September 23, 1952: Vice Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon's "Checkers" Speech

     Oddly, it was Richard Nixon, who was pilloried by the press throughout his career, who discovered the political power of the new medium of television. Imaginatively, aggressively, in the "Checkers" speech, vice presidential candidate Nixon used television in a way it had never been used before, in order to lay out his personal finances and his cultural virtues and, hence, to save his place on the Republican national team (and, ultimately, his place in the American political pantheon). That same year, 1952, also witnessed the first televised coverage of a national party convention and the first TV advertisements. However, it was Nixon's famous speech that transformed the political environment from party-based to candidate-controlled. By using television as he did-personally, candidly, visually (his wife Pat sat demurely next to him during the broadcast)-Nixon single-handedly created a new political style.

January 19, 1955: President Dwight Eisenhower's Press Conference

     When he agreed to let the television cameras into the White House for the first time in U.S. history, Dwight Eisenhower changed the presidency in fundamental ways. Until that point, the White House press corps had been a cozy outfit but very much on  the  president's leash or, at least, the lesser partner in a complex political arrangement. Television changed that. The hue and cry let out by the deans of U.S. print journalism proved it, as did television's growing popularity among the American people. More proof awaited. It was not long after  Eisenhower  opened  the doors  to television that U.S. presidents found themselves arranging their work­ days around network schedules. To have a political announcement receive top billing on the nightly news, that announcement had to be made by 2:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. If the news to be shared was bad news, the White House would choose the slowest news days, Saturday and Sunday, to make the announcement. These may seem like small expediencies, but they pre­ saged  a fundamental  shift  of  power  in Washington, D.C. After Eisenhower, television was no longer a novelty but a central premise in all political logic.

January 25, 1961: President John F. Kennedy's Press Conference

     Before Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, there was John F. Kennedy. No U.S. president has better understood television than these three. By holding the first live press conference in the nation's history, Kennedy showed that boldness and amiability may trump all suits in an age of television. In his short time in office, Kennedy also showed that all communication, even presidential communication, must be relational; that the substance of one's remarks is irrelevant if one can­ not say it effortlessly; and that being "online" and "in real time" brings a special energy to politics. Prescient as he was, Kennedy would therefore not have been surprised to learn that 50 percent of the American people now find television news more believable and more attractive than print news (which attracts a mere quarter of the populace). Kennedy would also not be surprised at the advent of CNN, the all-news, all-day channel, nor would he be surprised to learn that C­SPAN (Congress's cable channel) has also become popular in certain quarters. Being the innovator he was, Kennedy fundamentally changed the temporal dimensions of U.S. politics. Forever more, his successors would be required to perform the presidency during each moment of each day they held office.

February 27, 1968: CBS Anchorman Walter Cronkite's Evaluation of the Vietnam War

     President Lyndon Johnson, we are told, knew he had lost the Vietnam War when, during an evening documentary, CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite declared the conflict a "quagmire." To be sure, Cronkite's hard­ hitting special was nuanced and respectful of the presidency, but it also brought proof to the nation's living rooms that the president's resolve had been misplaced. Cronkite's broadcast was therefore an important step in altering the power balance between the White House and the networks. CBS's Dan Rather continued that trend, facing-down Nixon during one cantankerous   press   conference   and,   later, George H.W. Bush during an interview about the Iran-Contra scandal. Sam Donaldson and Ted Koppel of ABC News also took special delight in deflating political egos, as did CNN's Peter Arnett who  frustrated George Bush Sr.'s efforts during the Gulf War by continuing to broadcast from the Baghdad  Hilton even as U.S. bombs were falling on that city. Some attribute the press's new aggressiveness to their somnolence during the Watergate affair. but it could also be credited to the replacement of politics' old barter system. which featured material costs and rewards, by an entertainment-based celebrity system featuring personal achievements and rivalries. In this latter system. it is every person for him- or herself, the president included.

November 25, 1968: The Inauguration of the White House's Office of Communication

     One of Nixon's first acts as president was to appoint Herb Klein to oversee a newly enlarged unit in the White House that would coordinate all out-going communications. This act. perhaps more than any other. signaled that the new president would be an active player in the persuasion game and that he would deal with the mass media in increasingly innovative ways. Perhaps Nixon sensed the trends scholars would later unearth: ( 1) that citizens who see a political speech in person react far more favorably than those who see it through television reporters' eyes: (2) that the average presidential "sound bite·· has been reduced to 9.8 seconds in the average nightly news story: and (3) that negative news stories about the president have increased over time. This is bad news for presidents in the age of television. The good news is that 97 percent of CBS's nightly newscasts feature the president (usually as the lead story). and 20 percent of a typical broadcast will be devoted to comings and goings in the White House. In other words, the president is the fulcrum around which television reportage pivots: hence. he is well advised to monitor carefully the information he releases (or refuses to release).

September 17, 1976: President Gerald Ford's Pasadena Speech

     Neither President Gerald Ford's address nor the occasion was memorable.  His  was  a  standard  stump speech, this time at the annual  reception  of  the Pasadena Golden Circle. However, the speech's sheer banality signaled its importance: Ford spoke to  the  group not because he needed to convince them of something but because their predictable, on-camera applause would certify his broader worthiness to the American people. Ford  gave  some  200  speeches  of this sort during the 1976 campaign. Unlike President Truman, who spoke to all-comers on the village green during the  1948  election.  Ford  addressed  such "closed" audiences almost exclusively during his re-election run. In  addition, Ford  and  his  successors spoke in ritualistic settings 40  percent  of  the  time, since bunting, too, photographs  well.  The  constant need for media coverage has thereby turned  the  modern president into a  continual  campaigner  and  the White House into a  kind  of  national  booking  agency. It is little wonder, then, that the traditional press conference, with its contentiousness and  unpredictability, has become rare.

January 20, 1981: The Inauguration of President Ronald Reagan

     Ronald Reagan grew up with television, and television with him. By the time he became president, both had matured. Reagan brought to the camera what the camera most prized: a strong visual presence and a vaunted affability. He was the rare kind of politician who even liked his detractors, and television made those feelings obvious. Reagan also had the ability to concretize the most abstract of issues-deficits, territorial jurisdictions, nuclear stalemates. By finding the essential narrative in these matters. and then by humanizing those narratives, he produced his own unique style. Television favors that style, since TV is, after all, the most intimate of the mass media. with its ability to show emotion and to do so in tight-focus. Thus, it is not surprising that political advertising has now become Rea­ ganesque: visual, touching, elliptical, never noisy or brash. Like Reagan, modern political advertising never extends its stay: typically, it says in 30 seconds all that needs to be said and then it says no more.

January 16, 1991: President George Bush Sr.'s Declaration of the Gulf War

     From the beginning, President George H.W. Bush was determined not to turn the Gulf War into another Viet­ nam. His military commanders shared that determination. But what, exactly, are the lessons of Vietnam? From the standpoint of television they are these: (1) make the conflict an air war, not a ground war, because ground soldiers can be interviewed on camera; (2) make it a short war, not a Jong war, because television has a short attention span; and (3) make it a technical war, not a political war, because Americans Jove the technocratic and fall out with one another over ends and means. Blessedly, the Gulf War was short, and, via a complex network of satellite feeds, it entertained the American people with its visuals: SCUD missiles exploding, oil-slicks spreading, yellow ribbons flying. Iraq’s Saddam Husseum fought back, on television, in avuncular poses with captured innocents and by staying tuned to CNN from his bunker. The Gulf War therefore marked an almost postmodern turn in the history of warfare. 

October 25, 1992: The Richmond, Virginia, Presidential Candidates' Debate

     Several trends converged to produce the second presi­dential debate of 1992. In the capital of the Old South, President George Bush Sr., Democratic Party candidate Clinton, and Reform Party candidate Ross Perot squared off with one another in the presence of 200 "average Americans," who questioned them for some 90 minutes. The debate's format, not its content, became its headline; the working press had been cut out of the proceedings, and few seemed to mourn their passing. The president of the United States face-to­ face with the populace; here, surely, democracy was recaptured. The 1992 campaign expanded upon this theme, with the candidates repairing to the cozy studio (and cozy questions) of talk show host Larry King. Thereafter, they made the rounds of the morning talk­ over-coffee shows. The decision to seek out these friendly climes followed from the advice politicians had been receiving for years: choose your own audience and occasion, forsake the press, emphasize your humanity. Coupled with fax machines, e-mail, cable specials, direct-mail videos, and the like, these "alter­ native media formats" completed a cycle whereby the president became a rhetorical entrepreneur and the nation's press an afterthought.

April 20, 1993: President Bill Clinton's MTV Appearance

     Not a historic date, perhaps, but a suggestive one. It was on this date that President Clinton discussed his underwear preferences with the American people (briefs, not boxers, as it turned out). In television's increasingly postmodern world, all texts, whether serious or sophomoric, swirl together in the same discontinuous field of experience. To be sure, Clinton made his disclosure because he had been asked to do so by a member of the MTV generation, not because he felt a sudden need to purge himself. In doing so, however, Clinton exposed several rules connected to and means. Blessedly, the Gulf War was short, and, via the   new   phenomenology   of   politics:  (1) because  of television's celebrity system, presidents are losing their distinctiveness as social actors and hence are often judged by standards formerly used to assess rock singers and movie stars; (2) because of television's sense of intimacy, the American people feel they know their presidents as persons and hence no longer feel the need for party guidance; (3) because of the medium's archly cynical worldview, those who watch politics on television are increasingly turning away from the policy sphere, years of hyperfamiliarity having finally bred contempt for politics itself.

     For good and ill, then, presidential television grew apace  between  1952  and  the  present.  It  began  as a little-used, somewhat  feared, medium of  exchange and transformed itself into a central aspect of American political culture. In doing so, television changed almost everything about life in the White House. It changed what presidents do and how they do it. It changed network programming routines, launched an entire subset of the U.S. advertising industry, affected military strategy and military deployment, and affected how and why voters vote and for whom they cast their ballots. In 1992 presidential hopeful Perot tested the practical limits of this technology by buying sufficient airtime to make himself an instant candidate as well as an instantly serious candidate. History records that he failed to achieve his goal. However, if another independent candidate has sufficient money and has sufficient skill to harness television's capacity to mold public opinion, that candidate may succeed at some later time. This would add yet another important date to the history of presidential television.