2007 Conference on Interdisciplinary Studies in Information Privacy and Security May 22, 2007 Rutgers University, New Brunswick

David Greenberg

Title: War and the Expansion of Presidential Power: The Case of Public Persuasion.

In the 20th Century there emerged a new phenomenon that we now call spin.

Presidents and other politicians, along with a new cadre of professional experts in fields from advertising to public relations to polling, adopted and refined tools to help them shape public opinion. In general, wars, both real and rhetorical, have encouraged presidents to refine the tools of spin, or, as it was called in earlier eras, propaganda or news management. Presidential claims about security have helped to legitimize tools of spin that were then later used independent of the security threat that was initially invoked to justify them. Examples include the use of advertising by the Committee on Public Information during World War I, Franklin Roosevelt’s use of polling during World War II, and Richard Nixon’s use of the idea of a biased news media during the Vietnam War.

David Greenberg is an assistant professor of History and of Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers University and the author of three books on American political and cultural history: Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (Norton), which won several awards; Presidential Doodles (Basic); and Calvin Coolidge (Holt). A columnist for Slate magazine, Prof. Greenberg has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, The Journal of American History, Political Science Quarterly, and many other scholarly and popular publications. A former managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic, he holds a BA from Yale, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and a PhD in history from Columbia. He is currently researching and writing a history of political spin. He lives in New York City with his wife and two young children.