The Rhetorical Presidency

For an initial understanding of presidential rhetoric, I read the Rhetorical Presidency by Jeff Tulis. In this book, Tulis describes the ways in which presidents have used rhetoric since the founding of the country.   He breaks down the way presidents have used rhetoric into the different categories.  First is the Old Way from 1789-1900, the Middle Way from 1900-1913, and the New Way 1913-today. 

The Old Way of presidential rhetoric is much different from what we know today.  In the creation of the constitution, the founders were very concerned with demagogues taking power. For this reason, they wanted to policies in place that did not allow for direct democracy. Generally, the president was constrained as to not have too much power because of the fears surrounding demagoguery.  Policy recommendations were also written Presidents of the 18th and 19th centuries were not willing to use speeches to move forward their policies.   The speeches that they gave were most often patriotic in nature or were directed at dignitaries.   Tulis cites Lincoln as one example of this. For most of his speeches he avoided talking about specific policy and for things like war justification he did it after the fact.  Even though was a great speaker he did not use speeches to move forward policy goals like presidents do today. Andrew Johnson did attempt a modern style with his swing around the circle.  He made speeches all across the country and tried to gain support throughout the North.  This campaign was a total failure and was also seen as something that presidents should not do.  

Teddy Roosevelt started the middle way mainly with Hepburn act here because his party did not support the bill for this reason he had to make some popular appeals in order to get the bill through. He saw this as a means to end by avoiding class warfare he thought could come if the bill was not passed. 

The new way differs because the President makes many more public appeals.  Mainly through policy speeches and through visionary speeches. These policy speeches are used to outline the president's specific policies and ideas while the visionary speeches are more used to outline what the overall goal of the president is.  Presidents also run into problems with their rhetoric in the new way.  Both Reagan and Wilson made different arguments to the public than they did to the legislatures.  Presidents like Regan used Rhetoric to push policy over the heads of the Congress. Some presidents like George HW Bush have been less successful with their rhetoric but, overall the presidents of the 20th and 21st century have used speech as a tool much more than their predecessors. 

This book was a great read for learning about the transformation of how presidents have used the powers in their office over time. I think that this will give me a good understanding for the rest of my project about how and why presidents communicate the way that they do.