Declining to be spun: why the seemingly fearsome tools of political propaganda backfire with voters.

• Author: Green, Joshua
• Position: Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency - Book review

Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency

by David Greenberg

W. W. Norton & Company, 560 pp.

Anybody over the age of thirty who follows politics even casually probably recalls an episode from 2003 that epitomized the strange frenzy of propaganda that accompanied the U.S. march to war with Iraq. Outraged by France's refusal to join George W. Bush's looming invasion, a group of Republican congressmen directed the House cafeteria to strike the term "French fries" from the menu and replace it with "freedom fries." Other restaurants followed suit. I remember rolling my eyes at what I imagined was an absurd new milestone in American jingoism, and one that perfectly captured the through-the-looking-glass quality of Bush-era political spin.

It turns out I was wrong. As the historian David Greenberg reveals in Republic of Spin: An Inside History of the American Presidency, his rich, comprehensive study of political persuasion and propaganda, the "freedom fries" coinage was merely an homage to an earlier frenzy of patriotism that gripped the nation during a different war. In 1917, just after America entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson sought to counter German propaganda by establishing the Committee on Public Information, a publicity shop designed to rally mass opinion behind the policies of the U.S. government. It produced, among other things, the famous "I Want You" Uncle Sam recruitment posters. But it also fed a paranoid aversion about all things German. Posters appeared depicting menacing Teutons and warning of "Prussian Terrorism." The music of Johannes Brahms was banned; and sauerkraut was rechristened "liberty cabbage." As the philosopher John Dewey rationalized, "There was enough obnoxious German propaganda to create legitimate fear in the American public."

Greenberg's book traces the rise of the "public presidency" under Theodore Roosevelt and follows it across every subsequent administration. He reveals that every president, regardless of his initial skepticism, quickly succumbs to the temptation to try to shape public opinion, and every technology that emerges to enable this, from wax cylinders to Facebook, prompts the same hand-wringing concern. Yet we're blind to this cycle, believing each time that we're witnessing something new.

Before he was president, Roosevelt had been an ardent admirer of muckraking journalists like Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair. He envied their ability to seize public...