In office less than half a year, President George Washington
undertook an arduous month-long tour of New England to promote his
new government and to dispel fears of monarchy. More than two
hundred years later, American presidents still regularly traverse
the country to advance their political goals and demonstrate their
connection to the people.
In this first book-length study of the history of presidential
travel, Richard Ellis explores how travel has reflected and shaped
the changing relationship between American presidents and the
American people. Tracing the evolution of the president from First
Citizen to First Celebrity, he spins a lively narrative that
details what happens when our leaders hit the road to meet the
people.
Presidents, Ellis shows, have long placed travel at the service
of politics: Rutherford "the Rover" Hayes visited thirty states and
six territories and was the first president to reach the Pacific,
while William Howard Taft logged an average of 30,000 rail miles a
year. Unearthing previously untold stories of our peripatetic
presidents, Ellis also reveals when the public started paying for
presidential travel, why nineteenth-century presidents never left
the country, and why earlier presidents-such as Andrew Jackson,
once punched in the nose on a riverboat-journeyed without
protection.
Ellis marks the fine line between accessibility and safety, from
John Quincy Adams skinny-dipping in the Potomac to George W.
clearing brush in Crawford. Particularly important, Ellis notes, is
the advent of air travel. While presidents now travel more widely,
they have paradoxically become more remote from the people, as Air
Force One flies over towns through which presidential trains once
rumbled to rousing cheers. Designed to close the gap between
president and people, travel now dramatizes the distance that
separates the president from the people and reinforces the image of
a regal presidency.
As entertaining as it is informative, Ellis's book is a
sprightly account that takes readers along on presidential jaunts
through the years as our leaders press flesh and kiss babies, ride
carriages and trains, plot strategies on board ships and planes,
and try to connect with the citizens they represent.
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