The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations.
On Bended Knee
The Press and the Reagan Presidency
by Mark Hertsgaard
1988
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/On_Bended_Knee.html
Reagan’s was hardly the first administration to establish a public relations apparatus within the White House. But few, if any, administrations had exalted news management to as central a role in the theory and practice of governance as Reagan’s did. Leslie Janka, a deputy White House press secretary who resigned in protest after the administration excluded the press from the Grenada invasion, went so far as to say, “The whole thing was PR. This was a PR outfit that became President and took over the country. And to the degree then to which the Constitution forced them to do things like make a budget, run foreign policy and all that, they sort of did. But their first, last, and overarching activity was public relations.”
What made relations with the press especially vital to the success of Reagan’s presidency was the fact that much of his agenda was at odds with popular sentiment. On the basic political issues f his day, Ronald Reagan was much farther to the right than the majority of his fellow citizens. (Contrary to the widely accepted conventional wisdom of the time, American mass opinion in the late 1970s and early 1980s was not galloping to the right. As political economists Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers have demonstrated, public opinion was shifting, if anything, slightly leftward during that period, with Reagan’s policies themselves apparently providing some of the impetus.)
Reagan’s 1981 economic recovery program (for example) combined significant cuts in social spending and federal regulations with fantastic tax reductions aimed overwhelmingly at the very wealthiest Americans. In the name of free enterprise, the administration advocated a massive subsidy program for America’s corporations and rich citizens not an easy thing to sell to average working- and middle-class Americans. Yet Reagan emerged from his first presidential summer gloriously triumphant, with Capitol Hill Democrats and Washington reporters alike convinced- falsely, as it happened-that he was the most popular President in decades.
The Reagan model worked so well that the relationship between the White House and the press will never be the same again. Long after Ronald Reagan has left the White House, the model of news management introduced during his tenure will remain behind, shaping press coverage and therefore public perception. Republican and Democratic candidates alike are relying on elements of the Reagan model in their respective quests for the presidency in 1988, and it is virtually certain to inform the media strategy of whoever succeeds Reagan as President in 1989.
David Gergen was so proud of what the Reagan apparatus accomplished that he told me it would be “worthwhile to institutionalize some of the approaches Reagan has taken toward press events, in order to make it work” for future Presidents. Jody Powell, President Carter’s press secretary, and a man who knew a thing or two himself about manipulating the press, was convinced that future administrations would indeed copy the Reagan strategy of news management, but argued that the American people would be the poorer for it.
“There are a lot of people going to school on this administration,” said Powell, “and one of the lessons is that the press’s bark is much worse than its bite. They’ll huff and puff around, but in the end you can cut severely into the flow of information and manage it with a much firmer hand than we were able or willing to do…. If you as much as say to the administration, which is what the press is doing, ‘Look, you can do this and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it,’ they’re damn sure going to do it. It’s too much of a temptation for frail mortals to bear.”
Understanding the Reagan propaganda operation is essential if Americans are to make sense of what happened to their country and their politics during the Reagan era. But there is more to the story than slick skullduggery on the part of power-hungry politicos. Precisely because the Reagan PR model seems destined to become an enduring feature of presidential politics in this country, it is crucial to examine how the American press responded to it. After all, in the U.S. system, it is the job of the press to find and present the truth despite officially erected obstacles. As Tom Brokaw commented, “I can’t point my finger at [the Reagan White House]. I think they’re doing what they need to do, and if there’s a failure, it’s ultimately the press’s failure.” …