Content area
Full Text
Presidential newspapers, a form of the political newspapers that dominated mass communications for many decades in nineteenth-century America, played a crucial role in the articulation and promotion of key principles in American political thought and practice, while also promoting the political interests and strategies of their presidential sponsors. These points are illustrated in a study of how the first presidential newspaper, the Washington, D.C., National Intelligencer, was used in 1800-1801 to promote Thomas Jefferson's election and the principles of Jeffersonian Republicanism.
"For God's sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies and cut him to pieces in the face of the public."
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 17931
Nineteenth-century partisan newspapers played a critical but largely underappreciated role in American political development. For most of the century, these newspapers were a fundamental part of American political life at the mass communications level. Moreover, from 1800 to 1860, almost every American president was connected with a political newspaper that was published in Washington,D.C., and that was considered, to varying degrees, to represent the views of the president and his administration.2
These presidential newspapers circulated far beyond the capital via the U.S. postal system, and served a variety of functions: promoting the president and his policies, attacking opponents and their arguments, articulating party orthodoxy and positions, providing cues to the party elite, informing and mobilizing interested citizens, and providing political commentary for other friendly newspapers throughout the country to reprint-and elaborate upon- for their own readers. Like all such partisan newspapers, presidential newspapers regularly addressed fundamental principles of American democratic theory, in the process spreading those principles-and the public discourse over them-across the country, thereby helping to embed them in the national consciousness.
All this was done on behalf of a president through commentaries written by the newspaper's friendly editor/publisher and other anonymous contributors, thus providing a façade of separation between the president and the contents of the paper. In this way, political leaders, including presidents and presidential candidates, could "go public," presenting their views and positions to the governing public while formally maintaining a rhetorical distance from that public out of deference to the prevailing social construct of the time that government officials, especially presidents, ought to avoid obvious involvement...