The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 69 on Nov. 4, 2008. Perhaps that intense participation in the electoral process, along with new and enlightened lead- ership with a mandate for change, will produce an era of “colossal success.” For that to happen, however, diplo- macy must take its rightful place in the nation’s security strategy. J. Brian Atwood, a former Foreign Service officer, was administrator of the U.S. Agency for International De- velopment from 1993 to 1999. He also served as assistant secretary of State for congressional relations from 1979 to 1981, and under secretary of State for management in 1993. He is cur- rently dean of the Hubert H. Hum- phrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. What We Have Here ... Managing the President’s Message: The White House Communications Operation Martha Joynt Kumar, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, $35, hardcover, 345 pages. R EVIEWED BY J OE B. J OHNSON More people will read (or pretend to have read) Scott McClellan’s mem- oir of his days as George W. Bush’s press secretary ( What Happened: In- side the Bush White House and Wash- ington’s Culture of Deception , 2008) than this detailed analysis of White House communications. But Profes- sor Kumar’s comparative study of how U.S. presidents have dealt with the news media over the past 100 years of- fers better insight into what the new president may do. Unlike most accounts of White House media operations, which have been embedded in personal memoirs, this one comes from an outsider. Kumar has spent her academic career studying all facets of the White House and its inhabitants, as in her 1981 book, Portraying the President: The White House and the Media . To write this one, Kumar drew on more than 100 in- terviews with members of the last four administrations and the reporters cov- ering them. She even set up an office in the basement of the White House press room to observe the day-to-day B O O K S