Who would think that a doodle made by a United States president in a mind-numbing White House strategy session could interest a nation? David Greenberg, an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS), for one. Greenberg recently coauthored Presidential Doodles: Two Centuries of Scribbles, Scratches, Squiggles and Scrawls from the Oval Office (Basic Books, 2006) with the editors of Cabinet Magazine.
Presidents from George Washington and master doodler Herbert Hoover (an engineer) to JFK and George H.W. Bush are represented. George W. Bush’s memorable note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the United Nations in 2005 during a speech by the leader of Benin, “I think I MAY NEED A BATHROOM BREAK,” is also included. So are doodly love notes from President Ronald Reagan to his wife Nancy.
Greenberg, whose first book, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image, offered a kaleidoscope view of President Richard Nixon’s many images, was hired by the book’s publisher to add a history component to the art.
“Presidential doodles are intriguing, above all, because they provide us with a glimpse of the unscripted president,” Greenberg writes in the book’s introduction. “They’re the antithesis of the packaged persona. Made with neither help from speechwriters nor vetting by a focus group, a doodle is the ultimate private act; its meaning may remain opaque even to the doodler himself.
“As a result, it renders the president human in ways that a staged family outing cannot. And if we can’t make conclusive judgments about what a president’s drawings reveal about his innermost fears or fantasies, his doodles can still be suggestive and provocative.”
Of course, Greenberg warns that notes like Bush’s and other presidential doodles shouldn’t be taken too seriously. But the work that went into Presidential Doodles was very serious.
Researchers combed through the manuscript division of the Library of Congress and the 12 presidential libraries. The search took more than two years.
Greenberg, who teaches several courses at SCILS, including one in conjunction with the Department of History, is coming out with a biography of President Calvin Coolidge later this year. When he’s not book touring, he’s figuring out how to add more technology to his lectures to get the attention of students weaned on television, IT, and video games.
“What I’d like to do in my lecture course in the spring is add more audiovisual,” Greenberg said. “Right now, I kind of get up and do the old-fashioned lecture, and although my evaluations are perfectly fine, I do think students will appreciate more bells and whistles.”
This story first appeared in Alum-Knights, the newsletter for alumni of SCILS' Department of Journalism and Media Studies. Michael Huang, Rutgers College '07, is a double major in English and journalism and media studies.