Having watched the pathological media coverage of Donald Trump from the moment he threw his hat into the political ring by coming down that escalator, I wondered how other presidents did with their media portrayals. Was anyone else, other than Richard Nixon, treated as badly as Donald Trump by the press? The answer is quite surprising.
Starting with George Washington, the ‘Father of Our Country,’ virtually every President has been subjected to media vilification. Only William Henry Harrison, who died just one month after being inaugurated, was spared the media scorn, likely because the journalists of the day didn’t have time to get their hit-pieces into print before he got sick.
One might assume that Washington, the military hero of the American Revolution who became the nation’s first President, would have served his country absent media criticism. That was not the case. Following a relatively long ‘honeymoon’ for both the office of President and for a nation in its infancy, newspaper and pamphleteer attacks on Washington became quite vitriolic.
Washington, in both public proclamation and private conversation, adamantly refused the notion of being crowned or seen as a monarch. Likely his dealings with King George III of England left a bad taste in his mouth whenever the notion of King George I of America was mentioned. Even if that was not the case, our first President certainly realized that our fledgling nation was not likely to accept a British-style monarchy. A constitutionally drawn and publicly elected President was both his and the nation’s choice. In the election of 1789, Washington garnered a unanimous electoral college victory, winning all sixty-nine electoral votes. His was the only unanimous electoral college vote in the nation’s history.
It did not take long, however, before Washington’s political opponents (in those days they were viewed as noble opposition, not enemies with evil, existential designs upon national destruction), began their vocal and printed opposition to Washington’s presidency.
Today we might envision the Founding Fathers as a big, happy assemblage. They were anything but. The rancor and animus we see today may not have been as prevalent in those days, but people as noteworthy as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison did not hesitate to state their opposition to Washington’s policies. The National Gazette accused the President of wanting to be a king, citing his lavish state dinners and other ceremonial functions. The Aurora, scandalously and with no factual basis, accused Washington of stealing public funds for use in maintaining his home at Mt. Vernon.
helping to rescue him from a foreign prison. Washington’s support for the controversial Jay’s Treaty, a pact between the United States and England that averted war between the two nations and settled many differences that remained after the Revolutionary War, enraged his political opponents. It notably caused the U.S. to remain neutral in our dealings with the French during their revolution. Having been staunch supporters of the colonists in their war against England resulting in our independence, (remember Lafayette), France, and American Francophiles assumed we would rally for them as they had done for us.
They saw their revolution as a continuation of the American revolution, although the addition of the guillotine to their armamentarium did little to garner support among the citizens of our young nation. Some opponents, though, suggested that adding the guillotine on the front steps of our capitol would be a good move. And, of course, calls arose for Washington’s impeachment.
I have never heard President Trump mention the fact that the media of Washington’s day, as well as opposing politicians, called for the impeachment of our first President. I would think our seated President would declare it puts him in pretty good company.
Many Presidents, of course, have escaped calls for impeachment. The public instead called for removal by ballots cast in the voting booth. Abraham Lincoln got the worst of it, however, as a bullet rather than a ballot, cast not in a voting booth, but fired by a Booth with a first and middle name, ended his presidency. And his successor Andrew Johnson of course was impeached.
A couple of Presidents deemed among our greatest, engineered various legislation and decree that may seem worthy of bad press, at the very least. John Adams enacted the Alien and Sedition Act which allowed him to jail unfriendly editors, while Lincoln suppressed Habeas Corpus and forced unfriendly publications out of existence in the name of aiding the Civil War. Today, we view such lesser acts as JFK cancelling his subscription to the New York Herald Tribune and Trump’s cancellation of subscriptions to the Washington Post and the New York Times as symbolic, if petty statements about their unfavorable coverage.
President Trump’s efforts at defunding NPR and the Public Broadcaster Service goes a bit farther, perhaps, but none of these modern Presidents made an attempt to lock up editors, much less sentence them to the guillotine, no matter how much that possibility may have tempted them.
So, it seems that media persecution comes with the presidential territory, unless you die in your first month in office. Woodward and Bernstein may have perfected the art of destroying a President, but they were hardly the first in attempting to do so. They will certainly not be the last.
Bill Hansmann is a dentist and dental educator with over fifty years in the profession. He continues to teach and write political blogs and semi-mediocre novels while living with his wife and cats in Georgia.
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