Abstract
The 1920s often have been viewed as something of an interlude in the twentieth-century expansion of presidential management of public opinion through the news media. Republican candidate Warren G. Harding pledged in 1920 to lead the nation “back to normalcy” and away from the turmoil of World War I and the Wilson years.1 To correspondent Fletcher Knebel, they were the “placid twenties,” stretching generously from the end of the war to the excitement of the New Deal in the 1930s.2 The political scientist Elmer C. Cornwell Jr. referred to the Harding and Coolidge administrations as periods of “consolidation” in presidential leadership of public opinion, and to the unhappy single term of Herbert Hoover, who took office in 1929, as a “retrogression.”3 Among historians, the presidencies of the 1920s were diminished in hindsight by that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose well-documented impact on executive leadership of public opinion through the mass media overshadowed those who preceded him as well as those who followed him.4
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
John D. Hicks, Republican Ascendancy, 1921–1933 (New York: Harper, 1960), 24–5.
The term is from Fletcher Knebel, “The Placid Twenties,” in Cabell Phillips, ed., Dateline: Washington (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1949), 61–74.
William E. Leuchtenberg, In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, rev. ed. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), viii–xi. One factor limiting archival research into the executive-press relationship in the Harding and Coolidge administrations has been the truncated presidential manuscript collections. Large portions of Harding’s presidential papers were burned, heavily edited, or discarded after his death. For accounts of the remarkable story of the Harding papers,
see Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America’s Scandalous President (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 485—98 and 528–30,
Robert H. Ferrell, The Strange Deaths of President Harding (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1996, 151—9,
and Richard C. Frederick, ed., Warren G. Harding: A Bibliography (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992). As for Coolidge, the former President kept little more than the incoming mail. Surviving Coolidge Papers held by the Library of Congress were examined in microfilm.
In a 1995 survey of 58 presidential scholars, Harding ranked 38th of 38 Presidents; Coolidge, 26th, and Hoover, 24th. See Donald McCoy, “Chicago Sun-Times Poll,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (Winter 1996): 281—3. For overviews of the Harding administration,
see Robert K. Murray, The Harding Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1969),
and Eugene P. Trani and David Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Lawrence, Kans.: Regents Press of Kansas, 1977). For a rare defense, see Ferrell, The Strange Deaths of President Harding.
On Hoover’s publicity work as secretary of commerce, see James McCamy, Government Publicity: Its Practice in Federal Administration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), 12, n. 19. Lloyd, Aggressive Introvert, 123–51.
The quotations are from J. Frederick Essary, Covering Washington: Government Reflected to the Public in the Press (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 18.
See also Essary,”Uncle Sam’s Ballyhoo Men,” American Mercury 23 (August 1931): 419–28.
David Lawrence, “Reporting the Political News at Washington,” American Political Science Review 22 (November 1928): 893—902.
Frank R. Kent, The Great Game of Politics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page., 1923), 210–3.
Wayne R. Whitaker, “Warren G. Harding and the Press” (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, 1972), 68—78. Murray, The Harding Era, 50–2. Medved, The Shadow Presidents, 169–70.
Laurin L. Henry, Presidential Transitions (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1960), 201, n. 19.
Robert T. Barry, “Marion ‘Front Porch’ Organization Survives Capitol’s Whimsies,” Editor and Publisher 53 (26 March 1921): 10, 22.
Robert T. Barry, “Assemble Order of the Elephant in Washington Saturday Night,” Editor and Publisher 53 (2 April 1921): 9. “Harding Elephants’ Host,” New York Times, 8 April 1921, 3. Whitaker, “Warren G. Harding and the Press,” 36–78. See also Pollard, The Presidents and the Press, 691–700, and Corn-well, Presidential Leadership of Public Opinion, 63–5.
The quotation is from Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 18–20. See also Robert T. Barry, “President Strives for Working Agreement with Press,” Editor and Publisher 53 (12 March 1921): 7.
J. Frederick Essary, “President, Congress and the Press Correspondents,” American Political Science Review 22 (November 1928): 902—9.
F. B. Marbut, News from the Capitol (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 172. “Praises ‘We Boys’ Ouster,” Editor and Publisher 53 (23 April 1921): 40. “Propagandists Barred from White House Press Conference,” Editor and Publisher 56 (27 October 1923): 12.
Thomas L. Stokes, Chip Off My Shoulder (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940), 70—1. Whitaker, “Warren G. Harding and the Press,” 137.
The quotation is from Edward G. Lowry, “Mr. Harding Digging In,” New Republic 26 (18 May 1921): 341–2.
Sam W. Bell, “Editor Harding Fails to Win a Place on Washington Golf Team,” Editor and Publisher 55 (3 June 1922): 16.
Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s (New York: Norton, 1962), 1–25.
The quotation is from Olive Ewing Clapper, Washington Tapestry (New York: Whittlesey House, 1946), 67.
Nan Britton, The President’s Daughter (New York: Elizabeth Ann Guild, 1927). See also Anthony, Florence Harding, 530–2. Trani and Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding, 178.
Neal Gabler, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), xii, 78.
The quotation is from William Allen White, A Puritan in Babylon: The Story of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 230.
The quotation is from Sam Bell, “Ours Was the Honor of the President’s Requiem,” Editor and Publisher 56 (11 August 1923): 5—6.
Robert T Barry, “President Strives for Working Relationship with Press,” Editor and Publisher 53 (12 March 1921): 7.
Calvin Coolidge, The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge (New York: Cosmopolitan, 1929), 183–4.
For partial transcripts of Coolidge’s press conferences, see Howard H. Quint and Robert H. Ferrell, eds., The Talkative President:The Off-the-Record Press Conferences of Calvin Coolidge (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1964).
Robert Barry,“‘Silent Cal’ Causes Dearth of News,” Editor and Publisher 56 (6 October 1923): 12.
Philip Schuyler, “What Press Conferences Mean to Washington Correspondents,” Editor and Publisher 56 (10 May 1924): 3.
J. Bart Campbell, “White House Rules Out Stenographers,” Editor and Publisher 58 (27 June 1925): 14.
David Lawrence, “President Coolidge’s Step Backward in Official Press Relationship,” Editor and Publisher 58 (4 July 1925): 3, 12.
Alfred H. Kirchhofer, “Coolidge and ‘Spokesman’ Satisfied with Summer White House News,” Editor and Publisher 59 (31 July 1926): 6. Thompson, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Misses, 380–2.
Bart Campbell, “Barton Interview Not News Matter, Coolidge Tells Correspondents,” Editor and Publisher 59 (2 October 1926): 3, 10.
The quotation is Raymond Clapper, “White House Spokesman Mystery Stirs Senate Curiosity at Last,” Editor and Publisher 59 (15 January 1927): 15.
Willis Sharp, “President and Press,” Atlantic Monthly 140 (August 1927): 239–45
For examples of the association and Gridiron meetings that Coolidge attended, see “Daugherty Puts Honor Above Office,” New York Times, 9 March 1924, 1. J. Bart Campbell, “Coolidge Beams on White House Men at Annual Press Banquet,” Editor and Publisher 57 (28 March 1925): 29. “Gridiron’s History Reviewed by Depew,” New York Times, 24 April 1925, 10. “Coolidge is Guest of News Writers,” Editor and Publisher 58 (12 March 1926): 40.
The quotation is from David Lawrence,”The President and the Press,” Saturday Evening Post 200 (27 August 1927): 27, 117–8.
Louise M. Benjamin, “Broadcast Campaign Precedents from the 1924 Presidential Election,” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 31 (Fall 1987): 449–60.
The quotations are from Lindsay Rogers, The American Senate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 215–41.
Delbert Clark, Washington Dateline (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1941), 62—6;
Leo Rosten, The Washington Correspondents (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1937): 28–9.
Copyright information
© 1998 Stephen Ponder
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ponder, S. (1998). Harding and Coolidge: Emergence of the Media Presidency. In: Managing the Press. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-63048-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-63048-6_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-312-23507-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-63048-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)