The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush [Hardcover]

Evan Cornog (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2004

A masterly new look at the American presidency, revealing the importance of the way presidents craft personal narratives-persuasive storytelling that has a crucial effect on the electorate and the nation.

Perfectly timed for the 2004 election, Evan Cornog's The Power and the Story raises a thesis so integral to the discussion that it's surprising it's never been posited before. The key to a successful election, administration, and ultimate legacy is, in great measure, the crafting of the presidential story. The impact of these stories on the electorate and the nation is almost beyond measure, because it is often these stories that we call American history.

The sheer narrative drive of "the war hero," "the Rhodes scholar," "the drunkard-or recovered alcoholic," "the small-town boy," "the log cabin," "the cherry tree," "the good old boy," "the Rough Rider," and on and on can come to define a leader, an administration, and an entire era. The Power and the Story is the investigation of the story behind that story: how, with deliberation and occasional manipulation, a president's crafting of his public image has surmounted scandal, capitalized on opportunity, obfuscated flaws, and created legend. And how presidential storymaking has been a professional undertaking on the part of the media and spin meisters as well-from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Karl Rove.

There is, of course, the larger story as well. Cornog's book is a meditation on the American psyche and our penchant for storytelling. Questions are raised about what makes for the quintessential story; in what sense are Americans misled by the neatness imposed by storyline; and perhaps, most important, why are we so eager to see our leaders in this easily comprehensible light? All questions very much of the moment, and Cornog's sound and fascinating answers to them make this book essential campaign-season reading-and a lasting investigation of the presidency.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Repackaging presidential history for our age of "spin," Cornog's lively if reductionist work argues that it's "the battle of stories, not the debate on issues, that determines how Americans respond to a presidential contender." In making this argument, Cornog, associate dean at Columbia's journalism school and author of Hats in the Ring, a campaign history, touches on the roles of candidates, the public, the press and historians in crafting (or debunking) images and reputations. No reader will put down the book without greater appreciation of the role of tales, both tall and true, in our public history. To his credit, Cornog only occasionally drops into cynicism, as when he says that the role of images shows "the relative unimportance of truth." But sometimes he succumbs to melodrama, as in his grandiose conclusion: "The future of the nation, and the world, depends upon the abilities of American citizens to choose the right stories." And devoting a full chapter only to George W. Bush seems a ploy for media attention in this election year. More seriously, Cornog shortchanges such other important historical factors as presidential actions and national power. In sum, this is a pleasant but not weighty work.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Evan Cornog is the associate dean for policy and planning at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review. He was educated at Harvard and Columbia and has taught American history at Columbia, CUNY, and Lafayette College. He also worked as press secretary for former Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York City. Cornog is the author of The Birth of Empire: DeWitt Clinton and the American Experience, 1769-1828 and coauthor of Hats in the Ring: An Illustrated History of American Presidential Campaigns.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First Edition edition (June 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159420022X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594200229
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,817,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stuff You Knew, Stuff You Suspected, September 29, 2004

By 

Claude Call "ccradio" (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

This is a view of presidential "spin" throughout American history. Our Presidential war heroes aren't limited to the few that we ordinarily think of (Grant, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy); it was also Washington's success in the Revolution that led him to the Presidency. Andrew Jackson beat the British in 1815 during the Battle of New Orleans. Who cares if the war was already over, or if Roosevelt picked a fight with Cuba specifically to look good? They're still heroes!

Cornog notes that the truth is not always relevant to the story. For instance, the Washington-and-the-cherry-tree story is apocryphal. Likewise GW Bush's inflating of Saddam Hussein's pursuit of the weapons of mass destruction. He points out that there's a cycle to the story, that it's sent to the press, which itself behaves as an actor and chorus in interpreting and relaying it to the public, and then as an audience as well, by reacting and allowing the story to return to its source for reinterpretation and re-dissemination.

In some cases, the story becomes part of the president's "next life." Former presidents or even non-presidential statesmen, in publishing their memoirs, have tried to change the focus or the blame on some of the more negative stories about them by attempting to put them in a different context. In some cases the attempt was successful (George Washington and the tree didn't even come out until after he had died, but it's so central to the myth that it was accepted), others not so much (Nixon convincing himself that the decision to invade Cambodia was right by repeatedly watching "Patton", as noted in H. R. Haldeman's memoir).

It's even more clear in the light of the 2004 Presidential campaign that the election will likely be decided by the power of the stories told about the candidates, and how they react (or fail to react) to those stories. There have already been several examples of this: Jimmy Carter's "outsider" story played well the first time, but couldn't be used in 1980 and his 1979 "malaise" speech, combined with Reagan's "There you go again" in the debate doomed him to lose to Reagan. Again, it didn't even matter that Carter's statement that generated Reagan's response was actually correct. "There you go again" became the story. In 1984, Walter Mondale tried using the truth when he said that [Reagan] will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." Well the truth hurts, and it damaged Mondale in the polls. And again, Reagan had a line that effectively ended the debate when he said, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." For those of you who saw the debate, the look on Mondale's face said basically, "yeah, this one's over."

My only complaint with Cornog's work is that it's rather brief; I would have like to see a little more backstory on several of the incidents cited in the book. But perhaps this book can be used as a springboard for readers who can later pick and choose the presidents that they'd like to learn a little more about.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent history and great campaign guide, July 29, 2004

By 

Richard Bradley (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

This is a very smart book. The Power and the Story pulls together presidential history from George Washington to George W. Bush, media theory, and Cornog's own wisdom to analyze the importance of storytelling in presidential politics. We may know on some level that our presidential candidates are crafting life stories for themselves to advance or facilitate their political futures-both in reality, like John Kerry choosing to go to Vietnam, or in myth, like Kerry's campaign film created by a protege of Steven Spielberg-but Cornog shows how that tradition began, how these stories are manufactured, and why they work-or don't. Cornog gives us a powerful filter through which to interpret and evaluate modern political campaigning; this is the best single theory for understanding presidential politics I've ever read. An added pleasure is that the book is written lucidly and contains a breadth of historical knowledge that is quite remarkable. Combining literature, myth, history and current events, Cornog uses references from Herodotus to Jane Austen to September the 11th, all in an inconspicuous but highly useful way. Before an election this important, everyone should read The Power and the Story.

7 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Thinly veiled partisan bile, October 4, 2004

By 

Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

"Evan Cornog's masterful new look at the American presidency explores the ways our presidents craft persuasive personal narratives and how their storytelling can capture the public imagination and build the support necessary to govern," exclaims the flyleaf. In reality, this is an object lesson in how the disingenuous journalist can craft their stories to appear as scholarly research when, in fact, they are just old fashioned partisan campaigning.

Cornog's book should serve as a warning to anyone who believes the media are "objective": Cornog is an associate dean for plannig and policy at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and publisher of the Columbian Journalism Review.

My copy of "Power and the Story" is now loaded with slips of paper, each bookmarking a lie or distortion in Cornog's campaign tract. Cornog claims that the old Soviet Union was an American stereotype rooted in habitual ignorance or modern prejudice. Just what does Cornog find admirable about the old Soviet Union? Its gulag system? Its forced exile of minorities? Like others who apparently felt that acceptance of the Soviet Union was the right thing, Cornog casts Ronald Reagan's declaration of the Soviet Union as a message "inadequate to the complexities of the world." Why do people like Cornog come out and specifically say what was good and admirable about the Soviet Union?

In Cornog's view, Lyndon Johnson embodied the Texas Populist Tradition while George W. Bush is rooted in the Conferdate past. The single tenuous reference to support this theory is to yet another overtly partisan screed. This reminds me of Stalin citing Lenin as a persuasive authority.

Time after time, Cornog bases his assertions on the assertions of other partisan and sometimes thoroughly discredited sources such as Joseph Wilson whose partisan claims were debunked by investigative committees on both sides of the Atlantic. But such minor details cannot deter a rabid partisan like Cornog from his appointed rounds. He is a part of the journalistic community, where truth is apparently the first casualty.

In the final analysis, Cornog offers sophmoric history of how - big surprise - Presidential campaigns weave legends around their candidate and how history distorts them. He pays no attention to how determined such posthumous efforts can be, as in the case of John F. Kennedy. All of his contemporary sketches are clearly skewed: Democrats are all saintly, Republicans evil.

In all, this is just another anti-Bush rant. What makes it disturbing is that the author is someone who apparently is an "educator" of future journalists. With Cornog's work as an example, we can whistle goodbye to whatever shreds of honesty and objectivity remain in journalism.

Jerry