Book Review: White House Ghosts

There's nothing supernatural described in the pages of Robert Schlesinger's White House Ghosts. Unless you consider how remarkable it is that the Presidents deemed to have led the most regarded administrations in the last half of the 20th century were the most effective communicators with the American public. Another nugget a reader will mine from Schlesinger's work is that each President had some level of depth in substance and thought of where they wanted to take the nation. Schlesinger avoids the easy trap of attempting to report on and then judge the correctness of those policies and opts to adhere to the former course. Still, his research and the flow of his work brings the reader around to a singular conclusion: Only leaders that clearly voice their vision will get Americans to follow.

Listed at a daunting 581 pages, inclusive of 100 pages of bibliographical references, Schlesinger devotes one chapter to each Commander-in-Chief beginning with Roosevelt, whose fireside chats are consistently thought of as the onset of modern media presidencies. Readers get insight into the early evolutionary stages of political media, where grand programs began in lower case (i.e. Roosevelt talked about a "new deal for Americans"). And in an argument against evolution, we see that for the sake of a sound bite culture, Presidents began demanding their speechwriters develop capital letter names for their ideas. Could the focus on form over substance be an underlying cause of why Americans feel their government is failing them? Again, Schlesinger avoids being a judge, but for my part, the change in focus cannot be ignored, and words without substance at best allows for achieveing short-term agendas.

You will need to be a history buff to enjoy poring through all the pages. However, one benefit about Schlesinger's structuring of White House Ghosts is that you can pick and choose which Administrations that you will use Schlesinger's key through the back door of the White House.

I took the full sixty-plus year tour, and felt it was time well spent. It gave me several moments of pause to think how one properly worded speech could have changed much in our history. For example, what would have happened if Richard Nixon would have admitted early on that there are times when persons in power can lose sight of what is right instead of declaring "I am not a crook"? Once he made that declaration and then acted as if he was imperially exempt, his words and actions were too conflicting for the public to accept. Had he taken the mea culpa approach it is entirely feasible that Americans would have forgiven him, wanting to put it behind them as they did twenty-four years later during the Clinton impeachment.

By the time that I finished White House Ghosts I had drawn one additional conclusion. Now that we live in an era of instantaneous communications, the speechwriter's pen will continue to be one of the most potent weapons, or tools, of those that seek to lead.