Eyewitness To Power by David Gergen

Author:David Gergen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2001-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

7

Secrets of the Great Communicator

THE MOST MEMORABLE PRESIDENTS of the twentieth century have been excellent communicators. Teddy Roosevelt invented the bully pulpit to drive the country forward. Woodrow Wilson’s speeches are some of the finest expressions of idealism and of democratic sentiment ever voiced by a political leader. Franklin Roosevelt gave hope and light to millions of downtrodden Americans with his fireside chats. John F. Kennedy, the first president elected through television, turned it into a magic wand. And then there was Reagan.

One finds exceptions to every rule of leadership, of course. In the first days of the Republic, Washington believed he should express himself more through actions than words. While eloquent with a pen, a shy Thomas Jefferson gave only two public speeches during his eight years in the presidency, his first and second inaugurals. Neither Truman nor Eisenhower was noted for his oratory. So, it can happen that great presidents are not excellent speakers. In the modern age, however, there is no weapon more powerful than persuasion by speech. As Winston Churchill once wrote, “Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world.”

I was Reagan’s first “director of communications” at the White House. The title was a misnomer. He was director, producer, and star all rolled into one—the “communicator in chief” from the beginning to end of his presidency. The rest of us might think we were important, and there were moments when we were. But we were staff in the true sense of the word: the President leaned on us when he wanted to. When the curtain went up, he stood at center stage alone.

While Reagan was a born storyteller, he worked hard to hone his skills. For more than half a century, he made his living by holding an audience. Signing on as a radio broadcaster just out of college, he built a reputation covering the Chicago Cubs and learning to describe the game through his imagination. In those days, minimal pitch-by-pitch accounts would come over a telegraph wire and Reagan, sitting in Des Moines, would reconstruct the game in colorful detail.

Of the six hundred games he re-created over radio, Reagan’s favorite occurred on a day the telegraph failed and he had to fake the game until it went up again. “When the slip came through, it said, ‘The wire’s gone dead.’ Well, I had the ball on the way to the plate,” Reagan recalled at a White House luncheon for Hall of Famers in 1981. “I thought real quick, ‘There’s one thing that doesn’t get in the scorebook,’ so I had Billy [Jurges] foul one off … and I had him foul one back at third base and described the fighting between the two kids that were trying to get the ball … And I did set a world record for successive fouls, or for someone standing there, except that no one keeps records of that kind.

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