The Presidents vs. the Press

Toward the end of Washington's first term, Americans, once relatively unified in the quest for independence, began splitting into warring political factions devoted to markedly different aspirations. Pro-Washington, pro-Alexander Hamilton Federalists pledged to strengthen the new national government, regulate fiscal policy, and re-establish ties with Great Britain. The emerging Democratic-Republicans, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and the father of the Constitution, James Madison, advocated smaller government and states' rights. Infatuated by the French Revolution, Jeffersonians favored shunning America's mother country and embracing Enlightenment France. Federalists viewed recent upheavals there as a mobocratic threat to global stability, while populist Republicans regarded the French uprising as an inspirational outgrowth of America's successful revolt against England. Jeffersonians feared the imposition of a British-style class system here; Hamiltonians in turn dreaded a Jacobin-style reign of terror.

As the chasm widened, newspapers aligned with one or the other party ratcheted up their criticism of the respective opposition. In openly choosing sides, some editors abandoned original commitments to objectivity and embraced new roles as propagandists. Others established their journals under the direct auspices of party leaders, fully committed to their platforms from the start. Whether a divided America emboldened the rise of a partisan press, or the partisan press widened an existing political gulf, remains open to debate. In either case, most newspaper readers seemed to enjoy the lively new journalism. Colorfully written vitriol deflected subscribers' attention from cheap paper, coarse printing, and an overabundance of dull advertising. For his part, Washington "lamented" when "the Editors of the different Gazettes in the Union" first began "stuffing their papers with scurrility and nonsensical declamation."

The escalating editorial invective coincided with a revolution in printing technology. Ever-faster presses meant that more papers could be produced more rapidly. As biweeklies matured into weeklies, and weeklies morphed into dailies, readership skyrocketed. Only one hundred papers existed in the

Presidents and reporters can t really exist without each other, and Holzer, a historian of the presidency with the eye of a reporter, expertly explains why. Sean Wilentz, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
 
Harold Holzer is a master in telling us exactly what we need to know no more, no less on a critical and obsessive relationship spanning 200 years. With a gimlet eye, Holzer shows how some of our best presidents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Barack Obama were the most resistant to press scrutiny. Jonathan Alter, New York Times bestselling author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life
 
Not surprisingly, George Washington was the first president to protest the malicious falsehoods and violent abuse he d suffered from the press. In this vivid, anecdotal history, Harold Holzer, himself a shrewd veteran of political press relations as well as a fine historian, chronicles the ways in which Washington and eighteen of his most important successors have sought to seduce and cajole, defy, and sometimes conspire with the men and women who cover them. No one interested in the presidency or in the long history of fake news should miss it. Geoffrey C. Ward, New York Times bestselling author of A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt
 
From George Washington railing against infamous scribblers to the ravings of Donald Trump against fake news, there is an inherent tension between presidents and the press. Harold Holzer brings this centuries-long struggle to life in a brisk, enjoyable and authoritative book that offers valuable perspective on the art of governing while shining a light on how the free press is still the ultimate guarantor of freedom. John Avlon, CNN Senior Political Analyst and author of Washington s Farewell: The Founding Father s Warning to Future Generations