The Tell-All Tradition

Are there any rules left about when it is and is not appropriate to talk about your time spent in the White House?

There's no rule. There used to be that there was an unwritten rule that you never write while the president is in office and even for some time after that. Eisenhower had a speechwriter called Emmet John Hughes ... [His] book was called "The Ordeal of Power," and it was pretty mild criticism. It basically said, Eisenhower was a great man, he was so popular, why didn't he use his popularity for greater things than he did?" This is not an expose, this is not the kind of thing that we're talking about later on. Eisenhower heard about it while the book was still in manuscript. He was irate. The book was supposed to be published by Doubleday, which was Eisenhower's publisher. Eisenhower went to Doubleday and told them to cancel the contract--which they did.

Does it have an effect on the presidency if presidents have to worry about their aides going off to write books?

Sure, they get more and more secretive and they take less and less advice. Even [President John F.] Kennedy when he came to the White House made his ... household staff, meaning the people who worked in the mansion, sign pieces of paper saying that they would not write memoirs about anything that they saw during their employ. And Kennedy was very worried about someone who was on the White House staff who would reveal things that he would not want revealed. And, in fact, one quote from Kennedy, this is verbatim, he used to tell people: "I wonder who's going to be our Emmet John Hughes."

© 2004