The Bully Pulpit
Celebrity, Politics, and Presidential Powers
By Greyfiveys - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119108276
The presidency has been, for over a century, the gravitational center of American politics. During a presidential election it can seem that little else is going on. Several factors contribute to this. The executive branch and the presidency have assumed more and more power. In 1973, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., published The Imperial Presidency during Richard Nixon’s second term and the Watergate Scandal that seemed to capture concerns about excessive presidential powers. There is an extensive body of scholarship on this, but the short version is that the increasing size of administrative agencies and their power, combined with various crises has moved power away from the legislative branch towards the executive branch. Congressional deadlock and inaction contributed to the rise in executive power. In other words, presidents accumulated additional powers beyond the vague confines established in the Constitution. The focus on the president's powers during times of crisis and war explains a lot, but there is more to the story.
The president’s role as the symbolic head of state also contributed to the growing power of the office. Advancements in information technology gave us popular culture that meant that the president (or candidate) who captured the public’s imagination had a greater likelihood of succeeding.
The merging of the roles of administrator of the executive bureaucracies and symbolic leader of the nation goes back to the origins of the Republic.While it was true that many of the 19th century presidents saw their duty as administering the office, it was not universally true. George Washington served, as one of his biographers put it, as the “indispensable man.” Washington’s name and likeness permeated the new republic, reflecting the need to create an identity for the new nation through a leader who embodied republican virtue. You can see this in the statue of Washington on Wall Street (the site of the first government), the painting of him in the dome of the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, and, of course, the name of our nation’s capital.
However, Washington and his fellow founders, with their wigs and stockings, were soon out of style in a country whose politics were becoming more partisan and democratic and whose economy was becoming more capitalist. Partisan newspapers emphasized their candidate’s humble origins: born in log cabins, drinking hard cider (the common man’s beverage), and splitting rails.
The arc of information technology has played an interesting role in this.The industrial revolution accelerated this process, bringing newspapers, cheap paperback books, photography, and, around the end of the 19th century moving pictures. President William McKinley, who defeated populist William Jennings Bryan in 1896, appeared on film. His 1896 presidential campaign featured McKinley on his front porch being sold to the public.
Teddy Roosevelt succeeded McKinley when he died from an assassin’s bullet. Roosevelt achieved fame in the Spanish-American War, which is often viewed as a product of yellow journalism. TR as president was a bigger than life figure who called the presidency the “bully pulpit,” meaning that the office of the President of the United States could serve as a singular voice in speaking to the people. The Presidency represented an excellent (or bully to use TR’s synonym) platform from which to advocate, and to shape public opinion. This was an extension of the president serving as the symbolic head of state, the leader who could (potentially) represent the entirety of the American people but who could also use the power of popular opinion to shape policy.
Magazines and Hollywood came into their own during the 1920s. In 1920 Warren G. Harding, Republican from Ohio, became the first presidential candidate to receive endorsements from Hollywood stars; his campaign took full advantage of phonographs and modern advertising to sell the idea of a “return to normalcy.” Radio was just emerging as a main-stream technology. In 1920, a commercial radio station announced the results of the presidential election–a first.
Photography and motion pictures did not go away, even as radio saturated American culture. During this period Americans developed a truly national mass culture. President Herber Hoover was notoriously bad at radio, even as Franklin Roosevelt was famously good at radio. With his “Fireside Chats” Roosevelt could, for the first time, reach directly into households creating a sense of intimacy around national politics.
Television soon added to the scope and frenzy of presidential politics. Again, radio, newspapers, and film did not go away; television just added another layer. President Truman appeared on television. Dwight Eisenhower appeared on television as a candidate. He apparently thought it beneath the dignity of the office, but consented. His campaign ran the memorable animated cartoon featuring the catchy tune, “I like Ike.”
Television continued to play an oversized role in politics. In 1960 John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon appeared in the first televised presidential debate, with disastrous results for Nixon. Lyndon Johnson’s campaign ran the controversial “Daisy Ad” in 1964. CNN first broadcast in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan won the White House with his background in television and film. The television advertisements of all the major candidates from 1952 to 2020 can be found on the website Living Room Candidate.
Starting in the 1990s, the internet, followed by social media, added a layer on top of this tranche of information technology. Barack Obama made waves by embracing Twitter (now X) and Facebook in his presidential run in 2008.
TR embodied the politician as a celebrity, but he could not have imagined how far that trend would continue. One way to think about this is to look at the major speeches during times of national crisis or transition. More often than not, they feature the president and we can remember the words more than the policy specifics. Examples might include Lincoln’s two inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address, FDR’s Fireside Chats and addresses to the nation during the Great Depression (“we have nothing to fear but fear itself”) and World War II (“a date which will live in infamy”). Do we remember Roosevelt’s “nothing to fear” and his fireside chats or what the Glass-Steagall Act did? It’s easy to compose a similar list for the second half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the 21st century.
If we look at the 2024 presidential election and it appears more focused on the show (the horse race) this should not be a surprise. The trend towards politics as show business has existed for a very long time, which has sometimes served the nation well and sometimes for the worse. However, this is not a dichotomy or binary. Yes, the circus can distract the crowd but it can also build momentum for substantial political change. The bully pulpit, to use a TRism, has only become more grand serving both sides of presidential power.