The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955. By Shawn J. Parry-Giles. (Westport: Praeger, 2002. xxx, 230 pp. $61.95, ISBN 0-275-97463-4.)

Abstract

Shawn J. Parry-Giles has written a well-researched, carefully conceived book of interest to students of the U.S. propaganda apparatus and students of presidential rhetoric and communications strategies. Pointing to the target audience, Parry-Giles argues that study of the rhetorical presidency must include greater attention to the modern presidential orchestration of both covert and overt propaganda strategies. Centering this study “on how the Truman and Eisenhower administrations strengthened the power of the rhetorical presidency through their institutionalization of a governmental peacetime propaganda program,” the author argues that both presidents restructured use of the bully pulpit and, most significant, “increased the clandestine means by which to thwart such congressional supervision over their … Cold War policies, relying on multiple media channels to achieve such ends” (p. xviii). Parry-Giles refers to that consolidation of presidential control as a militarization of propaganda policy. The book is divided into three main sections. Part 1 explores the successes and failures of the “journalistic paradigm” shaping the Truman administration's loosely coordinated postwar propaganda policy. President Harry S. Truman's use of journalists and prestigious news sources was necessary to legitimize peacetime propaganda activities, but eventually the journalistic paradigm seemed too ineffective, inviting congressional attacks and investigations. Both Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower faced those attacks, and both countered with greater centralization—“militarization”— of propaganda policies in the Oval Office. Part 2, titled “The Period of Militarization,” contends that increased Soviet propaganda, combined with the perceived ineffectiveness of U.S. strategy, led Truman to avoid congressional control through use of covert channels, especially the cia (Central Intelligence Agency) in 1947 and the National Security Council's Psychological Warfare Board (1951). Parry-Giles argues that by 1951 most psychological warfare activity was “subject to the guidance and control of the president as commander-in-chief ” (p. 55) and was known about by very few members of Congress.