Presidential Presentation
If you were in control, how would you present the world's most important information? Written document? Speech? Video? Stone tablets? ...PowerPoint?
Earlier this month the CIA declassified seven video intelligence briefings created for Ronald Reagan which got me thinking about Presidential presentation.
Arguably, some of the most vital contemporary information comes either from or to the President of the United States. And it's interesting to note the various methods Presidents have used to communicate.
Speech
At the end of the day, the most lasting and world-changing presentations tend to be the unadorned live speech. Lincoln redefined America with 272 spoken words at Gettysburg. FDR calmed and connected with the nation through his radio fireside chats. Kennedy inspired millions with idealistic speech such as the Man on the Moon speech to Congress. And Reagan mourned for the country with his Challenger disaster address.
PowerPoint?
While we have had a Presidential candidate present with PowerPoint (not a rousing success) and we've seen gubernatorial PowerPoint, we haven't yet had a full-fledged slide presentation by a President.
Obama has come very close though with his State of the Union speeches. If you were in the House chamber, you would see no slides on screens, but the White House releases portrait-sized "slides" to accompany the speeches. These graphics served both as a documentary complement and as visual speaker support when combined with the video in an "Enhanced State of the Union" version. I have to say that if you haven't seen the enhanced version online, it's quite smart. And the graphics (slides) are incredibly well done.
Written Document
While the Founding Fathers may have produced this country's most effective piece of communication via written document, it may be true that more vital information flows to the President on the printed page than flows out.
Every day the President receives a top secret presentation of international intelligence called the President's Daily Brief (PDB). The most famous and controversial of these was the one from August 6, 2001 which contained the written heading, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."
Could there be a better format than written memo for the PDB? Maybe, maybe not.
But that brings us back to Reagan...
Video?
Though some may believe that Reagan requested all of his PDBs in video format, it's certainly more likely and realistic that the newly released video briefings were occasional supplements on specific larger topics. Even today, producing a 10 minute informational video piece is not an easy or quick task. But one would hope that a video PDB were it produced today, would feel a bit more mature than Reagan's which, quite frankly, seem more appropriate for a 5th grade social studies class than the Oval Office. Take a look...
