ABSTRACT
Theodore Sorensen, counsel to President John F. Kennedy, was struck by how very different the world looked from inside the White House. He might have added that a newly installed president and White House staff also suddenly look quite different to the world. One might expect them to seem larger than life in their newly elevated authority, and in certain moments they may. But more often, in the media mix of actuality and artifice through which most people experience them, the president and entourage soon lose the Inauguration Day aura and appear decidedly mortal (Kernell and Popkin 1986).
