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His reluctance to put speechwriting in a fuller context, though, becomes a serious liability by the time he reaches the Reagan years. Oddly, some of Schlesinger's strongest research is in that section, as he describes the wrangling between the "true believers" in the conservative cause (including Peggy Noonan, one of the best known and probably the most eloquent Reagan writer) and "the pragmatists," who accused the ideologues of overreaching and making policy. But such battles seem to exist in isolation from any broader media strategy, even though Reagan's nickname "the Great Communicator" itself calls attention to how aware of spin the public had become by then.

The public's savvy (which doesn't necessarily make media manipulation less effective, just tougher to pull off) has only grown with the rise of the Internet and the 24-hour cable news cycle. Schlesinger notes that George W. Bush's writers were disappointed that only one line from their speech turned up when the president spoke to the country on the night of Sept. 11; he doesn't tell us who wrote the words Bush did use (although he mentions the important role of Karen Hughes, then the president's adviser and formerly his campaign's communications director).

And Schlesinger tends to overstate the impact of single speeches. It's true that after Richard M. Nixon gave a fierce speech announcing that American troops would strike in Cambodia, the "swift and vociferous" backlash, including campus protests, led to the deaths of four students at Kent State University, but surely the policy created those demonstrations, not the strength of the speech.

Pointing to the many recent White House memoirs, Schlesinger concludes that ghosts aren't what they used to be: invisible. It's too bad that the visibility of spin remains an undeveloped issue in such an intriguing book. Still, the next time David Letterman does his regular "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" routine, with exalted sound bites from former presidents followed by a tacky one from Bush, you'll know that "Our long national nightmare is over" were Robert Hartmann's words before they were Ford's. Who might be behind the Bushism "Man, you're lookin' sharp" is anybody's guess.

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