Chapter 4 - The Currency of Distrust in Presidential Performances Since Watergate

Summary

On 8 April 1913, just over a month after his inauguration, Woodrow Wilson chose to deliver an address in person before a joint session of Congress. Since Jefferson's time, such communications by presidents to Congress had been presented in written form. ‘Washington is amazed’, reported the Washington Post on 7 April after Wilson's decision to appear in person had been announced (1913a). On 8 April, the front page of the Washington Post reported on a few senators’ objections to ‘the precedent-breaking event today’ (1913b), but on 9 April a front-page headline declared, ‘Wilson Wins Congress in His Epochal Speech from House Rostrum’ (1913c). Wilson's unusual step was, arguably, part of his project of putting into practice his vision of the US presidency as a role that exercised strong executive leadership, the legitimacy of which Wilson saw as rooted in the president's direct connection to the people. While Wilson was operating within a rapidly evolving media environment that was on the verge of making radio accessible to the masses, his predilection for direct rhetorical intervention as US president cannot be ascribed entirely to technological changes that transformed the media environment. To make that argument would be to disregard the influence of Wilson's well-defined ideas about what constitutes effective presidential leadership. Wilson's biographer Robert Kraig notes that Wilson was keenly aware of the increasing mediation of mass communication and had drawn the conclusion that democratic leaders had to become ‘inordinately skilled rhetors’ to cut through to the public in a ‘highly mediated communication environment in which a message was diffused in various ways’ (2004, 74–5). It is significant, however, that Wilson's observations about rhetorical skill asserted the strength of oratorical leadership necessary to cut through in an environment that was – somewhat paradoxically, from today's perspective – still dominated by print media. Radio broadcasting did not become widespread in the United States until the 1920s, and Wilson did not speak on the radio until 1923, two years after his presidency ended. Wilson's speech before Congress in 1913 was thus not broadcast to the public, though his ground-breaking decision to deliver it in person was reported on in print.