Politics & Power Quote by Richard M. Nixon

Nixon frames access as a democratic right, but he’s really renegotiating who gets to mediate reality. The line sounds like a defense of transparency: the people deserve the president unfiltered, face-to-face, voice-to-ear. Yet the key phrase is “only through the press,” which casts journalism less as a check on power than as an obstacle course between leader and public. In one clean sentence, Nixon shifts suspicion away from the presidency and onto the institutions designed to scrutinize it.

The intent is strategic. Nixon understood that modern presidents don’t just govern; they perform. Television made “direct” communication feel intimate and authentic, even when it’s meticulously staged. By invoking entitlement, he turns a preference for bypassing reporters into a moral claim, as if press conferences, investigations, and editorial judgment are an undemocratic detour. The subtext: trust me over them.

Context makes the rhetoric heavier. Nixon’s relationship with the press was famously adversarial, and his political rise coincided with a growing national media apparatus that could amplify scandal as efficiently as it could spread speeches. This quote fits the long arc of presidents building parallel channels to the public, from televised addresses to controlled photo ops. It also prefigures a now-familiar play: delegitimize intermediaries, then offer “direct” contact as the antidote. The irony is that “direct” doesn’t mean unmediated; it just means the mediation is done by the White House.