Download Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency AudioBook Free
The most powerful politics tool of the present day presidency is control of the message and the image. In Republic of Spin - a vibrant history covering more than a century of politics - presidential historian David Greenberg recounts the go up of the White House spin machine, from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama. His sweeping, startling narrative calls for us behind the views to see how the tools and techniques of image making and message craft work. We meet Woodrow Wilson convening the first White House press conference, Franklin Roosevelt huddling with his private pollsters, Ronald Reagan's aides crafting his nightly media audio bites, and George W. Bush staging his "Objective Accomplished" photo-op. We meet, too, the backstage visionaries who pioneered new ways of gauging public view and learning the advertising - statistics like George Cortelyou, TR's brilliantly effective press supervisor; 1920s advertising whiz Bruce Barton; Robert Montgomery, Dwight Eisenhower's canny Television coach; and undoubtedly the main element spinmeisters of our very own times, from Roger Ailes to David Axelrod. Greenberg also examines the profound debates Us citizens have waged over the effect of spin on our politics. Does spin help our leaders manipulate the citizenry? Or will it really allow them to engage us more fully in the democratic task? Checking out the ideas of the century's most incisive politics critics, from Walter Lippmann and H. L. Mencken to Hannah Arendt and Stephen Colbert, Republic of Spin illuminates both the power of spin and its limits - its capacity not only to mislead but also to lead.
