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Political Communication, 16:77–93, 1999Copyright ã 1999 Taylor & Francis

1058-4609/99 $12.00 + .00

“Betwixt and Between”: Woodrow Wilson’s PressConferences and the Transition Toward

the Modern Rhetorical Presidency

DAVID MICHAEL RYFE

Although Woodrow Wilson institutionalized the press conference as a routine feature ofpresidential opinion leadership, he detested his news meetings and did not use themeffectively. Wilson bore no personal animosity to the press but rejected the culture ofnews the press represented, for reasons central to Wilson’s theory of presidentialleadership. His rejection of this news culture is discussed in terms of the progressiveculture in which his views were nurtured. Despite having inaugurated the routine pressconference, Wilson was “betwixt and between” two periods in American politics ratherthan the founder of a new tradition in presidential opinion leadership.

Keywords presidential communication, presidential press conferences, Woodrow Wilson

When Woodrow Wilson stood to greet more than 100 Washington correspondents onMarch 15, 1913, at 12:45 p.m., just days after his inauguration, he set in motion one ofthe most enduring features of the modern public presidency: the regular press conference.Famously, however, it was not an auspicious beginning. One reporter described Wilson asappearing “embarrassed” and reserved (Baker, 1937, p. 230). Edward Lowry recalls thatWilson seemed almost stunned into silence at the number of newspapermen who filled hisoffice. “There was a pause,” he writes, “a cool silence, and presently some one ventured atentative question. It was answered crisply, politely, and in the fewest possible words. Apleasant time was not had by all” (Lowry, 1921, p. 19).1

A week later, Wilson tried again, this time delivering a brief speech to the assembledreporters. Sixteen years later, in a letter to Ray Stannard Baker, Richard Oulahan couldonly recall that Wilson

made a speech which astonished us [journalists] very much in that he arguedthat it was of no great importance what political Washington thought and headvised us, therefore, to bring to the attention of the Executive Governmentand Congress what the country was thinking. (Letter from Oulahan to Baker,March 15, 1929, R.S. Baker papers, Reel 81, Library of Congress [Baker,1982, Reel 81])

Oulahan’s memory is remarkably accurate. Verbatim, Wilson asked the journalists togo into a “partnership” with him, to “tell Washington what the country is thinking” rather

David Michael Ryfe is Adjunct Lecturer in Communication at the University of California, SanDiego. He thanks Michael Schudson, Daniel Hallin, Samuel Kernell, and Stephen Skowronek fortheir comments on earlier versions of this article.

Address correspondence to David Michael Ryfe, Department of Communication, University ofCalifornia, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0503 USA.

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than telling the “country what Washington is thinking.”2 Oulahan’s reaction to thisrequest also accurately reflects that of the journalists as a whole: “Of course, it wasimpossible for us to follow that formula.” Over the next 3 years,3 Wilson continued tohold regular press conferences, but on the whole, as these initial meetings indicate, theywere not useful or happy affairs for either the president or the press.

The difficulty, of course, lies in explaining why the very man who institutionalizedthe modern presidential press conference would fail to appreciate or use it effectively. Itis a difficulty scholars have generally skirted. Instead, Wilson is widely regarded as theintellectual architect of the modern rhetorical presidency. Wilson’s axiom that, as he putit, the president is free “to be as big a man as he can” (Wilson, 1908, p. 70) has been animportant foundation of theories of the presidency at least since the 1930s (see, forinstance, Binkley, 1962; Burns, 1965; Laski, 1940; Ranney, 1962). In the postwar period,his theory of presidential opinion leadership has enjoyed continued influence as a resultof its central role in Richard Neustadt’s (1990) model of presidential persuasion. By theearly 1980s, Jeffrey Tulis’s claim that “Woodrow Wilson settled modern practice for allpresidents that were to follow him” seemed a simple summation of received opinion(Tulis, 1987, p. 118). Even critics who have called into question the desirability of thepresidency-dominated, opinion-centered political system of the 20th century have agreedthat Wilson was its first great theorist (Ceasar, Thurow, Tulis, & Bessette, 1981; Cronin,1980; Eden, 1983; Kesler, 1984). Coupled with the practice of Franklin Roosevelt, Wilson’sview of the presidency as a strong leader of public opinion has served as a touchstone ofthe traditional versus modern divide in presidential historiography (Bimes & Skowronek,1996; Greenstein, 1978; Skowronek, 1993).

When they touch on the failure of Wilson’s press conferences at all, scholars havedone so in personal rather than theoretical terms. That is, it is often claimed that Wilsondisliked his press conferences because he was personally reticent and not given to thekind of give and take with the reporters that would have made more news. This explana-tion was first offered by the journalists who attended Wilson’s news meetings (Barry,1924; Kerney, 1926; Lowry, 1921; Thompson, 1970). According to their descriptions,Wilson was “cold,” “shy,” and “aloof” during these meetings; to them, he seemed to takeon the role of professor to his students rather than approach them as one professional toothers. James Pollard, the earliest of the historians to examine Wilson’s relations withthe press, picked up this theme when he suggested that Wilson’s reluctance to engagereporters in his press conferences was due at least in part to his “shy and sensitive” nature(Pollard, 1947, pp. 630–631). Subsequent scholars, including Elmer Cornwell (1965,p. 32) and George Juergens (1981, p. 127), have made similar points.

According to this view, Wilson’s head may have told him to do one thing in his pressconferences, but his heart simply could not follow. While there is undoubtedly some truthto this interpretation, there are reasons to be suspicious of efforts to assign too muchexplanatory weight to Wilson’s personality in this regard. For instance, Wilson’s attitudetoward the press did not prevent him from enjoying, if not a close, at least a workingrelationship with the press as governor of New Jersey (Kerney, 1926, p. 328; Pollard,1947, p. 631). During this time, reporters enjoyed an open-door policy with the governor.Moreover, Wilson took great pride in his ability to separate his own desires from theimperatives of the public office in which he served. If he conceived it to be his duty tomaintain a congenial relationship with the press, Wilson surely would have done so,regardless of his personal feelings in the matter.

A better indication of Wilson’s views is his strange call on reporters in his second pressconference to “tell Washington what the country is thinking.” This sounds like a rather

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odd request to modern ears and, to judge by Richard Oulahan’s reaction, to journalists atthe time as well. What conception of the presidency and of journalism must Wilson havehad for this request to make sense? Why was it not only improbable, but “impossible,”according to Oulahan, for journalists to honor Wilson’s request?

This essay is an attempt to make Wilson’s interactions with the press sensible interms of his theory of the presidency. It does so by arguing that Wilson did not rejectindividual reporters; rather, he rejected a culture of news, and he did so on principledrather than personal grounds. This is to say that Wilson did not betray the basic tenets ofhis theory of the presidency when he bristled at reporters; rather, he fulfilled them. More-over, I suggest that Wilson’s theory of the presidency and his actions in his press confer-ences are explainable in terms of the progressive culture of which they were a part. On theone hand, like most progressives Wilson sympathized with the focus on publicity andexposure, the concern for facts and issues, which in part defined the news. On the otherhand, however, he abhorred its fascination with conflict, its amoral stance toward publicissues, and its commercial sensibility toward publicity.

Finally, while an analysis of Wilson’s practice with regard to the press is obviously asmall contribution to debates on his place in presidential history, it is an important one.Recently, scholars such as Robert Eden (1995) and Stephen Skowronek (1993) havequestioned the conventional interpretation of Wilson as the founder of a 20th-centurypolitical tradition (cf. Tulis, 1987). But they have done so largely through textual inter-pretations of his writings. The evidence presented here lends empirical support to theirview that, as Bimes and Skowronek (1996) put it, Wilson was “betwixt and between”traditional and modern conceptions of the presidency rather than a founding father. Fur-thermore, Wilson’s interactions with reporters illuminate the terms on which this “betwixtand between-ness” were negotiated.

In what follows, I elaborate Wilson’s theory of presidential opinion leadership. Icontrast this theory to the orientation toward politics of Washington reporters and thenews culture they represented. I then examine the clash between Wilson and the press ina corpus of Wilson’s press conferences and press coverage of these conferences in eightnewspapers. Twenty of Wilson’s 149 press conferences were randomly selected and addedto the first press conference to compose the 21 press conferences used in this data set. Thedates of these conferences were as follows: March 22, May 8, June 5, June 19, July 14,August 25, September 4, October 6, and October 23, 1913; January 3, February 2, March23, April 2, June 11, July 9, September 3, October 15, and December 22, 1914; andJanuary 26, February 2, and March 2, 1915. Newspaper coverage of these press confer-ences was examined for the day after each press conference. The newspapers examinedwere the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Evening Star, the NewYork Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Herald, the San Diego Union, and theKansas City Star.

Wilson’s Theory of the Presidency

As he assumed office, Woodrow Wilson had thought and written about American politicsand the function of the presidency in more detail than perhaps any president since JamesMadison. He did so in the context of a wider generational effort to grapple with theconsequences of economic and social modernization (Hofstadter, 1955; McCormick, 1981;Thelen, 1969–1970; Wiebe, 1973). Whether this effort can be considered a cohesivepolitical movement has been a point of some contention in the literature (Filene, 1970).I am less interested, however, in the movement’s political cohesion than in its cultural

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orientation to politics. While it may be true that many kinds of political activities fellunder the umbrella of progressivism, it is undeniable that most national leaders of theprogressive movement belonged to the same social strata (Crunden, 1982; Quandt, 1970).They came from small towns and were White and Protestant, fairly well to do, highlyeducated for the time, and very religious. From this social position, progressive leaderssaw that a national economy and new transportation and communications technologyhad produced conditions of nationhood that had yet to be tamed and that threatened thesense of individualism on which the American system had been founded. They saw it astheir duty to mold these conditions into a proper national ideal. The pursuit of this goalhinged on two contradictory, if deeply felt, impulses: a fervid moralism combined with anorganizational frame of mind. Faced with 20th-century economic and social conditions,these men and women turned to their formative language and religion and, more tenta-tively, to the new language of science for solutions. In their view, the “Great Community”might be created by a set of institutions infused with Christian moral principles.

Wilson is often excluded from this list of progressive reformers. Gabriel Kolko bluntlycharacterizes Wilson as a “conservative,” someone who came around to progressive prin-ciples late in life, and only then because they promoted a conservative, business-orientedagenda (Kolko, 1963, p. 204). More recently, Eldon Eisenach has gone further, describingWilson as a “reactionary” who defended the “prevailing system of party and constitu-tion” against the efforts of true progressive reformers (Eisenach, 1994, p. 127). There ismuch in these indictments that is true. Wilson’s background in political theory hewedclosely to the ideas of the English conservatives Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot(Thorsen, 1988). And his Southern background distinguished him from the core progressivesof the Middle West and New England regions. But Wilson’s moral orientation to politicsand his administrative approach to political questions mark him as quintessentially pro-gressive. If Wilson’s explicit doctrines contradict those of other progressive reformers,this is an indication of the contradictory impulses in the progressive movement itselfrather than, as Eisenach concludes, evidence that Wilson was at some remove “from themoral and intellectual world of Progressivism” (Eisenach, 1994, p. 127).

Wilson’s theory of politics thus played its part in the larger progressive enterprise.Save for his Southern upbringing, his personal history is remarkably consistent with othermiddle-class reformers of the period (Crunden, 1972, 1982). He was White and Protestant,came from a small town, and was highly educated, relatively well off, and deeply moral.He approached his scholarship with the concerns of his generation: how to channel theincreasingly fragmented, highly organized corporate society that had arisen into a worthynational ideal that would promote right moral conduct and protect the individual’sautonomy and ability to get ahead in the world. His ideas centered on a theory of politi-cal leadership appropriate for the new conditions in which the country found itself. Intheory, Wilson’s thought hinged on three key ideas: appropriate channels for the effec-tive expression of public opinion, centralization of governmental power, and the creationof an efficient administrative apparatus to administer government policies. In practice,the institution of the presidency suffused with a deep belief in individual moral agencyassumed center stage.

Like progressivism’s emphasis on socialization and structure, morality and efficiency,Wilson’s political theory stressed the power of society, which in his case meant the powerof public opinion. For Wilson, public opinion composed the social tissue from whichsocial progress is woven. “Democracy,” he writes, “means a form of government . . . bypublic opinion” (PWW, vol. 5, p. 70). But his was not a wholly democratic notion ofpublic opinion. Wilson defined public opinion as a two-stage process. On one level, he

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defined public opinion as the passions, interests, concerns, and ideas of a heterogeneous,teeming mass of people. It is this polyglot that Wilson considered the “material” ofpolitical power, but not that power itself. “The pleasure of the people,” he writes, “thoughit be the source of authority, is not therefore authority itself.” In an allusion to Rousseau,Wilson suggested that the will of the majority cannot be considered the General Will. “Ibelieve,” he writes, “in the people: in their honesty and sincerity and sagacity; but I donot believe in them as my governors. I believe in them, rather, as the wholesome stuff outof which the fabric of government . . . is woven.” Wilson considered the “stuff” of publicopinion to be uneducated and highly volatile. Furthermore, he believed that to be of usein political affairs, this opinion ought to be refined into a coherent sense of the nation’swill. It is here that political leadership becomes important. “Masses of men cannot be self-directed,” he writes at one point. At another: “A nation is an organic thing, and . . . its willdwells with those who do the practical thinking and organize the best concert of action:those who hit upon opinions fit to be made prevalent, and have the capacity to makethem so” (PWW, Vol. 7, pp. 352–356). For Wilson, then, as for most progressives, themaintenance and progress of political society would not occur naturally but required theintervention of social and political elites; that is, it required their leadership.

Importantly, progressives tended to believe that the legitimacy of their leadershiprested on their moral, as opposed to economic or social, status. Wilson’s translation ofthis sensibility stressed the necessity of individual vision and a capacity for inner reflec-tion in political leaders. In his early career, Wilson believed the Congress might producesuch leadership. In Congressional Government (1956), Wilson urged that Congress bereconstituted on the basis of the English Parliament. But by the early 1900s, he hadturned his attention to the presidency. “The present fact is,” Wilson wrote to AlexanderMitchell Palmer, “that the President is held responsible for what happens in Washingtonin every large matter, and so long as he is commanded to lead he is surely entitled to acertain amount of power . . . [and] he ought to be suffered to use that power against hisopponents until his work is done” (PWW, Vol. 27, pp. 99–100). For the later Wilson, thepresidency ought to be the site of political power because it was the only true representa-tive of a national public. All others—the parties, interest groups, members of Congress—represented particular, local interests. As he put it in Constitutional Government, thepresident is “not so much part of [the party organization] as its vital link of connectionwith the thinking nation. . . . His position takes the imagination of the country. He is therepresentative of no constituency, but of the whole people” (Wilson, 1908, p. 68).

But in Wilson’s view, the power of the presidency ought not to be used in the serviceof policy implementation. His president was not the nation’s chief administrator (Eden,1995). Rather, efficiency and rationalization were the provinces of the adminstrativeapparatus beneath the president. Wilson charged the president himself with a very differ-ent task: the task of interpreting public opinion (Tulis, 1987, p. 129). “It requires vision,”Wilson writes, “to conceive society as it grows more and more vast, more and morecomplex and various” (PWW, Vol. 10, p. 349). It also required an ability for inner reflec-tion, both within the nation and within the self. In Wilson’s view, public speech shouldlay out a vision of the future; it should be inspirational, not informational. “Effectivespeech,” Wilson writes, “comes from a true vision of affairs, such as will appeal to thosewho know and have their eyes open, as well as to those who simply feel and have theirhearts open” (PWW, Vol. 8, p. 607). According to Wilson, an effective presidential leaderought to tap into the soul of the nation to discover what must be done; through oratory,he then should tap into the hearts of the people to establish a sense of common destiny.Presidents should not offer the public information or facts. Instead, they should offer the

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people a vision of the nation to which all could subscribe. In pursuing this sense ofleadership, presidents would be asking the public to reflect on the commonality inherentin striving for a collective moral ideal.

This view had important consequences for Wilson’s public performance as president.His public speech had a dramatic flair, but this drama was not acted out on the public. Forhim, “Our nation is not our audience: for what we do is not a play in its eyes, but part ofits own life, significant for its fortunes” (PWW, Vol. 7, p. 359). His function as a publicrepresentative was too serious for such spectacles. Rather, Wilson believed that the dramaof political life consisted in transformations within the leader himself. Because true pub-lic opinion was an elaboration of what was already there, leaders were charged withattuning themselves, changing themselves, to hear it. “If we live in a nation that waits tobe led, and which has sovereign liberty to follow even us, if we can convince or move it,what an incentive have we to be ourselves in all sincerity, press our claims, fit ourthought to effect its purpose . . . mend our lives to suit the state we would achieve!” Inanother place Wilson defined leadership as “the freedom to attempt the great role ofliving thus as models for the mass that fills a democracy” (PWW, Vol. 7, p. 359). ForWilson, leadership was a kind of personal, moral agency, a transformation of oneself intothe life force of a nation; in this transformation, presidents gained the right to lead.

Notice that this view of the president’s public leadership function includes only asecondary role for the news media. On Wilson’s view, newspapers could do many thingsfor the country: They produced information that helped, along with universal education,to transform society into a kind of “school”; they popularized politics and extended thereach of public opinion; they brought the public eye to the national and not only thelocal level (PWW, Vol. 5, p. 72; Vol. 6, p. 225). But they had no ultimate leadership oreducative function. Even if, Wilson writes in Constitutional Government, newspapers“were not owned by special interest; even if their utterances really spoke the generalopinion . . . their discussion of affairs would not be of a kind that is necessary for themaintenance of constitutional government” (Wilson, 1956, p. 102). This is so for thesimple reason that they are not elected to interpret public opinion. All that they produceis part of the “jumble” of opinion through which elected representatives are pledged tosift. For Wilson, with interpretation comes responsibility. The news media have no suchresponsibility and are therefore disqualified from performing an educative or leadershiprole. There is every reason to believe that, as far as possible, Wilson enacted his theoryof politics when he became president. His call on journalists to tell Washington what thepublic is thinking is evidence of this fact. His role, as he saw it, was to interpret publicopinion. To accomplish this task, he needed access to the diversity of the nation’s opin-ions. Journalists were in a position to give him that access. Wilson believed that their rolewas to facilitate his relationship with the public, to inform him of “what the public isthinking.” To the extent that they did so, they too contributed to the moral evolution ofthe nation. To the extent that they hindered this process, they acted in a self-interestedand hence immoral manner. As soon as Wilson realized that journalists would not “gointo partnership with him,” he began to balk at their meetings. Why should he spend hisprecious time with men who would not help him perform his leadership role?

Reporters and the News Culture

Of course, the reporters who greeted Wilson in Washington disagreed with his under-standing of their role. Far from their home newspapers, and covering a small politicalworld, Washington reporters by 1913 had developed strong ties among themselves. As

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Samuel Kernell notes, by 1900 reporters “were often sent to Washington only after yearsof service on local and state political beats” (Kernell, 1986, p. 56). They were thereforeaccomplished journalists who were expert in the techniques of modern journalism: culti-vating sources and interviewing public figures. And, increasingly, there were more of thesejournalists in the capital. In 1868, there were 58 journalists covering Washington, and thatnumber had ballooned to 171 by 1900 (Tebbel & Watts, 1985, p. 319). What they foundwhen they arrived in Washington was a dense network of social mores produced overdecades of interaction between reporters and politicians. Both formal and informal rules ofconduct were monitored by the Standing Committee of Correspondents, established in1877 (Marbut, 1971, p. 154). On numerous occasions, scandals involving leaks and thepublication of sensitive information, sometimes personal, at others official, led senators tocall the sergeant-at-arms to bring a reporter in for questioning. As these occasions multi-plied, an informal code of conduct developed. Reporters relied on their sources for news,so they tended to ignore less egregious examples of corruption and vice; politicians reliedon reporters for publicity, so they tended to forgive them when they published activitiesand events that embarrassed. Both needed to impress others back home. The close en-vironment of Washington only added to the strength of these relationships.

These relationships led Washington reporters to rely on sourcing and interviewing toa great degree. However, real strides in professionalization depended on two other devel-opments: a decline in the turnover rate of reporters (from 75% in 1864 to 34% in 1900)and the practice of writing for multiple papers (between 30% and 35% of journalistswrote for multiple papers in the first decade of this century) (Kernell, 1986, pp. 56–57).Less turnover meant that reporters could develop stronger norms of conduct betweenthemselves and their sources. Writing for multiple papers freed them from editorial con-trol. Reporters relied more and more on their clients for information, and less on editorialdecision making. Put simply, reporters became news brokers. They traded, circulated, andhoarded the news. All reporters everywhere played this role to some extent, but Washing-ton journalists played it better, and more often, than most.

In part, this meant a new spin on the meaning of partisanship. Although they wereless dependent on the party press, reporters still depended on others for news, and some-times for jobs, which meant that they were very reluctant to publish material that ad-versely affected their clients. “Close association with a particularly powerful senator,”one scholar notes, “enhanced a correspondent’s reputation and increased his value to hispapers” (Ritchie, 1991, p. 184). Sources may have replaced editors in the hearts andminds of Washington reporters, but many of the same constraints on news gatheringfollowed from both relationships.

The advent of muckraking journalism in the early 20th century put added pressureon Washington reporters to assume a more proprietary role toward their readers. Muckrak-ing journalists wrote exposés on crime and corruption for the new 10-cent national maga-zines that had emerged in the late 19th century. Coming from the same social classas other progressive leaders, most understood their reporting in moral terms (Schultz,1965–1966). One muckraker’s admission that he practiced his journalism as “an earnestChristian trying to apply Christian principles to a very definite and serious problem”is perfectly consistent with the larger progressive ethos (Filler, 1968, p. 60). Anothermuckraker, Frederic Howe, wrote of his own background in fundamentalist religion:“Physical escape from the embraces of evangelical religion did not mean moral escape.. . . This is, I think, the most characteristic influence of my generation. It explains thenature of our reforms, [and] the regulatory legislation in morals and economics” (Howe,1925, pp. 16–17). In fact, it has been argued that the muckrakers composed the “voice” of

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progressivism. “The Progressive mind,” Richard Hofstadter writes, “was characteristicallya journalistic mind, and . . . its characteristic contribution was that of the socially respon-sible reporter-reformer” (Hofstadter, 1955, p. 185). The very names of the magazines inwhich their articles appeared—Cosmopolitan, Everybody’s, Public Opinion—signaled anew concern for a national audience (Keller, 1977, p. 566).

The morality of the muckrakers did not alter the basic view of the political worldheld by reporters. It did, however, alter their perception of their place within it. Althougheditors may have viewed the exposé as a route to greater circulations, muckraking re-porters documented the bleaker aspects of industrial society because they held a funda-mental belief that the public ought to be informed and educated. Their work, the muck-rakers thought, “would enable readers to pass judgment upon the contemporary leaders ofsociety” (Greene, 1970, p. 236). While their method was to get the “inside story,” todepict society as it really was, a method pioneered by other reporters, their hope was thattheir work might enlighten, even educate, the masses. In this regard, they held a view ofthe public very similar to that of Wilson: as basically good, decent individuals whowould do the right thing if called upon. Only the muckrakers envisaged themselves asdoing the calling. They knew how the system “really” worked; they commanded a na-tional audience; it was their moral duty to educate the public about these conditions.

The muckrakers’ explicit intention to educate the public put Washington reporters ina difficult situation. Much of the time, these reporters held information from the publicfor fear of losing client relationships. But the muckrakers, who wrote for a national audi-ence, did not have such constraints. For instance, in 1906, David Graham Phillips wrotean influential series of muckraking essays titled “Treason of the Senate.” Although hespent very little time in Washington, and most of his indictments of the senators had longbeen known, Phillips’s articles put a public spotlight on Washington politicians and thejournalists who covered them. People wanted to know why correspondents had not re-vealed this corruption before. More important, editors and publishers pushed the reportersto meet the challenge of the muckrakers. As Donald Ritchie writes, “The cynicism of themuckraking magazines put the Washington press corps on the defensive, forcing its mem-bers to prove the independence of its judgments” (Ritchie, 1991, p. 192). When a groupof muckrakers and other concerned citizens proposed to create a “People’s Lobby” tomonitor the activities of Congress, the Washington correspondents were indignant. Thepress gallery, one Washington reporter responded, “already constituted a people’s lobbyof one hundred and fifty ‘professional observers,’ who were ‘weighing, doubting, scruti-nizing, suspecting’ every congressional action” (Ritchie, 1991, p. 192). In response to thechallenge of the muckrakers, Washington reporters were pushed to explicitly announcetheir role as public educators, to assert their custody of public opinion. This norm soonbecame a central aspect of the professional ethos of journalism.

In this context, it is understandable that Washington reporters would find it “impos-sible” to become partners with Wilson on his terms. As president, Wilson was a politician,an increasingly key player, but still a player, in the political system. Working with himwould sacrifice the reporters’ hard won independence, strain relations with their editorsand publishers, skew the news in inappropriate ways, and sacrifice their role as the public’scheck on centers of power. Not only was it likely to get a reporter fired, but Wilson’sproposal was also an affront to the reporters’ professional sensibilities. In this news cul-ture, the journalist’s job was to report on, not participate in, political activity. Moreover,Wilson’s view of politics in deeply moral terms did not make sense to reporters. Politicsto them was a process that involved multiple participants driven by self-interested mo-tives. To Wilson, politics was administrative and interpretive. His view of right politics as

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inner vision was in deep conflict with the reporters’ understanding of right politics as asystem utterly exposed.

Wilson’s Press Conferences

Given Wilson’s understanding of the press, it is not surprising that he agreed to conductregular press conferences at the request of Joseph Tumulty, his private secretary, onlybecause they seemed to him an efficient way to spend as little time with reporters aspossible. To extend his control over the conferences, very early on he established anonattribution rule according to which reporters were prevented from quoting the presi-dent directly. However, even with these constraints, the regularity of these conferenceslent reporters a certain degree of legitimacy. The news meeting form itself carried with itall of the assumptions embedded within the interview format from which it was derived.In this form, reporters had a legitimate right to ask questions of the president as represen-tatives of a third party: the public. For Wilson, the press conferences were an efficient wayof dealing with reporters who monitored his every move and stood ready to ask himquestions at every free moment. For reporters, they were an institution of great symbolicimportance.

Beyond symbolism, however, reporters gained little in their meetings with the presi-dent. A glance at their questions suggests that reporters approached Wilson with the toolsof their profession. That is, they approached him as they would any news source. Forexample, the first press conference for which there is a transcript, dated May 8, 1913,begins with this question: “Can you tell us anything about currency legislation, Mr.President?”4 It continues: “Will there be a currency committee organized?” “Will thehouse go into recess?” Will there be “final action on the tariff bill in this session?” Thesequestions suggest that reporters were seeking to fit the presidency into their regular taskof tracking the legislative process in Washington. They wanted Wilson to provide themwith information that might help them anticipate future political events: “What willhappen next? How will you (the president) respond?”

Unfortunately for them, Wilson’s answers to their questions indicate that he had nointention of becoming another source on the Washington beat. As Table 1 shows, Wilsonrarely satisfied the reporters’ thirst for news. For instance, he flatly refused to answer 50 oftheir questions. That is, he indicated that he could answer the question but refused to doso. To another 93 questions, he pleaded ignorance: He simply did not have enoughinformation to answer the question. So, to 143 of the questions asked of him, or 22% ofthe total, Wilson was utterly unhelpful to the reporters. To another 178 of the questions

Table 1Types of answers given, by category, Wilson press conferences

Type of answer Number Percentage

Unresponsive answers 50 8Pleadings of ignorance 93 151-line answers 178 282-line answers 103 16Rest of answers 206 33

Note. N = 630.

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that he did answer, Wilson gave a one-line response, and to 103 of the remaining ques-tions, he gave a two-line response. Even when he did attempt to answer a question, then,280 of his answers (or 44%) were very short one- or two-line responses. Thus, of the 630questions asked of him, 67% of Wilson’s answers were unresponsive, uninformative, orcursory. Even when he was asked for his direct opinion, as in the 17 questions in whichreporters sought to elicit his point of view, Wilson remained adamantly mum. He de-clined to give his opinion on all 17 occasions.

It should be noted that this finding contradicts the conclusion of other analyses ofWilson’s press conference transcripts. Elmer Cornwell, for instance, argues that Wilson’snews meetings were “exceedingly useful” for “Wilsonian legislative leadership” (Cornwell,1965, p. 38). And Robert Hilderbrand suggests that the press conferences were “ideallysuited to Wilson’s particular talents” and that they “gave [Wilson] a degree of consistentinfluence over the news which was far greater than that which any previous Chief Execu-tive had ever enjoyed” (Hilderbrand, 1985, p. xi). I take the disparity in our findings to bedue to the fact that these prior examinations of the transcripts rely on anecdotal evidencerather than a systematic review of the data. Hilderbrand, for instance, offers only a fewstories in defense of his interpretation, most of which rely upon a single question/answerinteraction. And, after dividing the press conferences into three categories (those in whichthe president fended off reporters’ questions, those in which he canvassed an issue in anunproductive manner, and those in which he was more communicative and assertive),Cornwell simply dispenses with his first two categories, because, as he put it, they “are ofless interest than the third” (1965, p. 38). It is likely, therefore, that the individual storiesrecounted by these prior analyses are exceptions to the general rule that these newsmeetings were largely unproductive affairs. This fact has probably been overlooked in thepast because of the wide acceptance of the view that Wilson was the founder of therhetorical presidency.

At the time, Wilson’s reticence was taken as a lack of respect for individual reporters.After all, his frustration was acted out on particular reporters, not on an abstract newsculture. But Wilson’s answers to obviously “political” questions suggest something morewas at work than personal antagonisms. These questions had nothing to do with publicpolicy; instead, they sought to substantiate Washington gossip, attempted to instigateconflict between Wilson and another political actor (most often Congress), or were unusu-ally personal. For example, on June 5, 1913, Wilson was asked to respond to the follow-ing: “It is suggested that you are persuaded that this stock-market flurry is caused bysinister influences and that you are going to suggest an investigation of Wall Streetmethods in that regard.” The phrase “it is suggested” indicates that the question is moti-vated by gossip from another quarter. The use of “sinister” frames the issue as a potentialconflict between Wilson and Wall Street. Wilson’s response: “No sir, that is entirelywithout foundation. I have all my life been so innocent that I have never known whatflurries were founded on. That is something too dark for the lay mind.” To a similarquestion, “Do you regard an extra session [of Congress] as [possible]?”—a question thatin its design implies an impending conflict with Congress, Wilson gave this answer: “Idon’t go on a hypothesis. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’” And Wilson cutoff the question, “Did you read the remarks in Congress today with reference . . . ,” beforeit could be finished, with “I read everything that is intended for the salvation of my soul”(PWW, Vol. 50, pp. 103, 563, 682). When asked how well he liked the presidency on his6-month anniversary in office, Wilson responded: “I have no opinions about myself ormy own administration. I am sawing wood.” Finally, when asked if he was going toparticipate in the impending state elections, he answered, “I haven’t been invited yet.” A

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reporter then said, “We can fix that up, Mr. President.” To which Wilson coldly replied, “Iwasn’t fixing” (PWW, Vol. 50, pp. 218, 427).

These questions have in common an explicit interest in the mechanics of politics:which actor is doing what and how other political actors will respond. Issues of publicpolicy are completely absent from them. They are in many ways the archetypal questionsof a news culture: They emphasize public officials in (potential) conflict over particularissues at specific times and places. To such questions, Wilson routinely responded withmoral adages and folk wisdom. That is, he not only refused to answer these questions, heactively sought to distance himself from their implications. In the face of the obviouspolitical nature of their intent, Wilson cast himself as a naive Christian, a patient personwho is “sawing wood.” In his reliance on such moralisms, Wilson reveals a typical middle-class progressive sensibility toward politics. In this culture, politics is (or ought to be)conducted by individuals who are responsible to their internal moral vision of rightconduct. Put simply, Wilson’s is a 19th-century response, with an emphasis on personalaccountability and morality, to a 20th-century question. When reporters asked about themechanics of politics, Wilson responded with the morality of politics. To Wilson, thereporters seemed immoral; to the reporters, Wilson seemed unprofessional.

Given the obvious antagonism between Wilson and the press, it is surprising that hispress conferences ever received coverage in the newspapers. However, in my sample ofeight newspapers, I found that, although relatively infrequently, Wilson’s conferences didmake news. As Table 2 shows, on 35 of 160 possible occasions Wilson’s remarks duringhis press conferences appeared on the first page of these papers (for the New York Herald,page 3 was the first page of news, the first two being devoted to advertisements). Onanother 38 occasions, remarks made at the conferences appeared on other than page 1. Inall, the press conferences appeared 46% of the time in these papers. These numbers aremore or less constant for papers across regions and political persuasions and are relativelyhigh given the character of Wilson’s answers during the press conferences and the factthat, except for the Washington Post and the Washington Evening-Star, all of the news-papers were based elsewhere. Although three of the other papers maintained Washingtonbureaus (the New York Times, the New York Herald, and the Chicago Tribune), all of themwere more concerned with local affairs than Washington politics. Even with these limita-tions, the conferences appeared in the papers nearly half the time.

Confined to an analysis of headlines and a simple count of column inches, thesenumbers are in line with Elmer Cornwell’s observation that the presidential image hasexpanded greatly in the 20th century (Cornwell, 1959). On this view, whatever the per-sonal inclinations of particular presidents, the image of the presidency has seen a steady,inexorable climb in the news media. However, a closer look at the actual content of thestories in which the press conferences are mentioned tells a slightly different story. In

Table 2Wilson press conferences coverage in newspapers

Newspaper coverage Number Percentage

Page 1 stories 35 22Other than page 1 stories 38 24No stories 87 54

Note. N = 160.

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total, 650.25 column inches were devoted to stories in which the press conferences werementioned in the eight newspapers (see Table 3). Of this total, only 199.25 columninches, or 31%, actually involve material from the press conferences. This number givesa slightly different cast to the newspaper coverage. It is true that the press conferencesappeared in 42% of the papers in my sample. But actual material from the press confer-ences is used in only 31% of these stories. In fact, then, although Wilson’s press confer-ences often appeared in the newspapers, they very rarely made news.

The question, of course, is, Why this dearth of news? I have already suggested thatWilson did not use the press conferences as a vehicle to make news. The rule that hecould not be directly quoted obviously hindered reporters from writing newsworthystories based on the content of the press conferences. The institutional context of politicsin the early 1910s is also important. Even into the 1910s, the presidency was still com-paratively weak, and the political parties and Congress relatively strong, in the Americanpolitical system. The president was not yet the center of the political world, and thecoverage reflected this fact. Finally, the organizational structure of print reporting mayhave predisposed reporters to concentrate on Congress. Stephen Hess’s observation ofWashington reporting in the 1970s is accurate for the early 20th century as well: “Thethree-ringed circus aspect of Congress, a body of 535 legislators, better fits the staffresources of newspapers” (Hess, 1981, p. 98). It is simply difficult, and boring, for largehordes of reporters to follow the president’s every move. Moreover, Congress is apt toproduce more of the kind of political news favored by Washington reporters.

Although the press conferences did not make much news, the news they did make isrevealing of the news culture in which they were produced and Wilson’s response to thisculture. This coverage displays a constant search for news, that is, for human interest,conflict, and sensationalism in presidential politics, and hints at a few of the techniquesreporters used to generate such stories. It also gives some indication of the kind of presi-dential performance most likely to make news.

For instance, on December 22, 1914, Wilson was asked about recent newspaperdiscussions concerning appointments. He answered:

So I see. It has been chiefly in the newspapers, let me say. I have learned witha great deal of interest that there is a fight between me and the Senate. I wasn’taware of it. The Senate has a perfect right to reject any nominations it pleases.I have no criticism. You may be sure that nobody can get up a row on thematter of patronage. We are engaged in a very large affairs in this government,much larger than patronage. You won’t find any harangues in this office onthe subject. (PWW, Vol. 50, p. 657)

Here Wilson signals several things: It is the newspapers, and not himself, that are instigat-ing a conflict with the Senate; furthermore, speaking for himself, he would never “get up

Table 3Column inches of Wilson press conference material in newspapers

Column inches Percentage

Press conference reference 199.25 31No reference 451 69

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a row” over the question of patronage, which is a relatively minor matter. The New YorkHerald’s lead story of the next day (“Senators See Hint of Peace in Patronage Fight”)reflects the fact that reporters rarely took Wilson’s view of the matter at face value.Instead, they went to the Senate (in this particular case, to Congress more generally) toget reactions to Wilson’s comments. “This talk of peace,” the Herald’s story reads, “andreference to the offices still on the patronage counter caused only mild amusement in theSenate. . . . Some members of the Senate, however, professed to see in President Wilson’sstatement the possibility of a reconciliation” (New York Herald, December 23, 1914, p.3). Here President Wilson takes a stand that in itself is not newsworthy. There is no newsin the headline “Everything is O.K. Wilson Says, Nothing Has Changed.” By bringingWilson’s comments to the Senate, however, reporters are able to fabricate a sense ofpolitical movement: Wilson makes a statement and the Senate responds.

Actions in conflict are a significant part of the daily diet of this news reporting.When conflict cannot be found, simple dramatic actions often suffice. On this score,Wilson was relatively better at making news. His early dramatic appearance before Con-gress to deliver a Presidential message was eminently newsworthy, as were his severalappearances on Capitol Hill to discuss legislation and appointments. Often, however,Wilson made these appearances at the expense of his press conferences. For example, onthe afternoon of June 5, 1913, Wilson made an unexpected trip to the Capitol to delivera list of diplomatic selections. The story made the front page of the Washington Post andthe New York Times, each of which emphasized the dramatic nature of the surprise visit.However, because Wilson did not advertise the trip at that morning’s press conference, hemissed an opportunity to establish his interpretation of the visit in the newspapers anddenied himself more extensive coverage because many reporters were unaware that hewas making the trip. On another occasion, Wilson was to deliver a message to the ForeignRelations Committees of both houses concerning the situation in Mexico on the eveningof August 25, 1913, and the same message before the whole Congress the next day. In hispress conference on the morning of the 25th, he downplayed his message as a simple“summary of the situation” and refused to elaborate any further until the message wascomplete and delivered. Of course, the lead story of the papers the next day was aboutWilson’s message to the two committees, the gist of which had been ascertained throughinterviews with individual congressmen after it had been delivered to them. Here, Wilsonagain refused to interpret his message for the newspapers, instead allowing individualcongressmen to mediate his message in the papers.

These examples demonstrate that news requires more than the simple presentation offacts; it demands a self-conscious representation of one’s views. The distance betweenWilson and the press is marked by this distinction in performative styles. As Elmer Cornwellnotes, the president did not so much meet with reporters as offer himself for questioningto them (Cornwell, 1965, p. 37). He once told George Creel that he “prepared for theconferences as carefully as for a Cabinet meeting”; in comparison with subsequent presi-dents, however, he prepared very little (Cornwell, 1965, p. 41). He did not study possiblequestions or memorize answers as most presidents after him have done. On most occa-sions, he also did not prepare an opening statement. Instead, he merely presented himselfbefore the reporters, confident in his capacity to solve political problems regardless ofwhat the newspapers printed. When he decided on a proper course, he took immediateaction, again, regardless of how such actions were reported in the papers. This explainshis penchant for dramatic appearances before Congress and his purposeful neglect of thejournalists on these occasions. On his view, the news was an intrusion into public life, nota constituent part, and it more often obscured than crystallized public opinion.

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Conclusion

It is easy to see in Wilson’s reaction to the press much that is common with other 20th-century presidents. David Lawrence’s description of Wilson’s theory of news, “that noth-ing is news until it was completed . . . that only conclusions or decisions were of interestto the public,” seems an apt description of most presidents’ theory of news (Lawrence,1924, p. 340). No president hated the press more than Richard Nixon, and none has beenmore leery of this institution than Lyndon Johnson. But to dwell on these commonalitiesrisks misunderstanding how vastly different was Wilson’s conception of publicity fromthose of subsequent presidents. On his view, leadership involved interpreting inward,toward the moral center of the nation; in his actions and in his words, he hoped to presentthat moral center to the nation. Rather than to cultivate public opinion, Wilson desired tomodel it.

Wilson’s press conferences register this clash between Wilson’s essentially moralunderstanding of popular leadership and the understanding of the news culture; they alsosuggest which side was likely to win. In its very form, the press conference demanded aheightened public performance. Facing the reporters in his office at a regular time, twicea week, the president was there for reporters and the public: He must give them himself,or at least a version of himself, or risk seeming distant and cold. Through the verystructure of the press conference, then, the assumptions of the news culture exercisedconsiderable power. Perhaps no greater evidence exists of this fact than that the pressconference was institutionalized by a president who detested its implications. By 1912, itwas no longer possible to ignore reporters or the news culture they represented. Wilson’srefusal to fully participate on their terms was painful and disruptive exactly because thoseterms carried such force. The personal invective slung at Wilson by reporters in thepostwar years is a register of his determination to remain immune to their influence.

In some sense Wilson acknowledged the power of the news culture when he createdthe Committee on Public Information during World War I, headed by George Creel, aformer journalist and publicity agent for various politicians (Hilderbrand, 1981). Wilsonhad once proposed the creation of a “national publicity bureau” in 1914, and the Creelcommittee, charged with producing propaganda to get the American people behind thewar, seems to have been an extension of this idea. Creel personalized the war in grandioseways. Every pitch to help America carried Wilson’s words and image. But, though thiswas the first massive propaganda effort by the executive branch (and a model for FranklinRoosevelt’s efforts 15 years later), even here Wilson betrays his abhorrence of the newsculture. As Cornwell observes, this committee “cannot be taken as evidence that thePresident had lost any of his earlier aversion to the seamy side of such activity” (Cornwell,1965, p. 55). In fact, just as Joseph Tumulty had before the war, the committee allowedWilson to keep a distance between himself and the press. Although his administrationpracticed the methods of the news culture, Wilson himself steered clear of personalinvolvement.

Throughout this essay, I have pushed very hard the notion that Wilson’s ideas areimplicated in late-19th-century, progressive understandings of politics and that his pressconferences register a clash with the 20th-century notions of reporters. I have framedWilson in this manner not to suggest that he was wholly of the 19th century but tocomplicate the prevailing view of Wilson as the “founder” of the modern 20th-centurypresidency.

His press conferences indicate that Wilson’s view of popular leadership was neithertraditional nor modern, but “betwixt and between” two periods in American politics. This

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understanding makes sensible the many ambiguities that characterize his practice as aleader of public opinion: the fact, for instance, that he viewed the presidency’s role asopinion leader in moral terms, yet hired Joseph Tumulty as his secretary, a man who helddaily press conferences, interpreted Wilson’s actions for the reporters, kept a clipping fileof Wilson’s press coverage, and smoothed over ruffled feathers when Wilson irritated thereporters (Blum, 1951); the fact that he believed reporters had very little role to play ininterpreting public opinion, yet was able to imagine a national publicity bureau as earlyas 1914 and created one in 1917; the fact that he engaged in instances of petty politics innegotiations with congressional leaders but refused to engage with reporters on routinepolitical matters; and the fact that he personally disliked interacting with reporters butinstitutionalized the modern presidential press conference. If Wilson innovated featuresof the presidency one would like to call modern, scholars would do well to appreciatethat he stood at the end of an era as well.

Notes

1. Lowry’s interpretation of the conference is the most cited. However, a New York Timesstory the day after the first conference praised Wilson for making a “big hit” with the press and forappearing so “unaffected” and “honest” (March 16, 1913, p. 1). Historians George Juergens (1985,pp. 168–184) and Robert C. Hilderbrand (1981, pp. 95–96) explain the discrepancy in these tworeports by suggesting that Wilson’s actions during and after World War I soured journalists to himand tainted their memory of his early days in office. This is plausible. It is equally likely, however,that the press conferences were truly stunted affairs and that the New York Times article is registeringappreciation for the institution of regular press conferences rather than for Wilson’s performancewithin them. Hilderbrand himself proposes this view in his introduction to the collected press confer-ence transcripts, and it is one to which I subscribe in this article (Hilderbrand, 1985, pp. ix–x).

2. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes from Wilson’s writings come from Arthur Link’s excel-lent series, The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Vols. 1–68, hereafter referred to as PWW. Thepreceding quotation is from PWW, Vol. 50, p. 5.

3. Wilson officially stopped conducting regular press conferences in July 1915, for the osten-sible reason that reporters could not be trusted to remain circumspect about important foreign affairsmatters related to the war in Europe. Of course, Wilson had been uncomfortable with the newsmeetings from the beginning, and reporters took the cessation of the news meetings as a snub to theirprofession and to themselves. Eventually, Wilson was convinced to resume the press conferencesduring the presidential campaign of 1916, but as American involvement in the First World Warloomed, Wilson again cut off his contact with reporters in January 1917. He held no press confer-ences after this time (see Hilderbrand, 1985, pp. xiii–xiv).

4. All references to transcripts of press conferences are taken from PWW, Vol. 50. Thisparticular one occurs on p. 48.

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