ABSTRACT
The final contribution of journalistic culture to the summing up of a news-worthy problem will, in the end, always be passed on to the historians for further research and revised interpretations. It is often difficult to recall the original quotidian twist to the reputations of major American public figures that were popularized in the daily press in thousands of stories bearing a Washington dateline. Dwight D. Eisenhower did not remain for long the all-conquering hero of the Allied victory in World War II when he served two mediocre terms in the White House. The curse of the demotic is upon us, and one can find the all-powerful White House chief-of-staff, Leon Panetta, searching for words to account for the experience of his several years in the Bill Clinton administration which amounted to chaos or, total disorganization. In the universal history of political leadership–with its center not holding and things falling apart–it is a recurrent theme.
