Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush

Chapter 2. Internal Factors: Process and Strategy in the Bush White House

cHAPter 2 internal Factors Process and Strategy in the Bush White House The public strategy of the George H.W.Bush administration,particularly that with the press,can be summed up as more access,more information, less image manipulation.Bush wanted to develop a strong and substantive relationship with the press, especially in providing more real interaction between him and the White House press corps than during the previous administration.As a result, he moved away from various communication strategies that had been employed by Ronald Reagan’s advisors and instead afforded the press extensive access to the entire administration. For example, he hoped to gain favorable coverage by holding many informal discussions with reporters, and he courted the press as members of the political elite. However, while Bush held many more press conferences than Reagan and met with reporters regularly on an informal basis, he did not use these events as a means to advance his policy agenda. Instead, he simply allowed reporters to ask him questions, which meant that he often talked to the press but did not do a good job of framing public perceptions of his vision for the United States.Wanting numerous informal, last-minute press sessions in an attempt to create an open and friendly presidency suggests that Bush’s strategy reflected what he considered to be his greatest asset,which was face-to-face,personal contact with reporters .1 What the strategy lacked,however,was an overall message to the U.S. public about his policy agenda, as well as a consistently clear understanding of the dramatic changes occurring within the news industry during his four years in office. The attempt to de-emphasize and move away from what was considered to be stagecraft during the Reagan years can be seen in the strategy, process,and procedures involving communications within the BushWhite House. This chapter offers an assessment of the internal factors affecting the Bush public presidency, including the overall communication strategy and attempts to develop Bush’s public image; press strategies and internal Factors : 15 the operation of the press office under the guidance of Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater; the public strategy, including the work of the Office of Communications in developing public events for the president; and the speechwriting process and Bush as an orator. These elements combine to make up the many components of Bush’s attempts at public leadership and how the heir-apparent to the Reagan administration sought to take a different approach in managing communications and the presidential image.The“output”from this strategy—Bush’s actual speeches and public events—usually reflected the administration’s attempt to favor substance over style, as well as to favor more behind-the-scenes access over staged press events. However, the overt attempts not to be Reagan at times hampered the efforts of the president to sound presidential, at least compared to the “Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan. communication strategy Meets Public image In spite of Bush’s professional experience in both national and international political circles, as well as his knowledge of relevant policy issues, Bush never mastered the role of “communicator-in-chief.” The overall communication strategy within the Bush White House often relied on an anti-Reagan approach—the president sought to distance himself from the staged photo opportunities and line-of-the-day news management style that the Reagan administration had used so effectively. Bush wanted his administration to focus on substantive issues by avoiding the reputation of being a“symbolic presidency”that relied on the“stagecraft”developed during the Reagan years. Throughout his four years in office, Bush maintained a high level of public discussion of issues but did so through an overall lower public profile.2 The problem for Bush came in the area of his public image—how to portray himself as an active leader on issues of substance (policy matters and running the federal government) without overexposure to the public and press in the area of public relations. It is important to remember,however,that Reagan was not infallible as a communicator . As Stephen Skowronek points out,“The difficulty comes not in explaining Reagan’s fame as a master of rhetoric and a communicator of ideas but in trying to square that with his other reputation for wandering into incoherence, misstatement of fact, and fantasy during his more extemporaneous remarks.”3 In spite of that,Reagan’s strengths in the area of communicationnotonly overshadowedthosetypesof incidentsbutalso often masked his weaknesses in the area of...