And pr, the field that supports the media. I built on his work and did what teachers and scholars say, i extended the his geography histiography. He would say that eisenhower was driven by a Public Relations mentality. Everything he did as a general and president , that was some facet of what he did. One of the reasons why i was telling people the title of the book and they were an eisenhower fan and they winced, because Public Relations can have a Bad Reputation in some circles. When i say that eisenhower embraced and was driven by Public Relations it was not a sense that he wanted to grab glory of it was not a sense that he wanted to fool people. Just the opposite. Eisenhower believed that Public Relations, if properly practiced, was he central to american democracy. And he wrote that in his book at ease. That Public Relations was good for american democracy. He saw it as a way for general eisenhower to get the American Public on board for the war. And he saw it as a way for president eisenhower to sell his agenda. He saw it as to way communication two way communication with the public. That is why Public Relations were important to him. If eisenhower indeed has played such a huge role in Public Relations and he clearly is if you examine the record why is he underrated in the field of pr and why has there not been scholarship on it . There has been some, but i would say not enough. I would submit to you that he is underrated and almost all of the areas. Eisenhower has not been given his due on almost any of the areas so why would pr be different. One of the reasons during his lifetime was that he played a lot of golf and people got the notion that he was golfing all the time. He did play a lot of golf but he was an army man and doing exercise was a part of the job. Edit relaxed them. And it relaxed him. There are other reasons i think he is underrated and the first is the nature of pr itself. There is a scholar that wrote a history of the Public Relations profession and he titled the history the unseen power of Public Relations harico Public Relation relations. Public relations at its best is invisible. Early in my career i was a reporter and when i wrote stories, i got bylines. When i became a pr practitioner, it was my clients name that got in the paper and mine was not to be seen. The nature of pr is such that the practitioner is not seeing. It is just the result. That is one reason he is underrated. Another reason is offered by a scholar named fred greenstein. He offered a book called the hidden hand presidency eisenhower as leader. What he said was that eisenhower was a very strong leader but what he would often do is have others carry out his wishes and he could have clean hands. If you take the unseen profession and hidden hand leader you can see why this is an area that people have not explored much before. But tonight i would like to do that. In order to make my case that eisenhower is the most transformative Public Relations president in American History i borrowed a page from the great scholar david letterman. David letterman is big on top 10 lists. I have a top 10 list for why i make this case. Number one. Eisenhower changed the way that president s meet the press. And i have a couple of things on that that i would like to set. First and foremost to say. First and foremost, the president ial News Conference we are accustomed to seeing today the present at the podium, the press caps off questions he answers shouts out questions the answers. Prior to eisenhower that did not happen. Prior to him the president ial News Conference was not on the record. What reporters could do was ask questions. If there was a quote that they wanted to use liquid perhaps ask questions, may i use this quote . Generally speaking it was information they could use but they could not quote the president. Eisenhower put the News Conference on the record. The other thing he did and you can say that he was fortunate because television was a new medium that was coming into its own. He put the president ial News Conference on television. We did not have it live because it was a new medium at the time they did not have it live as it was a new medium at the time. If you reporters complained that the white house was controlling the message but most of them were happy it was made available. Eisenhower did not meet the press best but he changed way everybody else met the press. Sarah mcclendon was a White House Reporter said in her memoirs that eisenhower should be given credit for birthing or creating the modern president ial News Conference. I submit to you that that alone is monumental. Because it changed the way the president not just interacted with the press but the American People for the first time could see the extract. The exchange. Craig allen says in his writings that one of the reasons that he did it is that eisenhower wanted to address the American People directly. James haggerty in his diary says that very thing, that eisenhower wanted to address the American People and not have a filter. That was the case here. Whatever the reason he did it, it changed the nature of the communication and the American People were brought into the exchange. Second, he embraced media advisers. That might not seem like a big deal today and the 21st century because we have tv shows like scandal where we see media advisers running around. This was not as common a thing in the 1950s. Public relations and advertising were trying to gain traction in society and often they were seen as sort of technicians people that could write words but they did not necessarily invent a strategy. They were sent out of the room to write to the words. What pr people wanted to do was have a seat at the table so they had discussions about the messages as well as writing them. Eisenhower believed in experts. I do not know if it came from his military training. As a general he had so many people that worked with him. When he campaigned for president and govern the country the country governed the country he had experts around and listened to them. I tell my students that one of the problems you will have is a Public Relations professional is to get your clients to take your advice. Even today they do not do it. Eisenhower was not a puppet but he listened to the people that he trusted. I am not saying that he singlehandedly elevated media advisers but the fact that he embraced them made a difference. A couple of scholars wrote about this. Nicholson wrote a book from whistle stop to soundbite. And then a woman named jamison wrote a book called the packaging of the presidency. They address this concept and other scholars. Others i will point you to, i have a complete bibliography and footnotes, but they talked about it a great deal and i wanted to give them some credit. Number three Dwight Eisenhower empowered to the office of the press secretary. James haggerty was the most powerful press secretary in American History and that happened in large part because eisenhower trusted advisors. Another man that road about this is a man named james deacon wrote about this is a man named james deacon who wrote an article about haggerty, the voice behind the throne. He said that haggerty was more powerful than you would think you would think in his power helps to elevate the Public Relations profession in the 1950s and his power helped to elevate the Public Relations profession in the 1950s. Haggerty did not know eisenhower well when he joined the campaign but he proved himself. I talked to his son roger on the phone and roger told me that his father gained eisenhowers trust just through his sheer competence. James taggart he was competent. I recognize that that was what it took. You could argue at one point secretary of state John Foster Dulles dollars and chief of staff is to resign from what today would be a very small candle i think. Small scandal i think. Integrity becomes the most powerful and influential aide that he has at haggerty becomes the most powerful and influential aide that he has had that point. When you think about today in a postwatergate era often the press secretary is left out of things so he or she has deniability, i do not know what was going on. The certainly are not the most powerful person in the inner circle of the presidency. Number four i am shooting a little bit here because this did not occur cheating a little bit here because this did not occur when he was president. The authorized the Army Information school when he was chief of staff. This was a school for Public Relations officers pros in the war pros in the war. Eisenhower believe that any misunderstanding that occurred between the army and the public was that people did not understand. He believed in the army. He believed if you could bolster the Public Relations training that would fix the misunderstandings on occasion. Now the authorized it, i am not suggesting that some of these he did on his own he taught the glasses or anything like that, the classes or anything like that. Now we have a defense Information School that blends all of the different branches so i cannot claim that eisenhower founded goes but he founded an antecedent to those. The fact that he valued pr and authorized a school for it speaks to how much cared for it he cared for it. He gave a speech in which he said that Public Relations was a central function. I got some of that information from the Army Information digest. Ok, number five. He created the u. S. Information agency. The u. S. Information agency, a lot of their duties was in the state department. There was an agency that dealt with communications and information in the state department. Eisenhower thought that was insufficient. When eisenhower became president , he created the u. S. Information agency as a federal Standing Agency for communications. The entire purpose of this organization was Public Relations because he believed that he could literally sell democracy to the world. And so the first week of his administration after he took office, he set up a committee called the jackson committee. What they did was study americas overseas Information Program and they found that there were a lot of overseas efforts that were stepping all over each other. They were duplicated. He thought that they should be streamlined and standalone entity of their own agency, giving them more power. Essentially giving them more visibility. This gives you some clue as to how much devalued Public Relations he valued Public Relations. I would argue this is the greatest manifestation of his belief in Public Relations. Visibility. This gives you some clue as to how muchit never came fully to the fruition he wanted. It never quite realized what he wanted. In his final days, he is in walter reed hospital. President nixon has taken office and president nixon has appointed a new director of the information agency. His name was frank shakespeare. In a booklet called ike and the usa, shakespeare says that eisenhower invites them to walter reed to talk to him. He is in the last days of his life. Frank shakespeare goes out there and shakespeare says in his account that eisenhower spent two hours at the hospital talking about the value of the usia and what he needed to do and how important it was. Can the first days of his administration and the last day of his life in the first days of his administration and the last days of his life he was still obsessed with information and selling america to the world. There are a lot of scholars that have talked about this. A man named david guff wrote an article about the jackson committee. John berry giles sean perry giles wrote several articles about this. We are not related, he just happens to have a similar last name. I cannot stress enough how important it was for eisenhower that there was a standing federal agency for Public Relations. And it lasted for 40 years roughly. I should have checked my math. It was folded back into the state department during the Clinton Administration because the cold war was over and it was primarily meant to combat russian propaganda and put forward are ideal of ourselves our ideal of ourselves. It is in the state department and it is not called the u. S. Information agency anymore and if i could channel like i have no doubt he would be disappointed. Number six, he helped to equalize print and electronic journalism. What i mean by that is that in the 1950s, print reigned in journalism. And television was still in its infancy. When eisenhower brought Television Cameras into the president ial press conference, the power shifted somewhat show that the newspaper print so much so that the newspaper print people knew it and they were not happy. I am not saying that he didnt singlehandedly but he helped did it singlehandedly but he helped. He was given an honorary ma for advancing emmy for advancing broadcast journalism and the inscription talks about the professional way that he broadcast. That is a big deal, bringing the presidency under the can and the cameras together helped. He helped to transform president ial campaigns and he did it two different ways into different campaigns. In two different campaigns. There are several scholars that i did not steal, i borrowed ideas. Noal wrote an article. Craig allen wrote about this a lot. Nicholson wrote about this as well. Stephen wood, edwin diamond stephen bates. Martin wrote a book about madison avenue. Kathleen and many more people wrote about this. When you do something for the first time, it gets written about. In 1952 what he did that was groundbreaking is that he used spot ads for the first time in a president ial campaign. And the story, although scholars all of those scholars there is a footnote saying that it is recounted in almost all of the versions. Apparently some of eisenhowers friends were playing golf one day and they were talking about a slogan that harry truman was using. And harry truman was saying, and the democrats were saying, you have never had it so good. Indicating why switch parties because with the democrats you have never had it so good. And it was a very effective slogan. An eisenhowers friends were dismayed and they went into the white house and they called a man named rosser reid who was an advertising man and said they need their own slogan. He said, what you need are spot ads. And you need to have a central message and you need to saturate the market at the right place at the right time. Ike was skeptical because he thought it was a little unseemly to sell a president ial candidate like a bar of soap. And that is exactly how i lie stephenson, his opponent adelie stephenson, his opponent, felt. But they took his advice and the did a campaign called eisenhower answers america. If you want to see some of these you can go to a website called the living room candidate. They have the old eisenhower answers america commercials. What they did is that they found that when he read eisenhowers speeches he had a ton of games all over the place themes all over the place. So he went to George Gallup and said that they need one theme and what did Americans Care about . He said, the korean war, the high cost of government. The ended up using all three. Very ended up using all three. They had eisenhower answer questions from everyday citizens. Eisenhower in one day take all of the responses and then they found everyday citizens that represented everyone different demographics, and have them ask the questions and they spliced them together. They were questions like, one of the questions was something like, mr. President the democrats may be wrong but dont they mean well . His response was something like, if your boss government well but drove into a ditch, would you get into was driver . Wouldnt you get a new bus driver . The spot drivers were creative. I do not think there is any way to know if they mattered because i do not think anybody could have defeated eisenhower but they did introduce a new way of campaigning. Can you imagine a president ial Campaign Today that did not have spot advertisements . Eisenhower himself really was just a conduit and used the media advisers, i give him credit because it was his campaign. In 1956 eisenhower was a little uncertain at first whether he was going to run for reelection because in 1955 he had a heart attack. They were worried about his health. They were not sure, go to the president survive a campaign and the next four years go to the president could the president survive a campaign in the next four years in office . One of the things that they did was they made Television Commercials that were a little bit longer and eisenhower ran a lot of his campaign on television. He did not do the traditional whistle stop where you get at the end of the train and you go from town to town and you give a stumjpp speech. Another thing was the use of the jet, you could fly. Eisenhower do a lot of his 1956 campaign on television and that saved some of his energy. Craig allen addresses that quite a bit in some of his writings. This one to me is the most difficult to talk about. The improved Public Disclosure of health information. It is a complicated thing and we could take the full hour for it and i am going to take about three minutes. One thing i can say is that eisenhowers Administration Made it clear that the president s health was the publics business. But they were not always as honest as they might have claimed. Eisenhower on september 24, 1955 has a heart attack and spends seven weeks in the hospital. How do you hide that . President s before eisenhower did the president s condition. The fact that they declared a policy of full disclosure eisenhower said our do not want to keep the public in the dark. James haggerty did. He talked about the food that he ate, his blood pressure, his bowel movements, everything. The press secretary did tell folks what was going on and they did have a policy of full disclosure but when you think about the politics of being president , it is hard to tell the complete and utter truth every day of a sick president. I have a quote that i did not think i would remember well. It is from a White House Reporter named Russell Baker who was the reporter for the baltimore sun. He was in boulder, colorado when eisenhower had his heart attack and he was there covering it. This is what Russell Baker has to say and i think when you hear this you kind of give dr. Howard snyder and some of the people in the information who may be did not tell the full truth, you cut them a little slack. This is what Russell Baker has to say. A president with a heart attack was an extraordinary piece of news in 1955. There had never been one before. How serious eisenhowers might be was anybodys guests. Guess. But a reporter would be foolish to believe the white houses statement that it was mile before the simple reason that the white house would be foolish to say it was grave even if it was. By both knew that they were playing a game they both knew they were playing a game. All we knew with reasonable certainty was that people often died of heart attacks, that the president had suffered one, and was still alive. Baker added that this was not just a big, big story but the biggest story in the world and likely to remain so for several days to come. I think that the press at the time gave the Eisenhower Administration a great deal of credit for being forthcoming in light of the heart attack and they did offer a lot of material. Eisenhower had two more illnesses. He had an operation at a stroke in 1957 and a stroke in 1957. Dr. Snyder who was a good and decent man whose father and son served in the military and who served in the military as well, the president had a stroke. We did not know much about strokes and he had a neurologist examine eisenhower. The neurologist told dr. Snyder in 24 hours we will know if this is serious or not. You did not know exactly how to be forthcoming in that 24 hour he did not know exactly how to be forthcoming in that 24 hour period. After the heart attacks the stock market plummeted and doctors letter said and dr. Snyder said that it might happen again so he decided he would wait 24 hours to tell people. He would wait until eisenhower woke up. And so he sent associate press secretary out to deal because haggerty was away. It was the president s third illness and they did not buy that eisenhower was missing a dinner because he had a chill. The king of gordon was in town and he was not going to the dinner of jordan was in town and he was not going to the dinner and he had a speech and he canceled. The truth did come out and fortunately for the administration, eisenhowers stroke was mild and he recovered quickly. I think that it was just a difficult thing for them to know how to navigate. I do think that they told more truth than not and they were pretty honest men. And i think that at the bottom line it is kind of tough on how much credit to give them. At the very least they made clear that the president s physical condition was the publics business. I had a reviewer review my book because that is what you do. And the reviewer said something like, in this day and age, they had to tell the truth. Look at john f. Kennedy. He did not tell the truth about his health. We did not know how sick john f. Kennedy was and there has been a lot written about that. I think they deserve a lot of credit for having the full disclosure policy but you have to be honest and say they did not always entirely live up to it. And for that, i read several books but in part what i read was dr. Snyders own journals. He wrote a journal and an unpublished book and there were other scholars that i have read on this particular topic. There was a german article interviewed snyder but i took a lot of it from his own writings. Number nine, ike opened up channels to pr professionals and that does not sound like much. Public relations was trying to gain respectability in the 50s as a profession. Public relations is a relatively new profession if you talk about history. Depending on what historian you talk to, Public Relations began at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century depending on who you talk to. Scoott digits before the beginning of the 20th century. Dates it before the beginning of the 20th century. People have cared about image since cavemen but as a profession it is over a hundred years old. They communicated with the jackson committee. The brought some pr professionals he brought some pr professionals into the mix to talk about the u. S. Information agency and there were open channels. In addition to James Haggerty and his associate press secretarie eisenhower had a man named Stevie Jackson who was a pr advisor. He was a next her pr advisor, and extra pr advisor who had done psychological warfare in the army. Eisenhower believed the Public Relations had ended the war quickly. He believed that it could end the cold war without blood shed. Number 10, he appointed anne as the first female associate press secretary in American History. The have an associate secretary that left office in may 1957. I am not sure about a month. The appointed wheaton. He appointed wheaton. In 1957, that was a big dea l. The former associate secretary said that that was the appointment heard round the world. That was hyperbole but she did get a lot of coverage in the press for being the first woman to be in this role. That is how i found this topic in a roundabout way. I was a Public Relations professor at another university before i came to houston kentucky and they always mention three women before i came to university of kentucky and they always mention three women including an wheaton. She does have her own chapter in this book but i decided to write more broadly about eisenhower after talking with jim. So that is a big deal. So in short for these 10 reasons and probably more but we are out of time, i think that eisenhower is the most transformative Public Relations president in American History not because he is the best practitioner. He was not the orator of a reagan the press was for her of a jfk. Whisperer of a jfk. But he changed Public Relations at an important moment in its history. I would like to thank three institutions that funded this research. The eisenhower foundation, the university of southern mississippi, and belmont university, my former employer. I would also like to thank Eastern Kentucky university and the only reason they did not find me is that i am a brandnew Employee Fund me is that i am a brandnew employee. The photos were provided by the Eisenhower Library except for the first one at the beginning of me and that is from Eastern Kentucky. And now i will take questions. Please come to the microphone so that we can capture you on the camera. I have got one. He had a hidden hands wrote Dwight Eisenhowers life. Do you think that it is a coincidence that he was a career Information Officer . Dr. Vandervelde no. A woman named carla gower a Public Relations historian from alabama, wrote a book called the trouble embrace about government npr. He says and pr. He says that milton was an influence on eisenhower. She talked about it in her book. If there are no additional questions i would like to thank dr. [arryparry for coming to abilene, kansas and sharing her research. [applause] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter cspanhistory. All weekend long, American History tv is joining Comcast Cable partners to showcase the history of Saint Augustine florida. To learn more, visit cspan. Org cities tour. This is American History tv on cspan3. Shannon oneill we are at the San Augustine lighthouse and museum. This is the location of floridas first lighthouse. There was originally a lighthouse that was built here sometime in the late 1600s, and in the 1700s, it was turned into a functional lighthouse. It was down on the water. And then after florida became a state, they kind of put the money into it, made it into a lighthouse with an oil lamp, and they realized it was going to fall into the ocean, so they started building the current lighthouse we had today, and that was completed in 1874, and the old one fell into the ocean in 1880. So the current tower we have has been here since 1874. So the purpose of the lighthouse here, theres kind of two. One is to serve as a location reminder to all of the ships in the area, so each lighthouse has its own individual day mark and night mark. Our lighthouse day mark is the black and white stripes with the red top. No other white house can have that. So if you see that white house that lighthouse, those colors, you know you are in San Augustine. We still have our original 1874 lens, and it has three bullseyes on it, and when they rotate around, basically, the beams are 30 seconds apart. It is a steady light with 32nd 30 second flashes is what it will look like when youre on the ocean, and that is our unique night mark. We basically serve to let sailors know they are in San Augustine and let them know where the port is so they can safely be guided inside. The lighthouse still comes on every night. And we, as a museum, we maintain that now through volunteers and that and donations. We are a nonprofit. We actually came in and restore the lighthouse and the original keepers house, which was from 1876, and we have preserved those for future generations so that they can see how the light housework lighthouse worked, how it was operated. The keepers that live here it was like a military post for them. They and their families lived here. They worked day and night. It was a very tough job. 219 steps to the top of the tower, and they had to climb up every two or three hours to put oil into the lantern and clean things off, wind the clock mechanism that kept the lens rotating. It was a really rigorous job and we just want to keep that commemorated and let people come and see how that worked. In addition to being historic preservationists and taking care of the tower and the keepers house, we launched a lighthouse archaeological maritime program, and what we do is we have a team of archaeological researchers, and they go out and look at shipwrecks in our area. We want to know what the history of the nations oldest port is because San Augustine being the nations oldest city is also the nations oldest port, so they go out and find shipwrecks using a magnetometer like a big metal detector, they drag the water, and then they actually dive down to those wrecks and analyze what is there. We bring up some of the artifacts and use those to bring up the story behind the ships. As the ships were coming and going, that was in and out of Saint Augustine for 100 years, so it can tell us a lot about the people who were coming and going from San Augustine. At one time, there was a shipwreck every two weeks in Saint Augustine. So there are literally hundreds of shipwrecks off our coast just waiting to be discovered waiting for us to come in and be able to excavate those. So we look forward to the next piece of San Augustine history that we will uncover. Throughout the weekend, American History tv is featuring Saint Augustine, florida. Our citys tour staff recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. Learn more about San Augustine and other stops on our tour at cspan. Org citiesto ur. You are watching American History tv. American history tv is featuring cspans original series first ladies influence and image on sunday nights at 8 00 p. M. For the rest of the year. We tell the stories of americas 45 first ladies. Now, Martha Washington on first ladies, influence and image. This is about one hour and a half. Martha washington was george