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(upbeat music) - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

Welcome to a compelling and important half hour of programming with David Greenberg, the author of a book published in 2016, more relevant now than ever before, it's called "The Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency".

And David Greenberg's also a Professor of History at my alma mater, Rutgers University.

Good to see you, David.

- Good to see you.

Good to be here representing history.

Also Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers, my other home there.

- Well, I was proud to come out of the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies many years ago.

- Right.

- So, David, let's do this.

In reading the book, I kept thinking the word "spin".

Define it, and then I'm gonna ask you how it's connected to a bunch of other words that I would use.

"Spin is" and why does it matter?

- Great, well, it's a great question because, y'know, the terms we've used over the years have changed, and each time they have kind of slightly different nuances or connotations.

Y'know, back at the start of my book, in the early 20th century, they used words like "publicity" and "propaganda" as terms for how does the government or anybody, a corporation, a nonprofit, put across its message?

How does it give you its slant on the fact?

Y'know, in other eras, we talked about news management coming from the presidency, and starting in the '80s, we started talking about spin.

Spin had a kind of playful connotation to it.

- Someone's a spin doctor!

- Exactly, spin doctors.

There was the Spin Room that you'd go to in the debates, following the presidential debate, where you knew these guys were giving you spin.

It was kind of a winking acknowledgement that this was a one-sided partisan take.

And the idea was, yeah, it's partisan, but you're staying within the boundaries of, y'know, what could be defended as a truthful claim.

So spin is not quite lying.

It's kind of putting your best spin on the truth.

Now, something- - Okay, hold on.

Hold on one second, hold on.

Hold on one second.

So first of all, I do, in my other life, I do some leadership coaching and I talk about reframing tough questions.

You get a tough question, you answer the question, and then you reframe it, but you don't lie, you don't deceive.

What the heck is the difference between reframing?

So I'll give you an example.

- Yeah.

- I often use this in some of my classes, including at Rutgers.

I'm a graduate of the Eagleton Institute and went back there and taught a seminar recently.

And so I said, "listen, if someone runs for governor and they say, 'I'm not gonna raise taxes!'

Six months into office, they get elected, they raise taxes and they get asked in a press conference, 'Governor, you said you weren't gonna raise taxes.

You raised taxes.'

My response is, 'I absolutely did raise taxes.

That's what I believed at the time.

When I came, I realized our schools were not funded to the way they needed to be and we needed more state aid.

So those dollars were needed to increase public funding to our schools.'"

Is it spin?

Is it a lie?

Is it propaganda?

Is it reframing?

What is it?

- Yeah, yeah, well, I call it a broken promise.

(both laughing) Yeah, I once wrote a piece for Politico, a sort of taxonomy of, y'know, political falsehoods.

There are lies.

there's the non-denial denial, there's the flip flop, right?

So, there's a whole different vocabulary and, y'know, a lot of people these days, because there are a lot of lies in politics, like, nothing better than to accuse the other side of lying, but a lot of the time it's tricky.

Y'know, when George Bush said, "we believe Saddam Hussein had WMD"- - I just wrote down "weapons of mass destruction to justify a war," go ahead.

Is that spin, a lie, propaganda, what?

- I call that spin, you could call it propaganda, but I call it spin because he did have WMD.

WMD does not mean nuclear weapons.

It means nuclear or biological or chemical.

Saddam did have chemical and biological weapons and then used them, but what Bush and his administration wanted everyone to think was nuclear.

- Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq's neighbors and against Iraq's people.

So you're using a kind of weasel word, a fudging word, to spin it to make people think the worst, but you could still say, if pressed, "hey, I'm telling the truth!"

- David, you wrote this book in 2016 before... And we are doing this program, I wanna be really clear, full disclosure, no spin... Bill O'Reilly, who used to work at Fox News, called it "The No-Spin Zone."

I was on it many times.

Trust me, there was spin.

That being said, there's no spin here, so that's why the date that we're doing this program is going on the screen right now.

The first time we'll air it is on Election Day 2024.

We're taping a few weeks before that and it'll repeat, so I wanna be clear, we don't know who's gonna win the presidential race.

We don't know if there's gonna be a peaceful transition of power.

We don't know any of those things.

I need to ask this, You wrote this book pre-Donald Trump, - Yeah.

- Pre-his campaign in 2016.

Forget about whether he wins or not, Kamala, we don't know that.

Donald Trump and spin, go!

- Well, I mean, I do think Donald Trump has sort of changed the rules of the game, or sort of broken a lot of taboos.

Donald Trump seems to me to be quite brazen in saying things that are just demonstrably false, that goes beyond spin into outright lying.

For example, first day of his presidency, "I had the largest inaugural crowds ever."

Knowingly false, everyone knew it was false, and yet he insisted on it like you or I would claim the sky is blue.

Trump seems to have done that, y'know, a lot more than the average politician and seems to do it with a kind of casual ease that I think takes a lot of people, y'know, by alarm, causes a great- - But why does that matter?

I'm sorry for interrupting, but why does that matter?

And again, we don't know who's gonna win the election, but why is that lying, whether it's by Trump or anyone else?

And trust me, not the only one, okay?

That being said, what the heck, and the graphic will come up, we've been doing this series called Democracy in Danger, it'll come up right now, what the heck is the connection between spinning, lying of public officials at the highest level and democracy being in danger?

Loaded question, I know.

- Right, well, look, we live in an open society.

And so when we use terms, if you think about propaganda, a lot of people prefer to reserve that for a situation like the Soviet Union, like Nazi Germany, where you don't have alternative sources of news, and so the people only hear what the government wants them to hear.

In a democracy, in a system with a free press, with an opposition party, Donald Trump can lie, he can spin, and you count on his opponent, you count on the media to fact check him, to give a different argument, to explain why he's wrong.

So in that sense, y'know, it's not a danger to democracy.

I mean, it's worrying because you do want politicians to kind of have a core sense of the truth that they're operating from.

And when they don't, there is, of course, the danger, as we have seen, that a lot of people will believe things that are not only... Y'know, people could argue does cutting taxes on the richest top brackets raise revenues?

That was the Reagan administration claim about supply side economics.

Well, you can have economists debate that and maybe people say it's false, but, y'know, when you have a whole swath of the country believing in conspiracy theories, whether it's, y'know, Q-Anon or what have you, you really lose the capacity to have the arguments over public policy, over candidates, over our political future that are kind of rational and positive looking.

- Point well taken, but David, Trump, again, don't know what's gonna happen in the election, is not the only one.

I want to be really clear.

Don't know if Kamala Harris, as we do this program, the Vice President, we don't know what's gonna play out, but when she's asked a direct question, and, again, you can watch, decide for yourself, and, again, this will be after the election will be seen, if she's asked about the failure in Afghanistan, the withdrawal, and she starts talking about a bunch of other things, is that not spin because she doesn't want to answer the question because the withdrawal in Afghanistan was an abomination?

- Oh, of course that's spin, yeah.

So I do draw this- - Are there degrees of spin?

- Right, and there are degrees of spin.

There's sort of mild, benign ones and there's ones that, y'know, are more egregious.

Y'know, my argument in the book is actually that we need, well, that spin is sort of part of the language of politics in the age of mass media.

- How about social media?

- Yeah, I mean, we cannot expect the political arena to be like a courtroom.

We cannot expect the politician to be like the historian who just must search for truth or like the judge who has to really adjudicate.

Politics is an arena where we argue, where we have a different sense, I mean, yes, we should try to agree on the facts, but we may have a different sense of which facts matter the most.

And so I think we kind of hold up an unrealistic standard if we think everybody is going to, y'know, have the same endorsement of what constitutes, y'know, a truthful account.

- But there are different interpretations of truth.

And in David's book, by the way, check it out, "Republic of Spin", published in 2016, more relevant than ever before.

You look at different presidents.

I'm gonna go through this, David.

I'm a student of history.

I'm a student of presidential leadership.

But the first person, I'm gonna... John F. Kennedy, the Kennedy spin, framing, propaganda around Camelot.

It's the Age of Camelot.

There's a whole bunch of stuff we never knew about JFK and what he was engaged and involved in.

Spin, lie, propaganda, what?

PR?

- Right, well, I mean, the book is really a history of how presidents develop the whole apparatus that they have.

Y'know, if you go back to Teddy Roosevelt, basically where I start the book- - The Rough Riders?

- The Rough Riders.

I mean, that was- - Put Teddy... We'll talk about FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, in a second.

Teddy Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, propaganda and spin, go ahead.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, y'know, back then, the President did not have a lot of tools at his disposal.

The presidency actually in the 19th century was a pretty weak office.

If you were a political reporter, you would be covering Congress and in the Senate press galleries.

There was no White House press room.

The White House wasn't putting out regular press releases or hosting briefings.

All of that is new in the 20th century.

And Teddy Roosevelt comes to the presidency, one, as someone who believes in strengthening that office, that it needs to be an office that really represents the people because America has gotten bigger, more complex.

There are problems that can no longer be solved locally or state level, but need federal intervention.

He also comes to the presidency, as you say, with these experiences, as in the Rough Riders, knowing how to use what were then modern mass media techniques.

Y'know, when the Rough Riders, which was his group that organized to go fight in the Spanish American War in Cuba, when they have their training in Texas, y'know, he allows photographers and the press in to kind of see them.

There's a lot of hype.

He signs a contract with a magazine to write about his war exploits before he even goes to war!

- What was he spinning?

What was he spinning, David?

- In his case, he was spinning his own heroism.

He was a man with a great sense of himself and a great sense of his own destiny.

And he comes back having actually been quite heroic in the Spanish American War, acclaimed as a national hero, and immediately sort of translates it into a successful run for the Governor of New York.

But I say people like Roosevelt, or pick your president, typically they spin, yes, for their own advancement, but also to advance the ideas and the goals that they believe in.

He had a vision of the presidency, so when he's spinning, yeah, it's about TR, there's an ego involved, but it's also, "how do I move public opinion to get behind the causes I believe in?"

- I got it David, but I'm gonna go back to another figure in history in a moment, but I want to do current day.

As we're doing this program.

President Biden is the president.

When it's seen after January, if there is in fact peaceful transfer of power, there'll be a new president.

But is it not spin, or worse, when in fact President Biden was clearly on the back end of his term struggling on so many levels, and it wasn't until, we saw the debate and we can talk about the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, its connection to spin and propaganda, media, et cetera, television, but if it were not for that debate, millions of Americans may have believed the spin, the propaganda, the whatever, that he was able-bodied, cognitive, sharp, totally focused.

And in the eyes of millions of Americans, they came to believe that wasn't true.

What was the danger of the spin going on in the White House press room when his press secretary and others were saying, "no, he's fine"?

- Yeah, look, I mean, in the book, if people read "Republic of Spin", you'll find there are actually a lot of precedents for that kind of spin doctoring, covering up, you might say, of a president's medical challenges, cognitive- - Excuse me, including FDR, who was not seen, there were the pictures with him with crutches or no?

- Occasionally.

Occasionally with a wheelchair.

So people knew about it, they knew.

He often described himself using a word we wouldn't use today, as "crippled".

So the public knew, but they tried to keep those pictures out of the press.

They tried to convey the image of a guy who was strong and resolute.

So it was spin, it wasn't a lie.

People knew he had had polio, but they also knew that the man they saw before them in the Depression and the war was a guy who conveyed great strength.

- What about Biden?

- Right, so I mean, and, again, we look at Eisenhower when he had his heart attack.

That was sort of downplayed, the severity.

- Or Woodrow Wilson, who was very sick as president- - Woodrow Wilson who had a stroke.

Y'know, Kennedy had Addison's disease.

It's in some ways a kind of familiar story.

There's even some suggestion now that, y'know, when Reagan had his ailments, that those were kind of downplayed by his White House office.

- His cognitive issues?

- Well, his cognitive issues are a subject of historical debate at this point.

Some people think the Alzheimer's was evident earlier on than was led on.

And so, yes, with Biden, I mean, I think, y'know, there was that sort of refusal, reluctance to do press conferences and media appearances, y'know, especially in sort of the latter part of his term.

That was to some a warning sign and should have been to others.

I think part of it was a lot of people who, y'know, didn't want to see Trump, y'know, return to office kind of were just hoping, "well, he's good enough.

Let's not pay too much attention to this issue."

And, y'know, "he's good enough.

He can do the job.

He's got a good team around him and that'll carry him through."

And, of course, at that debate, it was seen you not only have to be able to do the job behind closed doors with a team, which, y'know, Biden arguably is still continuing to do effectively, but you have to be able to get out there and make your case to the public if you're running for reelection, and that was something that Biden really couldn't do effectively anymore.

- Again, as we do this program late in October, President Biden is the president, President Biden is the president, and it's still very relevant.

A couple more questions.

How about Hitler and spin, the Nazi movement?

And go back to your family's horrific experience and your connection to this.

Put that in perspective, Nazi Germany, Hitler.

- And I have a whole chapter here on, y'know, Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine.

It's really a book focused on the American presidency, but in the 1930s, Americans are focused.

They see what's happening in Germany.

They see the rise of Nazism.

Some people kind of want to put their head in the sand and not face the fact that it's gonna require a military effort to defeat Hitler.

But, yeah, I mean, I have family who perished in the Holocaust.

Y'know, most American Jews probably do.

And a lot of people who got out, y'know, at the last minute had to flee either, y'know, by illegal means or sneaking out of the country.

So we saw the way in Nazi Germany or, again, in Soviet Union and other repressive countries a complete takeover of the media, y'know, can allow very dangerous propaganda.

In Hitler's case, it was propaganda with antisemitism as the central fact of it.

And what Americans tried to argue in the '30s and '40s is how do we have a democratic form of government messaging- - Small D, small D democratic.

- Small D, so that the government could put out its message, but you have a press corp, you have an opposition party that's also arguing with it, so people aren't being indoctrinated?

Because, look, spin can been misleading, but it is also leading.

Presidents need to put across an effective message with arguments.

I mean, the President is not like the weatherman who's just telling you the facts, "this is what's coming in".

We want our President to make arguments.

"This is what we need to do and why."

So spin is leading as well as misleading and it's the tension that makes it interesting.

- David, sorry interrupting.

You're differentiating between spinning and lying, are you not?

- Yeah, yeah.

- You are, but there's a gray area?

- Yeah, sure.

- Okay.

- I mean, we can argue what constitutes a lie, y'know, in any given case, yeah.

- Yep, and by the way, when people talk about January 6th or they say there was a peaceful transition of power, yeah, they're spinning.

Some might say, "no, no, they're lying.

There was a peaceful transition of power on January 20, 2021.

- Right.

- But that effort was not peaceful on January 6th."

And some will say, "well, it was a group people that were protesting."

Well, that's the way you're framing, spinning, some would argue lying.

Before I let you go, who was terrible as an American President?

What American President, concisely, clearly, was not good at spinning?

- We've had a few, and I would argue it's not that they're thought of as bad presidents because they couldn't communicate well.

They're thought of as bad communicators because their presidencies failed.

Let me give you two quick examples.

Herbert Hoover.

Jimmy Carter.

When Herbert Hoover comes into the presidency, he's thought of as a genius of modern media techniques.

He does, y'know, this amazing campaign film about how as Commerce Secretary in the '20s, he sort of saved the nation during the Great Flood of 1927.

He's called the Master of Emergencies.

Well, when another emergency comes along a few months later, he's a disaster.

- You mean the Depression?

- Yeah, so- - Oh, that thing.

- Right, right, exactly.

And now he withdraws from the press.

He doesn't know how...

He actually is the one who starts using the term "depression", thinking this is better than words like "panic", and it turns out that it becomes a negative term.

But, y'know, a depression, it was like a little bump, like recession.

And so he's a failed communicator, but it's because he has failed policy.

He even brung Edward Bernays, who's often called the Father of Public Relations, an early PR guru.

And Bernays, says, "look, I can give you some messages to put out, but you really need a jobs program," y'know?

Same with Jimmy Carter.

You go back to 1976, '77, New York Times Magazine cover, "Jimmy Carter, Master of the Media" and it shows him manipulating ABC, NBC, CBS- - What about the Playboy interview?

- Right, I mean, he's seen- What do they call it?

"We have a national malaise."

- Malaise, right.

- What the heck?

And what's that spin?

- Right, so once Carter gets into this economic rut with high inflation, high employment, he can't get the hostages out after they're seized in Tehran by the revolutionary government that takes over, so now we think of Carter as a failed spinner, a failed media presidency, but had he been a successful president, we might remember him like Reagan as this great TV president.

- "Morning in America!"

- Absolutely, a great example of spin.

- Yeah, there's no spin here.

This book is called "The Republic of Spin: The Inside History of the American Presidency".

David Greenberg is the author.

And also we're gonna have David back.

This book, I just started reading it, is an extraordinary book about John Lewis, a life.

The amazing John Lewis, a great leader in the Civil Rights Movement, at the right arm of Dr. Martin Luther King, Member of Congress, and somebody who matters greatly in American history.

David, I cannot thank you enough for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you, Steve.

Great to talk with you.

- Looking forward to having you back.

That's David Greenberg and I'm Steve Adubato.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

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