning of the government, he went and visited-- in person-- every congressman at their boarding house. And what he did was, he got there. He got off his horse. He bowed. He got back on his horse. And he went away. So there was no touching of George at that kind of moment. But it was a definite display of, I am here and I am showing respect to you. ED: Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you. JOANNE: No, no. Go ahead. ED: So it seems to me that Washington-- in many ways-- succeeded. He struck a balance between familiarity and distance that seems to have been-- throughout most of American history-- the kind of tone that most American presidents would set. Does that seem true to you, Joanne? JOANNE: Well, I think that was true for people who agreed with him politically. And then, I think you get Thomas Jefferson comes along in his presidency at the very beginning of the 19th century. ED: Well that didn't take long. JOANNE: No, not at all. It took one president in between. And he comes along and says, no. Jefferson changes the etiquette of the presidency. He decides that there will be round tables so that there won't be any one seated at a position of power over anybody else. He really-- very aggressively-- says, the presidency is going to be a much more small-d democratic office now that I'm in power. BRIAN: Well, not to jump to the 20th century but to jump to the 20th century, I just want to underscore something in that spectrum that you guys were talking about. That's the need to distinguish one's self from one's predecessor, especially when there's a real change in party. ED: Right, right. BRIAN: They're beginning to emerge in the early 19th century to distinguish one selves ideologically through stylistic changes. And what you and Joanne were talking about is so resident of that contrast between Richard Nixon-- the very formal president, but ultimately disgraced by things like Watergate, and Jimmy Carter-- the populist president who carried his own coat bag during his inauguration. And obviously when I talk about Jimmy Carter, there are people at the inauguration. But there are hundreds of millions more that might be watching around the world. How did the image of presidents get projected in the 19th century? ED: Well, I've got two words for you Brian. Honest Abe. JOANNE: Aha! ED: Honest Abe Lincoln, right? The rail splitter, right? That was a complete projection of-- you know, he did split rails at some earlier point in his life. They weren't taking him out of the field into the presidency. He did some other things in between, right? But Lincoln, of course, was beloved because he struck the common tone throughout his presidency, that he would visit the soldiers in the hospital. And he would step out into the streets of Washington. And of course, as we know in some ways, that inclination to be seen among the people ended up making him remarkably vulnerable. And so he was assassinated in being at the theater-- sort of the clearest example-- of how you could be a man of the people. JOANNE: Sorry, I have a question about that. ED: Yeah. JOANNE: How much of that was a very deliberate adopting of a persona? And how much of that was just Lincoln? Or can we tell that? ED: Joanne, you know, there's no doubt that Lincoln-- who was a very political person-- understood the value of this. But he actually took it to impractical ends. He would meet with all these people who would come to the White House to meet him, to talk about some patronage job they needed, or sometimes very touchingly about sons that a mother had lost. I think that's one thing that made this so remarkable. And we still remember it. It's authentic. And I think that's an important part of all that we're talking about. The persona can't be manufactured. We have to have some reason to believe that it's growing from within who the person really is behind the office. BRIAN: Ed, I'm just thinking of Richard Nixon. And his aides were telling him, you know, you've got to show that you care about people. So there is this iconic photograph of him working the lines of some huge crowd. And he's shaking hands. Unfortunately, he's looking at his watch at the same time. [LAUGHTER] Kind of undercut what his aides were trying to achieve. JOANNE: Well, let me ask you a question then. How much of what we're talking about here, as far as presidents engaging with the public, how much of that is affected by technology? Because you're talking about a photograph. BRIAN: Oh, it's totally affected by technology, Joanne. Now, I don't think that's a photograph that Nixon wanted-- JOANNE: Probably not. BRIAN: --to get around. But certainly by the time you get to the post-World War II presidents-- and my guess is even before-- they are acutely aware of what a 19th century technology-- the photograph-- can do when spread across newspapers across the land. I'm thinking about the emergence of the video image that Ronald Reagan was just absolutely brilliant at using.