What Goes Around . . . : Some Shtick from “Tricky Dick” and the Circulation of U.S. Presidential Image

Abstract

Modern U.S. presidential persona is based on “message,” that is, on creating and sustaining a publicly imaginable “character” with biography and moral profile built around and projectable in relation to issues under current debate. Controlling “message” depends on the success of directed circulation of verbal and pictorial signs, among them narrative reports and images of presidential doings that join electoral politics and government uneasily and warily—or, in some eras and circumstances, comfortably and reliably—to the media institutions of news reportage and opinion‐shaping on the functioning of which the political order in democratic polities depends. Through the analysis of a news article reporting one remarkable—and seemingly revealing—incident during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, and its circulatory fate, we can gain insight into the vicissitudes of “message”—as of any entextualized semiotic form—as it traverses the socio‐spatiotemporal realm in which it is shaped. [circulation, semiotics, presidential image, entextualization]