Managing the President's Message, by Martha Joynt Kumar, professor of political science at Towson University, discusses the use of news organizations by American Presidents and White House staff to communicate with the public in order to attain political goals. Having a historical and communicative approach, the book focusses on Bill Clinton and George Walker Bush's presidencies. Kumar's claim is that multifaceted communication is central to government and that while the President needs supporters, presidential communications can form political outcomes, especially in the process of re-election.

Interviewing senior administration officials, the author covers such presidential communications tasks as publicity operations for Presidents, defending chief executives from critics, explaining administration actions and policies, and, lastly, coordinating government-wide publicity.

Considering this new subject and writing in fluent language, Kumar studies modern versions of communication operations like television ads in two established White House communication units: the Office of Communications and the Office of the Press Secretary. She points out, for instance, how television ads promote the President's deficit-reduction proposals or identify the Republicans as those responsible for cutting social programs. Readers will come to understand the process of constructing public opinion in American society about presidential policies and agendas.

As Martha Joynt Kumar has mentioned, the eight chapters of Managing the President's Message are built upon Portraying the President, co-authored by Michael Baruch Grossman and Kumar, which was published at the beginning of the Reagan administration, demonstrating how the White House and the press go hand in hand to crystallize the president's message.

Kumar sums up her book by mentioning the developments in the area of communication operations such as the basic elements of effective presidential communications, the benefits that good communications operations buy for a President, and the considerable limits to what White House communications operations can do for a President. Last but not least, understanding the nature of the institution of the presidency is possible by studying its communications operations because the chief executive of the American political system is central to the new organizations – this is the most important feature of the modern presidency.