Craig Fehrman - The Best Presidential Writing: From 1789 to the Present

ALSO BY CRAIG FEHRMAN

Author in Chief

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Copyright 2020 by Craig Fehrman

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I n 1906, a young soldier named Douglas MacArthur received some thrilling news: hed been chosen to serve as an assistant to the president, Theodore Roosevelt. The job turned out to be rather boring, with MacArthur mostly helping at White House dinners and enduring the hectoring of self-important congressmen. Still, the settingand the bossmade up for it. MacArthur marveled at Roosevelts intelligence, his energy, his certainty. A few times, in quiet moments, they talked about foreign policy, but one day MacArthur raised a domestic concern. What, the soldier asked, explained Roosevelts political success? To Roosevelt, the answer was simple: the people loved him, he said, because he put into words what is in their hearts and minds but not their mouths.

This skillof identifying and focusing on the right problems, of describing their significance and arguing for the right solutions, of writing and writing wellhas always been essential to the presidency. In essays and addresses, Roosevelt coined phrases that still mark his era more than a century later: the strenuous life, the square deal, the muckrakers of the press and their opposite, the man in the arena. Most presidents have tried to do this, though not always with Roosevelts success. The presidency is a position won through words, defined through words, and carried out through words. Americas chief executives have talked and written their way into the White House; once there, theyve explained not just their policies but their own role as president, often expanding that roles powers along the way; after they depart, they usually reflect on the experience, defending their choices and sharing what it felt like to lead.

This anthology, for the first time, collects the best and most important examples of each of these kinds of writing: campaign, presidential, and postpresidential. It contains the story of America, told by the presidents themselves.

That story, like most stories from history, is one of continuity and change. Certain themes emerge, with even the most famous speeches finding new meanings or fresh connectionsso that George Washingtons Farewell Address leads to Ulysses S. Grants defense of the Fifteenth Amendment, which leads to Lyndon B. Johnsons call to pass a Voting Rights Act that would make this amendment actually mean something, which leads to Barack Obamas address, fifty years on, that shows how the amendment has been weakened once again.

One theme that spans this anthology is how presidents campaign. During the eighteenth century, and for long stretches of the nineteenth, candidates did not go out and stump. In keeping quiet they followed Washingtons example, proving their fitness for the office by proving their lack of interest in it. This changed, of course, but slowly, with candidates getting involved through campaign biographies and published letters, then front-porch speeches and bestselling books. Technology was changing, too, with new forms supplementing (if never quite replacing) old ones: from newspapers to widely affordable books, from the telegraph and the locomotive to newsreels and radio, television and Twitter. Each form encouraged its own style of writing, but they all seemed to benefit from the same basic material: a charming backstory, a big idea, a clever bit of symbolism linking the two. Seeing candidates sell their ideas, and seeing them sell themselves, reveals much about America and its desires.

Another theme is how presidents govern. The Constitutionitself a piece of writingprovides few details about the presidency and its powers. It has fallen to the presidents themselves to describe their job and then to do it. They have pursued both steps aggressively through writingthrough the bully pulpit, to use another of Roosevelts phrases.

One can see this expansion of executive power in the State of the Union address, which has grown from a written progress report to a detailed and executive-driven platform, delivered in prime time with a STATE OF THE UNION chyron flashing underneath. (While that name didnt stick until the twentieth century, this anthology calls all annual addresses State of the Unions; for more on such modernizing, see the Note on Texts, Sources, and Permissions on page 461.) One can see this expansion in impromptu remarks, in prepared statements, in inaugural addresses or addresses that mourn a tragedy or dedicate a place. Every speech or statement is an opportunity to demonstrate and enact executive power. There have been periods of our history, Woodrow Wilson once wrote, when presidential messages were utterly without practical significance, perfunctory documents which few persons except the editors of newspapers took the trouble to read. This changed because of presidential writing, and presidential writing changed because of this.

One can also see this expansion in the content of presidential writingin the evolution of foreign policy, to choose another prominent theme. While the Constitution does dwell on the role of commander in chief, that role has shifted as America has shifted, from a provincial nation with no standing army to a postatomic superpower. Americas foreign policy has shifted as well, moving from the isolationism of Washingtons Farewell Address to the durability of the Monroe Doctrine and then the violent revisions of the twentieth century: World War I, World War II, the Cold War. These shifts occurred on the battlefield, but they occurred in the bully pulpit, too.

Another theme is how presidents view history. Americas politicians have long specialized in using history to justify their decisions or to push new policies. (Grant invoked Washington in his statement on the Fifteenth Amendment because Grant wanted to tie it to, in his phrase, the Father of his country.) Presidents have analyzed the writing of their predecessors, theorizing about what makes an effective address. They have tried to write history themselves, privately in diaries and unpublished manuscripts and publicly in presidential memoirs. Here especially one can feel the human side of the presidency, though it exists in each kind of writing. In this anthology, presidents open up about a key battle in the Revolutionary War, about the assassination of other presidents, about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Taken together, these excerpts show how autobiography has changed across the centuriesand just as much how the self has changed, the