Words to heed and repeat, and a life’s work to regard.
George Washington Carver Educational Postcard
This vintage educational postcard (likely printed in the mid-1960s) features quotations from agricultural scientist George Washington Carver (1864-1943), displayed on an exhibit at George Washington Carver National Monument. The card presents Carver’s thoughts on success, preparation, and nature alongside his portrait. Carver, born into slavery, became a prominent botanist and inventor who developed hundreds of uses for crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes while teaching at Tuskegee Institute for 47 years.
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. — George Washington Carver
The George Washington Carver National Monument, established in 1943 near Diamond, Missouri, was the first U.S. national monument dedicated to an African American. Located at Carver’s birthplace, it preserves his legacy and the 1881 Moses Carver house where he lived as a child. The National Park Service now manages the 240-acre nature preserve and historic site.
The summer slow-down is coming to a close, and The Posted Past is launching into a new phase as a social enterprise. On Wednesdays, you’ll still receive a weekly wander through postcard history, along with a new focus on rare cards, and a regular review of the art cards we receive at the World’s Smallest Artist Retreat (our P.O. Box). More inspiration as our circle expands. Wisdom, wisecracks, and butterfly wings. See you in September… next week!
Copper maps. Wooden cards. Puzzle prints. Discover how obsolete technologies transform into art and craft, and explore why we can’t stop reinventing the perfect postcard.
In this age of instant digital communication, the persistence of physical postcards presents an intriguing contradiction. These rectangular pieces of cardstock—designed to carry both image and correspondence through postal systems without an envelope—serve as artifacts of a communication method that had its heyday a century ago. But rather than disappear entirely, postcards have evolved in novel ways that tell us even more about who we are.
Why We Seek the New
Humans have always been drawn to novelty. Our brains light up at the unfamiliar—it’s a survival mechanism that once helped our ancestors notice changes in their environment that might signal danger or opportunity. But our relationship with novelty runs deeper than vigilance. We seek out new experiences, objects, and sensations even when no practical threat or benefit is apparent.
This human attraction to novelty serves several purposes. First, it provides simple pleasure—the dopamine release that accompanies discovery keeps us engaged with our surroundings. Second, it helps us learn and adapt—new situations force us to develop new skills. Third, it offers social currency—being the first to discover, own, or report something novel (even if untrue!) gives us a kind of status within our communities.
Perhaps most fundamentally, novelty helps us fight against the deadening effect of habituation. We become blind to what remains constant around us, a psychological phenomenon called “sensory adaptation.” Think of how you stop noticing a persistent background sound, like traffic noise. Novelty jolts us back into conscious appreciation, like noticing the birdsong instead, making us sense the familiar differently.
With mass-produced consumer goods, we often pursue novelty through customization or unique variants—like these postcard alternatives. They satisfy our craving for something special while maintaining connection to recognizable forms. Even novelty doesn’t stray too far from the familiar.
Technology Becomes Art
As technologies age and are replaced by more efficient methods, something interesting happens—the displaced technology often shifts from the realm of utility to the realm of artistry and craft. What was once valued primarily for function becomes appreciated for form, precision, and the visible human touch.
Letterpress printing was an extraordinary innovation of its time and once the standard for all printed matter. It was largely replaced by offset printing in the 20th century and later the digital methods we use today. But rather than disappearing, letterpress evolved into a premium craft, prized for its tactile quality and visible impression on paper—characteristics that were originally just side effects of the technique, not its intended purpose.
The same transformation happens with many technologies: vinyl records, film photography, mechanical watches. As digital alternatives take over the functional role, the analog predecessors become vessels for history, craftsmanship, ritual, tactile pleasure. They move from being tools to being experiences.
This pattern helps explain our collection of novelty postcards. Somewhere in the middle of last century, the standard paper postcard was functionally superseded by digital communication, freeing it to evolve into these more elaborate, less practical forms. They represent a technology in its artistic phase—no longer bound by strict utility, but free to explore expressive and sensory possibilities, along with kitsch and commercialism.
Utah in Copper Relief
The copper-embossed Utah souvenir represents one of the more elaborate departures from traditional postcard design. The metallic rectangular plate features a raised topographic outline of the state with embossed illustrations of regional landmarks and attractions. The word UTAH is prominently displayed at the top, while places like Vernal, Provo, Cedar City, and St. George are labeled at their approximate locations. The copper medium gives the piece warmth, with a decorative scalloped border framing the state’s geography and securing the paper card below.
The manufacturing process likely involved die-stamping or embossing thin copper sheeting, a technique that dates back to the late 19th century and regained popularity in mid-20th century souvenirs. The tactile nature of the raised elements invites touch, creating a multisensory experience unavailable in traditional flat postcards. The utility of this object as actual correspondence is significantly diminished—the copper surface resists easy writing, and its weight requires additional postage and hand-canceling. It’s more a miniature commemorative plaque that happens to maintain postcard dimensions.
Woodsy Aesthetics
Let’s look closer now at a novelty postcard featuring a cabin in Salmon, Idaho, printed onto a thin wooden substrate and depicting a rustic cabin nestled among stylized pine trees. The scene employs a limited color palette—brown and black for the structure and green for the surrounding vegetation—lending it a deliberately simple aesthetic that echoes both woodcut prints and traditional lithography.
The simple text at the top identifies the location without intruding on the scene. The artwork itself employs minimal detail, capturing the essence of rural life rather than photographic accuracy. The manufacturing process of printing onto thin wood veneer allows for mass production, while adding a specific scene, location name, and ink color for customization.
This card’s rustic medium and subject matter work in harmony, creating a self-referential object where the material reinforces the message—a wooden card depicting a wooden structure set within a forested landscape. The medium becomes part of the message, suggesting authenticity through material consistency. Though mass-produced, it strongly evokes a rural sensibility.
Framed Vistas
Our souvenir from Yellowstone National Park adopts yet another approach. This card features a stylized illustration of Yellowstone’s grand canyon and waterfall printed on cardstock and mounted on a wooden backing.
The artwork employs a palette of oranges, purples, blues, and whites to capture the dramatic landscape, with the falls rendered as a white vertical streak against colorful canyon walls. Dark silhouettes of pine trees frame the scene, while puffy clouds hover in a light blue sky, held inside a purple border. The stylized typography echoes vintage travel posters from the early to mid-20th century. The entire image is mounted or printed on a natural wood base, visible as a frame around the illustration.
This card’s production combines offset printing with a wooden substrate—a look that recalls both traditional woodblock prints and mid-century travel advertisements. The design deliberately evokes an era of American national park tourism when artistic posters commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and the National Park Service established a distinctive aesthetic for natural landmarks.
Playful Puzzles
The Disney puzzle postcard introduces an element of interaction we haven’t seen before. This card features Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Pluto, and Goofy arranged in a group pose against a blue-and-white checkered background. The message reading “Hi From The Whole Gang” in bubble text curves around the edge of the image.
This item turns a postcard into a simple jigsaw puzzle—die-cut pieces that can be jumbled and reassembled to reveal the printed image. The manufacturing process involved full-color printing followed by precision die-cutting to create interlocking puzzle pieces, then applying a thin adhesive film to maintaining the card’s overall integrity for mailing.
This souvenir represents a curious hybrid—a postcard that actively invites its own disassembly. The Disney characters themselves represent another layer of nostalgia, combining America’s animation icons with the traditional postcard format to create an object that references multiple forms of 20th-century popular culture simultaneously. But only modern technology could accomplish these manufacturing details, a playful combination of familiar and fresh.
Magnetic Memories
The Will’s Hardy Trees and Seeds magnetic card is the one in our set with the most layers of both meaning and making. See packets, postcards, fridge magnets, and agricultural Americana all combine in this take home treasure.
The 1909 seed catalog cover is a contemporary image inspired by the real-life Oscar H. Will & Co. of Bismarck, North Dakota. The vibrant illustration displays pansies in various colors—purple, yellow, orange, pink, and white—arranged in a bouquet. Text identifies the company’s 26th year of operation and describes their products as the “choicest and most beautiful on earth”.
A small purple circle overlay on the plastic film cover announces the item’s true nature: a magnetic postcard to send as a gift. Despite its historical appearance and postcard dimensions, the object is actually a refrigerator magnet that merely references seed catalog and postcard aesthetics. The production involved digital printing on magnetic sheet material, applying a printed paper backing, and slipping into a plastic cover with instructions to mail the gift in an envelope.
As a novelty item, it reveals a peculiar circularity. A reproduction of a commercial artifact (seed catalog) transformed into a correspondence medium (postcard) further transformed into a decorative household item (refrigerator magnet). Somehow, we love each iteration all the more.
Nostalgia Squared
What these examples share is a relationship with nostalgia that operates on multiple levels. They aren’t simply nostalgic; they engage in a looping nostalgia—nostalgic representations of already nostalgic forms.
The copper Utah relief draws upon mid-century tourist souvenirs, themselves designed to evoke frontier-era maps and territorial markers. The Salmon cabin employs modern production techniques to simulate traditional woodcuts nad print, which were themselves often romanticized depictions of rural life. The Yellowstone cards references mid-century national park posters that were already stylized interpretations of natural wonders. The Disney puzzle incorporates cartoon characters who have become nostalgic cultural icons, presented in the format of childhood games. The Will’s Seeds magnet reproduces early 20th-century commercial art that was, even in its original context, employing Victorian aesthetic sensibilities.
This layering of reference creates objects that are remarkably dense with cultural signifiers despite their modest physical dimensions. They offer not just a connection to place and time but to the ways we’ve represented ourselves and our interests through commercial souvenirs.
Our apparent need for novelty, then, might be better understood as a need for continual context. Each new postcard iteration doesn’t merely replace what came before; it absorbs and references it, creating objects that function as compact archives of our evolving relationship with the characters and places we cherish.
These novelty postcards sit at an interesting crossroads of commerce, craft, and communication. They represent what happens when a formerly utilitarian object—the humble postcard—is freed from its purely practical obligations and allowed to evolve along lines dictated by sentiment, aesthetics, and novelty.
In a world increasingly dominated by digital experiences, these physical novelties offer something screens cannot—texture, weight, presence. They satisfy our hunger for the tangible. Their quirky, sometimes impractical forms speak to a human need more fundamental than efficient communication: the need to hold something unique in our hands, and to feel a physical connection to places we’ve been and experiences we’ve had.
The postcard itself is and was a very simple concept and object that, over time, has become a medium for ongoing conversations about permanence and impermanence, about what we value over time, and about the tension between utility and sentiment. In their various novel forms, these more-than-postcards tell us about places we’ve been and how we’ve chosen to remember and delight in those places—a correspondence not just between people, but between past and present.
Old Faithful Inn stretches across the Yellowstone landscape, its distinctive roofline echoing the forested hills in a vintage linen postcard. Steam rises from the nearby geyser basin. The Civilian Conservation Corps built Yellowstone for their time and for future generations. In New York, a sister program blazed trails, too.
The story of our national parks is also a remarkable story of resilience and collaboration in hard times. Just as the national parks were becoming popular, the Depression brought unprecedented unemployment and bare scarcities at home, on the farm, and in cities. Leaders with optimistic vision were challenged to engage an illiterate and unskilled workforce or face severe cultural, social, and economic consequences.
The Civilian Conservation Corps’ work in Yellowstone exemplified an unprecedented partnership between federal agencies, orchestrated by a remarkable team. Robert Fechner, the program’s first director, brought his labor union experience to balance competing interests that might have limited the program. Harold Ickes, as Secretary of the Interior, ensured high standards for conservation work. The Department of Labor selected the men for service in the corps. The Army constructed and operated the camps. The National Park Service and Forest Service supervised the technical and construction work. This complex dance of bureaucracy somehow produced remarkable efficiency, with the CCC completing projects that had languished on drawing boards for decades.
Take the terraced formations of Mammoth Hot Springs, for example, their delicate travertine steps descending the hillside in nature’s own architecture. CCC workers constructed the stone steps and walkways that would allow visitors to safely view these natural wonders. The careful integration of human infrastructure with natural features became a hallmark of CCC work. Now known as ‘parkitecture’, the philosophy would influence park design for generations.
Long before the federal programs, Frances Perkins coordinated closely with Roosevelt during his New York state governorship to protect workers and grow the workforce. She had witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, an experience that drove her lifelong commitment to worker safety and labor reform. As New York’s Industrial Commissioner from 1929 to 1933, Perkins pioneered unemployment relief programs and worker protections that would later shape New Deal policies. When Roosevelt became president, he named her Secretary of Labor – the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet – and she brought her New York experiences to Washington just in time.
Perkins understood the value of both job creation and job training, having seen their impact in New York. She helped shape the CCC, carefully navigating the political tensions around women’s employment programs. Her influence helped ensure that CCC and other programs included educational components, reflecting her belief that economic relief should build long-term capabilities, not just provide temporary aid. She also made sure the federal programs benefited her home state, and piloted important new programs there.
A 1905 hand-colored postcard of Watkins Glen in New York state shows Diamond Falls in the distance, framed by the narrow gorge’s layered rock walls. When the CCC arrived here in the 1930s, they found a park already famous for its natural beauty but in need of significant infrastructure. The Corps constructed the stone walkways that still guide visitors through the glen today, built overlooks at strategic points, and created a trail system that made the park’s dramatic features accessible while preserving their natural character.
The CCC’s work at Watkins Glen was particularly challenging given the varied landscape and unique natural formations. Jacob’s Ladder, a daunting stone staircase ascending the gorge wall, required precise engineering to integrate it naturally into the rock face. The Corps workers quarried stone and shaped the ascent, creating a path that appear to emerge organically from the cliff itself.
At Rainbow Falls, they constructed the “flying stairs” – suspended pathways that seem to float alongside the cascading water. This required not just skilled stonework but innovative engineering to ensure the structures could withstand the gorge’s frequent flooding and harsh winters. The Stairway to Lover’s Lane presented similar challenges, with workers having to carefully cut into the gorge wall while preserving its natural beauty.
The Corps also built the park’s amphitheater, transforming a natural hollow into a gathering space that would host generations of visitors for educational programs. Throughout these projects, workers had to move tons of stone while working in the confined space of the gorge. They developed specialized techniques for working in the narrow spaces, often suspended above the creek as they built pathways that had to withstand both regular flooding and freezing temperatures. The project showcased the Corps’ ability to combine heavy construction with delicate environmental consideration – skills that would prove valuable throughout the park system.
Yet while young men were building parks across America, another story was unfolding at Bear Mountain, New York. A smaller program called the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA) – nicknamed the She-She-She camps – was offering women their own opportunity for training and education. Eleanor Roosevelt championed this effort, collaborating closely with progressive educator Hilda Worthington Smith to create a program that emphasized both practical skills and broader education.
At Camp TERA, women learned furniture refinishing, bookbinding, typing, and business skills. They studied literature, current events, and public speaking. The curriculum reflected both practical needs and progressive educational ideals, emphasizing peer learning and leadership development. The camps created a college-like atmosphere, quite different from the military structure of CCC camps.
The economics of these programs tell their own story. Spending roughly $1,000 per enrollee annually (about $25,000 in today’s dollars) the CCC cost $3 billion over nine years – equivalent to about $60 billion today. In its time, the program returned an estimated $2.50 in measurable public benefits for every dollar spent. Each CCC enrollee earned $30 monthly, with $25 sent home to their families – enough to keep many families fed during the Depression’s darkest days. The TERA budget was much less and never achieved the scale that made the CCC so cost-effective, yet for some of the women who participated, the return on investment was significant in improving their health, caregiving capacities, and professional skill sets – many went on to careers in business, education, and public service.
The CCC employed three million men over nine years. TERA participants numbered just 8,500 women. Despite Eleanor Roosevelt’s advocacy and Frances Perkins’ support from the Labor Department, the women’s program expanded only briefly and never really got off the ground. The reasons echo familiar themes: limited funding, resistance to women working outside the home, and debates about appropriate roles for women in society.
These limitations weren’t unique to TERA. The CCC itself reflected America’s racial divisions, with segregated camps and discriminatory selection. Some local communities opposed Black CCC camps in their areas. The program’s focus on young, single men also excluded many who needed help.
Yet for all their limitations, the New Deal’s public works programs transformed America’s public spaces. Beyond the CCC and TERA, the Works Progress Administration built parks, schools, and community centers nationwide. WPA artists created murals that still enliven post offices and courthouses today. Collectively, WPA workers built communities, developed national infrastructure, and documented American life through photography and collected folk songs and stories that might otherwise have been lost.
The human legacy of these programs extends far beyond their physical achievements. Chuck Yeager, the pilot who would later break the sound barrier, learned mechanics in the CCC. Stan Musial developed his work ethic in a Pennsylvania CCC camp before becoming a baseball legend. Robert Mitchum and Raymond Burr worked in CCC camps before their Hollywood careers. From the TERA camps emerged teachers, business leaders, and community organizers who shaped their communities for decades to come.
Looking at these vintage postcards today, we can measure the value of these programs not just in the enduring infrastructure they created, but in the generational impact of providing education and opportunity to millions of Americans of modest means. Think of the families fed by CCC wages, the skills learned, the confidence built. Consider the children and grandchildren who grew up hearing stories of carving out Yellowstone’s trails or getting the chance to study at Bear Mountain, who inherited not just the physical legacy of these programs but their spirit of public service and possibility. Think of all of us today, who still climb the steps and set our sights on this same legacy.
The trails around Old Faithful, the stone steps at Watkins Glen, the walkways at Mammoth Hot Springs – all have weathered nearly ninety years now, crossed by millions of visitors. They stand as monuments not just to American craftsmanship, collaboration, and ingenuity but to the transformative power of public investment in both our spaces and our people. They give us examples of leadership and also remind us of the great many unknown men and women who preserved and protected the places we love. Their endurance challenges us to imagine what might be achieved in this generation if we again dared to think so boldly about developing our natural resources and our human potential together.
Gift shop postcards reveal how Americans get to know our presidents. Explore how pocket-sized portraits shape our understanding of leadership.
In the spring of 1865, Alexander Gardner made a series of photographs of Abraham Lincoln in a studio in Washington DC. Originally, the images were meant as source material for a later unremarkable oil portrait. Instead, one image would become a widely circulated presidential carte de visite (CDV, predecessor to the postcard) showing a contemplative Lincoln, his face bearing the weight of war.
This same series produced dozens of CDV variations, each emphasizing different aspects of Lincoln’s character – his determination, wisdom, and his ordinary humanity. These interpretations of presidential imagery etched his memory in time just after the assassination, have been reproduced in every decade since, and still shape our national memory today.
Consider how presidential postcards – those humble, democratic pieces of correspondence – have both reflected and shaped our understanding of presidential perspective and leadership. Looking at postcard collections from presidential libraries, let’s explore how these portable portraits reveal how certain leaders viewed the world and made decisions.
Memory Making in Presidential Libraries
The modern presidential library system began in 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt donated his papers to the federal government, establishing a revolutionary model for preserving presidential legacy. Before this, presidential papers were considered private property, often scattered, sold, or lost to history. Roosevelt’s innovation created a systematic approach to presidential preservation that transformed how Americans access their presidential past.
Today, fifteen presidential libraries, administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), serve multiple functions: archive, museum, research center, and public education facility. Each library manages large collections of documents, photographs, and artifacts, while their museums and visitor centers help interpret presidential legacies for millions annually.
These institutions also play a crucial role in postcard production and distribution. Their gift shops serve as primary retail outlets, while their archivists and curators help ensure historical accuracy in commemorative imagery. Tensions between history, educational mission, and commercial viability shape how presidential memory is packaged and sold.
Business of Memory
The story of presidential postcards is also the story of how American trades shape historical memory. In the late 19th century, innovations in printing technology coincided with the rise of mass tourism and the establishment of the postal service’s penny postcard rate. Companies like Curt Teich & Co. and the Detroit Publishing Company recognized an opportunity, creating catalogs of presidential imagery that would help standardize how Americans remember their leaders.
The economics were compelling: postcards could be produced for less than a cent, sold for 3-5 cents, and resold by retailers for 5-10 cents. This accessibility meant that average Americans could own and share pieces of presidential history. Later, the Presidential Libraries, the Smithsonian, and the National Park Service would become major distribution points, creating a government-private partnership in historical memory that continues today.
Postcard Power
Before diving into specific presidents, let’s remember why postcards matter. Unlike formal portraits or imposing statuary, postcards serve as intimate, portable connections to our leaders. Their very format – combining image with personal message, sold inexpensively and shared widely – makes them unique vehicles for democratic memory-making.
Consider the contrast: The Lincoln Memorial presents the 16th president as a marble deity, remote and perfect. But, period CDVs showed him in numerous human moments: reviewing troops, visiting battlefields, and playing with his sons. These cards, sold for pennies and passed hand to hand, helped Americans see their wartime leader as both extraordinary and approachable.
Lincoln: The Moral Realist
The Gardner series of photographs reveals Lincoln’s moral realist perspective in subtle ways. In one popular version, Lincoln’s gaze is directed slightly upward, suggesting moral vision, while his worn face acknowledges harsh realities. This duality perfectly captured Lincoln’s ability to hold fast to moral principles while grappling with very real human suffering.
Another influential series showed Lincoln visiting the Antietam battlefield. These cards, first published during the war and reprinted for decades after, highlighted his hands-on leadership style. One image shows him speaking with wounded soldiers from both sides – a visual representation of his “malice toward none” philosophy.
Theodore Roosevelt: The Progressive Naturalist
The postcards of Teddy Roosevelt present a striking contrast. The Detroit Publishing Company’s Yosemite series showed him with naturalist John Muir in various outdoor settings, emphasizing his connection to nature and physical vigor. These images perfectly aligned with his naturalistic-progressive worldview, which saw human advancement as part of natural evolution.
Perhaps most revealing were the Rough Rider postcards, mass-produced during and after his presidency. These action-oriented images showed Roosevelt leading charges, planning strategy, and bonding with his men. They captured his belief in the power of human will to shape both nature and society – a core tenet of his progressive philosophy.
Franklin Roosevelt: The Pragmatic Experimenter
FDR’s postcard imagery evolved significantly during his presidency, reflecting both personal and national transformation. Early cards showed him standing at podiums, emphasizing traditional presidential authority. But as the Depression deepened, a new style emerged.
Fireside Chat postcards, first released in 1933, showed Roosevelt in intimate settings, explaining complex policies to average Americans. These images matched the pragmatic instrumentalism they heard on the radio – his belief that truth and reality were tied to practical situations more than abstract principles.
The photographs from Warm Springs deserve special mention. While official imagery generally hid Roosevelt’s disability, these postcards showed him in the therapeutic pools, working to strengthen his legs. They humanized him while demonstrating his experimental, solution-oriented approach to problems, both personal and political.
Kennedy: The Dynamic Optimist
The Kennedy era revolutionized presidential imagery. Color photos from Hyannis Port show the president sailing or playing with his children, emphasizing youth and vitality. But more telling were the Space Race postcards, which showed Kennedy studying rocket models or meeting with astronauts. These captured his perspective of historical dynamism – his belief that reality itself was expandable through human initiative and technological advancement.
LBJ: Larger than Life
The LBJ Library’s postcard collection reveals another perspective entirely, showing Johnson’s complex relationship with power and persuasion. The collection captures Johnson in intimate conversations with civil rights leaders and in passionate speeches about poverty, reflecting his hands-on, domineering approach to domestic reform.
Carter: The Moral Engineer
Jimmy Carter’s postcard imagery often puzzled publishers. How to capture a president who combined technical expertise with moral conviction? The “Carter and Farmers” card showed him inspecting crops, and another shows him in front of solar panels on the White House roof. These images captured his unique moral-engineering perspective – his belief that problems required both technical solutions and ethical frameworks.
Reagan: The Moral Dualist
The Reagan Library’s postcard collections reflect his clear moral dualist worldview. The famous Brandenburg Gate series shows Reagan from multiple angles as he challenges Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.” These images emphasize his belief in clear moral absolutes – freedom versus tyranny, good versus evil.
Reagan’s unique gift for communication amplified the impact of these postcards. His ability to speak in accessible language while conveying profound ideas meant that the images resonated deeply with the public. When he spoke of America as a “shining city on a hill” or called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” these phrases became powerful captions for postcard imagery, blending visual and verbal memory in the public mind.
George H. W. Bush – Institutional Security
The George H.W. Bush Library’s postcards emphasize his diplomatic achievements, particularly during the Gulf War. These images often show Bush in military context and related to large institutions. The contrast with Reagan’s more populist imagery is striking – where Reagan is clearly a personality, Bush’s postcards frequently make the man matter less than the magnitude of his role.
Clinton’s Casual Comport
The Clinton Library’s postcard collection breaks new ground in presidential imagery, showing Clinton with his daughter Chelsea, playing with Socks the cat, and capturing his forward-looking optimism in the post-Soviet era. These images demonstrate Clinton’s ability to relate to his constituents in casual terms, mirroring what Reagan had done with conservative principles.
The Persistence of Perspective
What emerges from this look at presidential postcards is the remarkable consistency with which each President projects his image in keeping with his worldview. Whether facing economic crisis, cold war, or civil war, these presidents tended to approach problems through a lens shaped by life circumstances as much as political philosophy. Lincoln’s moral realism helped him navigate both slavery and secession. FDR’s pragmatic experimentalism served him in depression and disability. Reagan’s moral dualism shaped his approach to both domestic policy and Soviet relations.
Yet the postcards reveal the human dimension of leadership, too. Through these small, shared images, Americans see their leaders as both exceptional and relatable. The very format of postcards – democratic, portable, personal – helps bridge the gap between presidential perspective and public understanding.
Presidential Perspective and Democratic Memory
Understanding presidential perspective remains crucial today. How leaders view reality shapes how they define problems, evaluate solutions, and make decisions. The enduring power of postcards lies in their ability to capture and communicate these perspectives in accessible ways.
Presidential postcards serve as more than souvenirs. They are vehicles of democratic memory, helping each generation understand not just what their leaders did, but who they were and how they thought. As we face contemporary challenges, these historical perspectives – preserved and transmitted through humble postcards – offer valuable insights into the relationship between worldview and leadership.
Look closer the next time you are in a museum shop or visitors center. In those mass-produced images lie clues to how our leaders view the world – and how they helped Americans see it too. Perspective is about how we view problems, and also how we view ourselves as a nation and a people.
The Posted Past 