The immense power of visual media first surfaced during the presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Those who watched the debate on TV clearly believed Kennedy was the winner. Those listening on radio gave the victory to Nixon. Kennedy eventually won that highly-contested 1960 election. But another winner was television, which had clearly demonstrated its power, a power that was only to grow during the ensuing years.
Tonight, Beschloss appeared at a special program at the Newseum to discuss how presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama had both used and been affected by the contemporary media of their times. Beschloss' talk was part of the Newseum's recently opened exhibit Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press.
For his part, Eisenhower saw little effect from the media. "He was so popular he could say almost anything and it wouldn't change anyone's opinion of him," Beschloss said. In fact, Eisenhower, genuinely mystified, once replied to a question by saying "What could a reporter do to me?"
But by Kennedy's time the president/media situation was much different. "After the debate, it meant you had a different kind of president," Beschloss said, noting that in 1963 national polls showed that more people received their news from television than from newspapers.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was obsessed with media coverage. He had 3 television sets tuned to the news showing on the 3 major networks - ABC, CBS, and NBC. He also had 2 ticker tapes constantly running to see what was being reported between the nightly broadcasts. It was not unusual for Johnson to pick up the phone and angrily call a network executive insisting "get that off the ticker, it is completely wrong" or "kill that one for the western feed. That is completely wrong."
Johnson was succeeded by Richard Nixon, who had a testy and challenging relationship with the press which eventually culminated in his resignation as president due to the highly and competitively reported Watergate scandal.
Both Gerald Ford and his successor Jimmy Carter had image problems created in part by the media. Ford, one of the most athletic presidents in history, became portrayed as a a bumbler on Saturday Night Live sketches after he beaned one of his secret agents with a golf ball and stumbled exiting an airplane. Carter never really recovered from admitting in a Playboy magazine interview that he had "often had lust in his heart."
As a former actor, Ronald Reagan was extremely comfortable in front of the camera. "He was LBJ's nightmare of what the presidency would be turned into by television," Beschloss said.
George H. Bush admitted that television was "not a medium he ever handled well." In fact, during a debate with Bill Clinton who would deny Bush a chance at a second term, a defining moment came when Bush kept looking at his watch, an action viewers took to mean that he was "an effete, out-of-touch person who felt that the debates were somehow beneath him" Bush's action contrasted greatly with those of the personable Clinton.
During Clinton's 8 years in office, the modern media that we now have today first came into being. "There were suddenly three 24-hour cable news networks that were extremely competitive and we had the first 50 pages (of politics) on the internet," Beschloss pointed out.
George W. Bush used television to push his agenda after the 9/11 attacks. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected after running the most sophisticated media campaign in American history, a trend that Beschloss is convinced will only grow with Obama's upcoming campaign against his as-yet undecided Republican challenger.
Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
During his talk, Beschloss raised a truly terrifying possibility from the unrelenting 24-hour news cycle. The time for presidential action has been dramatically shortened. That means hard decisions have to made much more quickly than in the past. As just one frightening example, Beschloss cited the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Initially, President Kennedy favored military action against the Russian missile sites in Cuba, an action which almost certainly would have plunged the world into nuclear confrontation. However, he was able to hold off his final decision for more than a week and the crisis was averted. "Can you imagine if something like that happened today to President Obama? It's a much different atmosphere. It's much more immediate. When you think about who you want in office, you need to choose someone who has the strength to hold those kinds of decisions off despite media pressure," Beschloss said. Of course, if the press acted the way they do in today's anything is reportable era, there is a good chance that Kennedy would never have been elected. The press knew about his incessant womanizing, but due to the tone and unstated rules of that time, never reported about it. That is a silence that is simply unimaginable today.
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