Author: Amnon Cavari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107150035
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
This book develops a theory of presidential public leadership taking into account the partisan nature of the political debate and the role of presidents.
Author: Kristina Horn Sheeler
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623490103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
What elements of American political and rhetorical culture block the imagining—and thus, the electing—of a woman as president? Examining both major-party and third-party campaigns by women, including the 2008 campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, the authors of Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture identify the factors that limit electoral possibilities for women. Pundits have been predicting women’s political ascendency for years. And yet, although the 2008 presidential campaign featured Hillary Clinton as an early frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and Sarah Palin as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee, no woman has yet held either of the top two offices. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but the authors assert that the question certainly encompasses more than the shortcomings of women candidates or the demands of the particular political moment. Instead, the authors identify a pernicious backlash against women presidential candidates—one that is expressed in both political and popular culture. In Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture, Kristina Horn Sheeler and Karrin Vasby Anderson provide a discussion of US presidentiality as a unique rhetorical role. Within that framework, they review women’s historical and contemporary presidential bids, placing special emphasis on the 2008 campaign. They also consider how presidentiality is framed in candidate oratory, campaign journalism, film and television, digital media, and political parody.
Author: Colleen J. Shogan
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585446391
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Although sometimes decried by pundits, George W. Bush’s use of moral and religious rhetoric is far from unique in the American presidency. Throughout history and across party boundaries, presidents have used such appeals, with varying degrees of political success. The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents astutely analyzes the president’s role as the nation’s moral spokesman. Armed with quantitative methods from political science and the qualitative case study approach prevalent in rhetorical studies, Colleen J. Shogan demonstrates that moral and religious rhetoric is not simply a reflection of individual character or an expression of American “civil religion” but a strategic tool presidents can use to enhance their constitutional authority. To determine how the use of moral rhetoric has changed over time, Shogan employs content analysis of the inaugural and annual addresses of all the presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush. This quantitative evidence shows that while presidents of both parties have used moral and religious arguments, the frequency has fluctuated considerably and the language has become increasingly detached from relevant policy arguments. Shogan explores the political effects of the rhetorical choices presidents make through nine historical cases (Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Buchanan, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Carter). She shows that presidents who adapt their rhetoric to the political conditions at hand enhance their constitutional authority, while presidents who ignore political constraints suffer adverse political consequences. The case studies allow Shogan to highlight the specific political circumstances that encourage or discourage the use of moral rhetoric. Shogan concludes with an analysis of several dilemmas of governance instigated by George W. Bush’s persistent devotion to moral and religious argumentation.
Author: Elvin T. Lim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199711615
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
Why has it been so long since an American president has effectively and consistently presented well-crafted, intellectually substantive arguments to the American public? Why have presidential utterances fallen from the rousing speeches of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, and FDR to a series of robotic repetitions of talking points and sixty-second soundbites, largely designed to obfuscate rather than illuminate? In The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin Lim draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents' ability to communicate with the public. Lim argues that the ever-increasing pressure for presidents to manage public opinion and perception has created a "pathology of vacuous rhetoric and imagery" where gesture and appearance matter more than accomplishment and fact. Lim tracks the campaign to simplify presidential discourse through presidential and speechwriting decisions made from the Truman to the present administration, explaining how and why presidents have embraced anti-intellectualism and vague platitudes as a public relations strategy. Lim sees this anti-intellectual stance as a deliberate choice rather than a reflection of presidents' intellectual limitations. Only the smart, he suggests, know how to dumb down. The result, he shows, is a dangerous debasement of our political discourse and a quality of rhetoric which has been described, charitably, as "a linguistic struggle" and, perhaps more accurately, as "dogs barking idiotically through endless nights." Sharply written and incisively argued, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency sheds new light on the murky depths of presidential oratory, illuminating both the causes and consequences of this substantive impoverishment.
Author: Janet Johnson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498540848
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Political Rhetoric, Social Media, and American Presidential Campaigns explores how social media influenced presidential campaign rhetoric. The author discusses media use in American presidential campaigns as well as social media campaigns for Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. This book addresses how presidential candidates adapted their rhetorical performances for newspapers, radios, television, and the Internet. Scholars of rhetoric and political communication will find this book particularly useful.
Author: Martin J. Medhurst
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1603445587
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
Here, the contributors suggest how embracing the art of rhetoric might have allowed Bush to respond more successfully to the challenges of his presidency. Drawing on the resources of the Bush Presidential library and interviews with some of his White House aides, they explore such issues as the first Gulf War, the fall of the Berlin wall, Bush's environmental stance, and the 1992 re-election campaign.
Author: Arnaud Vincent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429638450
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
Drawing on corpus linguistic methods of analysis, this book critically examines the "rhetorical God gap" in American political discourse between the Democratic and Republican parties. The volume investigates the claims (which have often not been substantiated by quantitative data in the literature and have tended to focus on particular genres of political discourse) that there is a correlation between a higher degree of religiosity in Republican political discourse and voting preferences for the party and that Democratic politicians should engage in similar discourse toward "closing" the gap. The book adopts a keyword approach, using such techniques as collocation analyses, concordance reading, and Bible-specific N-gram identification, toward the study of a corpus of general campaign speeches over a 50-year period, and links findings from this data with social and cultural contextual factors to provide a more informed understanding of rhetorical patterns in religiously laden political language. The volume showcases the value of corpus linguistic methods in interrogating claims around political language and their broader applicability in linguistic research, making this key reading for students and scholars in corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, American politics, and religious studies.
Author: Jeffrey K. Tulis
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888360
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
Modern presidents regularly appeal over the heads of Congress to the people at large to generate support for public policies. The Rhetorical Presidency makes the case that this development, born at the outset of the twentieth century, is the product of conscious political choices that fundamentally transformed the presidency and the meaning of American governance. Now with a new foreword by Russell Muirhead and a new afterword by the author, this landmark work probes political pathologies and analyzes the dilemmas of presidential statecraft. Extending a tradition of American political writing that begins with The Federalist and continues with Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government, The Rhetorical Presidency remains a pivotal work in its field.
Author: Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226092410
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
"Deeds Done in Words is an impressive piece of work. It is the first attempt to identify and assess the principal genres of rhetoric, and to interpret the panoply of those genres in terms of the needs of, and the needs for, ritual in American politics."—Jeffrey Tulis, author of The Rhetorical Presidency "Deeds Done in Words is a thoughtful survey of how a democracy uses language to transact its business. Based on an enlivened understanding of genre theory and on numerous pieces of original criticism, Campbell and Jamieson vividly show how central public discourse has become the lifeblood of the American polity."—Roderick Hart, author of The Sound of Leadership "The rhetoric that issues from the White House is becoming an ever more salient part of what the presidency means and does. This acute inquiry provides a great many insights into the forms, meanings, and functions of presidential discourse. It is an enlightening contribution to our understanding of American politics."—Murray Edelman, author of Constructing the Political Spectacle
Author: Amnon Cavari
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316982726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 251
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Book Description
By bringing together two bodies of literature - the presidency and political parties - this book makes two important contributions. First, it addresses the gap between presidential public actions and the perceived limited effect they have on public opinion. By examining the short-term effect of speeches of presidents on the entire public, the long-term effect of the speeches on their partisans, and on the reputations of their parties for handling policy, the book shows that presidents are effective leaders of public opinion. Second, the book adds to the scholarly interest in how political parties are viewed by the electorate in terms of policy substance. It suggests that Americans possess coherent reputations of the parties for handling policy challenges, and that these reputations contribute to the party identifications of Americans. The effect of presidents on the reputations and, in turn, party attachments position them as leaders of the party system.
