In the 1992 presidential election, candidate Bill Clinton periodically conjured up the images of past presidents in his quest for the White House, and with some success. In certain speeches he sounded like Kennedy, in others like Lincoln or Jefferson; both he and George Bush openly made reference to Harry Truman, a gritty, popular politician who had staged a come-from-behind victory in his 1948 re-election bid. Such appropriation of tried-and-true figures was not accidental. Past presidents often possess qualities that living politicians lack: a well-aged image of virtue, wisdom and statesmanship. Presidents of yore were subjected to scrutiny--by the press, by their colleagues, by their enemies--but on a far smaller scale than modern-day presidents, who are in many ways the symbolic leaders of the entire planet and hence exposed to global criticism. In many ways, as the president's power and influence has increased, so has his vulnerability to attack.
In examining the evolution of the presidential image, we shall look first at three early presidents--Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln--then briefly compare them to our most recent national leaders. It should be pointed out that, in a fairly recent poll of professional historians (the Murray Poll of 1983), these three men comprised three of the four presidents in the "Great" category, the fourth being Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
George Washington, now widely known as the "Father of our Country," was to at least some of his contemporaries anything but a benevolent patriarch. During Washington's tenure in office, politicians became polarized between the Federalists and their supporters (including Washington and John Adams) and the Jeffersonian Republicans. The antagonism reached a peak with the disclosure in 1795 of Jay's Treaty, in which Washington sought to mend differences and restore relations with the British Crown. Since many Antifederalists were also fervently anti-B...