The PR Genius of the White House

Decades ago, presidential press conferences were a journalists-only affair, with members of the media having the sole privilege of hearing directly from the White House. We wouldn’t hear what the President or press secretary say to a gaggle of reporters in the briefing room without the precedent set by James Hagerty CC 1934.

Hagerty was the White House press secretary during President Eisenhower’s administration, from 1953 to 1961. Widely considered a public relations genius, Hagerty initiated the practice of permitting press conferences to be recorded for radio and television, enabling the public to hear the press secretary’s and the President’s address.

Hagerty also let the President be quoted directly for the first time in the press. Newspapers could print, “‘The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it,’ Eisenhower said” — as compared to a weaker paraphrase such as “Eisenhower said preventing WWIII is the only way to win it.”

Born in Plattsburgh, N.Y., just south of the Canadian border, Hagerty moved to New York City with his family as a child. His father was a political reporter and editor at The New York Times, and Hagerty said that he vaguely remembered meeting Teddy Roosevelt at Oyster Bay when his father was on assignment.

After high school, Hagerty wanted to work on Wall Street, but only got a few months of experience before the stock market crashed in 1929. He decided he needed a degree and enrolled at the College to study politics. With his father’s connections, he became the Times’ campus correspondent, and joined the staff as a fully-fledged reporter after graduating.

Hagerty spent the next decade working his way up through the ranks of the newspaper, eventually becoming the political correspondent in Albany covering the New York State government. He also made a name for himself as that city’s deputy bureau chief and caught the eye of Gov. Thomas Dewey (R-N.Y.), who made him his press secretary in 1943.

“I decided I would go into it temporarily, because I think that government service of any kind is always good for anybody in the news business. You get the other side of the field that you’re covering,” Hagerty said in a 1968 oral history interview. “And as a matter of fact, while I thought it would be temporarily, it was for the next 17 years.”

Hagerty saw Dewey through most of his governorship and two presidential campaigns, occasionally brushing elbows with Eisenhower when the general was president of the University. But it wasn’t until Dewey decided against running for President in the 1952 election that Hagerty really got acquainted with Eisenhower. According to Hagerty, Dewey’s staff went right to work doing what they could to get the general elected. At Dewey’s request, Hagerty was the one to prepare Ike for his first press conference as a candidate. And Eisenhower told him that if he were to “go all the way,” he would be taking Hagerty along.

Three weeks before the Republican National Convention, Hagerty resigned from Dewey’s staff to join the Eisenhower campaign; he officially became press secretary after Eisenhower secured the nomination. Though they still did not know each other well, a game of golf shortly after the convention laid a pivotal foundation.

“We worked out our working relationship for the whole eight years in that golf cart in about three hours,” Hagerty said. “[Eisenhower] said, ‘You’ll know everything I’m doing, and I’ll keep you fully informed. If you get any questions, don’t shoot off your mouth before you have the answer. If you have anything you don’t know the answer to, come to me and I’ll tell you.’”

Those ground rules came to define how Hagerty presented the President to the press. Through Eisenhower’s many health scares, Hagerty was quick to learn medical terminology to translate his condition for reporters, and cleverly illustrated his recuperation by giving daily updates about how the President was eating, sleeping and taking medication. A silent press secretary would likely have left room for speculation during Ike’s weekslong recovery from a heart attack in 1955. But Hagerty shared personal details, painting the picture of a President growing stronger every day and running the country from his hospital bed. The public had no need to wonder about the state of Eisenhower’s health.

The candor that defined Hagerty’s and Eisenhower’s relationship with the press was also part of the decision to allow cameras and microphones in press conferences. When Hagerty proved to Eisenhower that the technology would work in the briefing room, Eisenhower immediately greenlit the operation, setting the stage for the next quarter century, up to the present day, where the world can hear directly from the President and press secretary at the podium.

“The newsmen made a squawk, and particularly ... the wire service men that this would be an intrusion on the privacy of the press conference and so forth,” Hagerty said. “I had to remind them that we were in the second half of the 20th century and television was here to stay whether they liked it or not, and we were going to use it.”