An analysis of communicative strategies
employed by the President of the United States in
times of domestic and international crisis between
1933 and 2001;
with particular focus on literary and linguistic
devices used in presidential rhetoric.
Aidan O’Connor - Joint Honours American Studies & English
Q43128 (40 Credit Dissertation)
Dissertation Tutor: Professor Thomas Allcock
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
Abstract.
This study examines the evolution of crisis rhetoric employed by the President of
United States between 1933 and 2001. Transcripts of public speech from former
Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush are
subjected to literary and linguistic analysis. Combined with intellectual and
contextual references, this information determines how and why crisis rhetoric has
evolved across the Great Depression, the Empire of Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor,
violent domestic civil rights demonstrations and al-Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The first chapter scrutinises Roosevelt’s ‘Fireside Chat’ responses to the nation’s
economic depression and Empire of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The
second chapter examines Johnson’s influence on the campaign for civil rights that
took place predominantly during the 1960s, specifically his 1965 “The America
Promise” speech. The third chapter inspects Bush’s televised responses to the 9/11
terrorist attacks in 2001.
Literary and linguistic devices in these speech transcripts, including narrative
voice, figurative language and cultural allusions, help understand the distinct forms
of each President’s crisis rhetoric. Frequent comparisons between the oratory styles
of Roosevelt, Johnson and Bush suggest crisis rhetoric’s basic function has changed.
Roosevelt favoured accurate information, Johnson adopted a more persuasive model
of speech and Bush chose to manipulate the national audience. This is evidenced by
a shift from informative, candid crisis rhetoric to an intimate and dramatic alternative.
To determine the motivations behind this shift in rhetorical style, contemporary
public reactions and existing academic criticism of these speeches have also been
accommodated in this study. From this research, the growth of mass media, the
population’s reduced faith in federal government and the revocation of the
intellectual’s political influence are all considered as potential causes.
13,592 words (including footnotes)
Contents
Page No.
Introduction
1
I - Franklin D. Roosevelt: Economic depression, international
5
conflict and direct interaction.
II - Lyndon B. Johnson: Civil rights, social reform and debate
15
rhetoric.
III - George W. Bush: ‘The War on Terror,’ globalisation and
30
emotive speech.
Conclusion
51
Bibliography
57
1
Introduction.
As the leader of a democracy, the President of the United States must maintain an
effective relationship with the American citizens he represents. Rhetorical strategies
in public speech are a significant part of this duty, conveying and promoting political
ideologies or government agendas. Academic professor Jeffrey Tulis cited this
association, where “the words [of public speech]…are regarded as mere ‘reflections’
of these doctrines.”1
During periods of threat to national security, domestic or international, between
1933 and 2001, the U.S. President’s communicative strategies, his means of
interacting with the national population, have become more pro-active and
‘intimately coercive’. Public addresses have shifted from a formal and staid rhetoric
to a more personal, colloquial and figurative alternative. The function of this rhetoric
has also evolved from accurate information, to rational persuasion and dramatic
embellishment. Throughout this hermeneutic study of public speech, ‘rhetoric’
relates to the linguistic and literary devices used in the President’s communication
with the national population. ‘Ideology’ refers to system of ideals that directs social,
economic or political policy.
Scholars Jeremiah Olson, Yu Ouyang, John Poe and Richard Waterman labelled
rhetoric’s significance in the President’s redirection of public policy and opinion as
one of “three principal powers…[with] the formal constitutional and statutory
powers defined in the Constitution and subsequent legislation [and] the political
1
Jeffrey Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987): p.13
2
power of being head of his party…”2 To understand the motivations behind
rhetorical selection and why the President’s crisis rhetoric has evolved into a more
intimate and dramatic resource, this study conducts a linguistic analysis of three
different Presidents’ crisis rhetoric. Linguistic analysis identifies and describes each
speech’s semantic, phonological and grammatical structures, linking them to the
period’s contemporary context. This partially entails the political agendas of each
President, which have affected the form and content of their communicative
strategies’.
Studying Presidential rhetoric during periods of threat to national safety reveals
the ideologies the President and American citizens regard highest once their sense of
security has been compromised. This project correlates these ideologies with
Franklin D. Roosevelt; Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush’s use of rhetorical
strategies in public speech, 3 examining how enduring ideologies are represented
differently, through rhetoric, over time. Roosevelt’s response to the Great
Depression and attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Johnson’s intervention in the
domestic campaign for civil rights in the 1960s and Bush’s reaction to the terrorist
attacks of September 11 2001 reveal the evolution of the President’s crisis rhetoric
between 1933 and 2001. This window of time encapsulates three distinct periods of
threat to national security.
This project’s focus on the Presidency disregards the need to analyse party
2
Jeremiah Olson, Yu Ouyang, John Poe, Austin Trantham and Richard W. Waterman, “The
Teleprompter Presidency: Comparing Obama's Campaign and Governing Rhetoric,” Social Science
Quarterly, 93.5, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): p.1406
3
For the purposes of this dissertation, the titles ‘President Bush’ and ‘Bush’ refer to George W. Bush,
the 43rd president of the United States of America.
3
affiliation in detail. The President communicates with a national audience, regardless
of which political party he comes from. Similarly, the role of the speechwriter will
not be scrutinised in this study either. Whilst professional writers help create public
speech, the President has the final verdict on its shape, content and use of rhetorical
devices.
Existing critical interpretations of U.S. presidential rhetoric provide two dominant
schools of thought on the consistency of the U.S. President’s rhetorical style in
public address over the twentieth-century.
Certain scholars argue there has been no significant change in the style of the
Presidents’ rhetoric or the values it perpetuates. Karen Hoffman stressed a
“significant continuity” amongst U.S. President’s public addresses, refusing to
acknowledge any discrepancy in presidential rhetoric.4 Craig and Kathy Smith
shared this opinion of “an unusually concordant value system”.5 Barbara Hinckley
suggested the ‘old’ formal and ‘new’ intimate rhetorical models of the U.S.
presidency bore a “striking similarity.”6 This study’s linguistic and contextual
analysis of Roosevelt, Johnson and Bush’s crisis rhetoric argues against this
collective opinion to suggest there was a development in rhetorical style.
In the second mindset, academics argue the President’s communicative strategies
have transformed over time. Scholars Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Edward Yager and
4
Karen S. Hoffman, “The rhetorical vs. the popular presidency: Thomas Jefferson as a popular
president,” Annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, (Chicago, IL, April 2001.)
5
Craig A. Smith and Kathy B. Smith. “Presidential values and public priorities: Recurrent patterns in
addresses to the nation, 1963-1984,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, p.15, (Washington D.C.: Center
for Study of the Presidency and Congress, 1985): p.749
6
Barbara Hinckley, The Symbolic Presidency: How presidents portray themselves, (New York, NY:
Routledge, 1990): p.133
4
Sandi Lahlou recognised this shift, citing colloquial terminology and abstract themes
in modern public address: “from themes concerned with (1) institutions, to…(2)
individuals, families, and children.”7 Olson suggested the modern President’s
rhetoric had become “anti-intellectual…more abstract, relying on religious and
idealistic references…more activist…inclusive and…conversational.”8 Tulis argued
“popular or mass rhetoric has become the principle tool of presidential governance,”9
suggesting each President adapted their rhetoric according to his political ideologies
and the national audience’s condition. Each claim partially contributes to my study’s
thesis, which hypothesises a transition from candid, formal registers of language to a
more intimate, emotive and dramatic lexicon in Presidential crisis rhetoric.
This study distinguishes itself from the second collective outlook, however, by
comparing close linguistic analysis of each President’s crisis rhetoric, whilst
identifying the prevalent social forces that prompted their respective oratory styles.
This provides further insight into the motivations behind each President’s selection
of rhetoric. Gallup polls and intellectual responses from the time provide further
indicators of synchronization or discord between the President and the national
population. Their incorporation into the project measures the contemporary response
to these different styles of rhetoric. The intellectuals referred to in this study are
figures who address U.S. politics and society on a theoretical level, for the educated
class of each period.
7
Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Edward Yager and Saadi Lahlou, ‘Yes, Ronald Reagan's Rhetoric Was
Unique—But Statistically, How Unique?’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 42.3, (Washington D.C.:
Center for Study of the Presidency and Congress, 2012): p.484
8
Olson et al, “The Teleprompter Presidency,” Social Science Quarterly: p.1408
9
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency: p.4
5
I – Franklin D. Roosevelt: Economic depression, international
conflict and direct interaction.
Becoming U.S. President in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was tasked with
restoring the United States following the nations’ descent into economic depression.
Roosevelt represented the early stages of a shift toward more dynamic
communicative strategies in crisis rhetoric. More reassuring, intimate rhetorical
features combined with the traditional and measured customs of predecessors
including Woodrow Wilson. Following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the laissez-faire
political mentality of Herbert Hoover had struggled to help the nation recover
economically or emotionally.1 This prompted Roosevelt to combine his pioneering
rhetorical style with interventionist legislation that reflected his government
ideologies, collectively known as the ‘New Deal’ programs. Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’
cultivated a more direct and vicarious relationship with the national population, as
Federal government agencies including the Civilian Conservation Corps stimulated
employment as direct methods of government intervention.
Roosevelt established regular communication with the population through radio
broadcast “Fireside Chats.”2 Roosevelt’s actions developed familiarity and personal
intimacy with citizens in the domestic sphere, enforcing practical response in the
economic sphere at the same time. Roosevelt’s approach represented the modern
twentieth-century Presidency that Tulis cited in The Rhetorical Presidency, which
1
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ‘Rating the Presidents: Washington to Clinton,’ Political Science
Quarterly, 112.2 (New York, NY: Academy off Political Science, 1997): p.186
2
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Russell D. Buhite and David W. Levy, FDR’s Fireside Chats, (Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1992): pp.xiii-xviii
Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1952): pp.5–6
Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, (New York: Viking Press, 1946): p.72
6
prioritised direct public appeal over Congressional deferment through
communicative strategies including ‘Fireside Chats’.3 This medium provided
assurance directly to the domestic sphere in a period of crisis. Through ‘Fireside
Chats,’ Roosevelt combined a stately, systematic register of language with reassuring
communication to the American family household. Following Japan’s 1941 attack of
Pearl Harbour, the U.S. navy base, this strategy became applicable to foreign policy.4
Roosevelt used the same rhetorical strategies to campaign for military mobilisation
in response to this threat from the Axis powers.
Roosevelt’s “Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War” and
“Fireside Chat 21: On Sacrifice,” challenged the prevalent national feeling of
isolationism that the attack on Pearl Harbor had crippled in 1941. Academic Dan
Scroop depicted isolationist sentiments in U.S. society prior to the Pearl Harbor
attacks as “the most popular and pervasive features of American society…US entry
into the First World War had been a disastrous mistake…to swell the profits of big
business and munitions manufacturers”.5 This depiction of isolationist sentiments in
U.S. society prior to the Pearl Harbor attack provided reasoning for the volatile
features of Roosevelt’s rhetoric in the attack’s aftermath. Roosevelt sought to resolve
national feelings of resentment and vulnerability by pushing the agenda for military
mobilisation.
Amongst Roosevelt’s rhetorical strategies, language from the semantic field of
hostility including dynamic verbs, “attacked,” “to deceive,” “torpedoed,” and
3
Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency: p.4
Lumeng Yu, ‘The Great Communicator: How FDR's Radio Speeches Shaped American History,’ The
History Teacher, 39.1, (Long Beach, CA: Society for History Education, 2005): pp.89-106
5
Dan Scroop, ‘September 11th, Pearl Harbor and the Uses of Presidential Power’, Cambridge Review
of International Affairs, 15. 2 (Taylor and Francis Online, 2002): p.322
4
7
“whipped”, addressed the Axis powers that opposed the U.S.6 Conveying the
enemy’s hostile aggression, Roosevelt implied the U.S. should mobilize in its own
defence. Dynamic verbs’ form a part of Roosevelt’s largely accurate and informative
rhetorical account of the Pearl Harbor attack, without significantly embellishing the
truth.
Similarly, Roosevelt‘s reassuring, yet formal register of language includes
repetition, as a neutral rhetorical tactic, to convey urgency without resorting to
emotive language that could compromise speech’s serious tone:
“Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese
forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the
Philippine Islands. Last night Japanese forces attacked Wake Island. And
this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.”7
The juxtaposition of repetition in an asyndetic list form – without conjunction
words - against the single night of attacks reinforced the aggressive hostility of the
Japanese Empire. Combined with honesty, underlined by admissions of weakness,
these devices formed Roosevelt’s measured and informative rhetoric: “We have had
no illusions about the fact that this is a tough job – and a long one.”8 Roosevelt does
6
Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War with Japan,’ 8
December 1941. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16053. (15 July 2012)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘Fireside Chat 21: On Sacrifice’, 28 April, 1942. Online by Gerhard Peters and
John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16252. (15 July 2012)
7
Roosevelt, ‘Requesting a Declaration,’ The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16053. (15 July 2012)
8
Roosevelt, ‘Fireside Chat 21’, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16252. (15 July 2012)
8
not betray his belief in the difficulties of the war effort, which translates to a respect
for the audience. This gesture is indicative of a candid and civil relationship between
the federal government and the national population that marked the early stages of a
transition towards more conversational rhetoric.
Roosevelt also asserted an authoritative tone highlighted by answering his own
rhetorical questions with declarative and imperative statements:
“Are you a business man, or do you own stock in a business corporation?
Well your profits are going to be cut…Are you a retailer or a wholesaler or
a manufacturer or a farmer or a landlord? Ceilings are being placed…Do
you work or wages? You will have to forego…”9
The question-answer format asserted Roosevelt’s reliability during a vulnerable
period in U.S. history. His detailing of the economic drawbacks of the nation’s entry
into World War II exhibited a candid honesty that contributed to Roosevelt’s
accurate and informative rhetorical style. Similarly, Roosevelt’s ‘seven point
program,’ a collection of economic principles designed to lower the cost of living,
exhibited organisation and preparation in response to the Pearl Harbor attack,
“First…Second…Third”.10 The list demonstrated informative rhetoric that contrasted
the emotive and figurative language George W. Bush employed in response to the
9/11 attacks.
9
Roosevelt, ‘Fireside Chat 21’, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16252. (15 July 2012)
10
Ibid.
9
Roosevelt also alluded to American Exceptionalism, one of the most rigid and
traditional ideologies in the national American identity; dating back to 1840.11 Terms
from the semantic fields of bravery and unity in ‘Fireside Chat 21’ conveyed this
ideology: “…The great war effort must be carried through to its victorious
conclusion by the indomitable will and determination of the people as one great
whole”.12 Roosevelt’s correlation of unity with strength is pertinent to the Pearl
Harbor attack’s threat against the nation.
The national population largely approved Roosevelt’s campaign for an
international war effort. The President’s approval rating rose from 73% to 84%
between 27 November 1941 and 25 January 1943 to reflect support following the
Pearl Harbor attack and Roosevelt’s reaction.13 The December 16, 1941 archived
copy of The Flat Hat also exhibited an acceptance of warfare and Roosevelt’s
interventionist ambitions in academic circles, documenting the opinions of faculty at
the College of William and Mary:
“‘A.G. Taylor, Professor of Political Economy …we must figure out what
each of our responsibilities is and go ahead and do our jobs until the time
when we find it necessary to change our course of action’…’The
importance of our participation in the war is that it assures finally our
11
Alexis De Toqueville, Democracy in America, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1998)
Ibid.
13
‘Job Performance Ratings for President Roosevelt,’ Online. The Roper Center for Public Opinion
Research.
URL:
http://webapps.ropercenter.uconn.edu/CFIDE/roper/presidential/webroot/presidential_rating_deta
il.cfm?allRate=True&presidentName=Roosevelt#.UVxEz6t34Tk (14 January 2013)
12
10
participation in the peace.’”14
“Carlton L. Wood, Assistant Professor of Economics and Government: “In
this present crisis we must always bear in mind the reconstruction of the
world that will be necessary both during and after the war, and we should
begin planning at once for such reconstruction.”15
“Harold Lees Fowler, Associate Professor of History: ‘…our immediate
duty is to do our own jobs to the best of our ability and to support the
national effort in every way possible.’”16
Calling for formal intervention into the Second World War, these responses affirm
an ideological departure from isolationism in the U.S. following Roosevelt’s appeal.
They are also evidence of a united outlook on foreign policy amongst educators, who
wielded significant social influence. Compliant attitudes are a testament to the
effectiveness of Roosevelt’s communicate strategies.
Domestically, Roosevelt’s informative, measured and reassuring rhetoric
contended with opposition in Louisiana Senator Huey Long and radio personality
Father Charles Coughlin. Long and Coughlin capitalised on widespread vulnerability
in the aftermath of the Great Depression, arguing that Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ did
not sufficiently address the imbalanced distribution in wealth in society. Long and
Coughlin’s dramatic communication of their radical social-economic ideologies
14
‘Opinions On The War Crisis Given By Faculty Members’, The Flat Hat, December 14, 1941, 60.12,
(Williamsburg, VA: The College of William & Mary, 1941): p.1
15
Opinions On The War Crisis’, The Flat Hat: p.1
16
Ibid.
11
accentuated Roosevelt’s formal rhetoric and central political ideals. American
historian Alan Brinkley affirmed Long and Coughlin’s reactionary exploitation to the
Great Depression:
“[Long and Coughlin] are manifestations of one of the most powerful
impulses of the Great Depression…the urge to defend the autonomy of
the individual and the independence of the community against
encroachments from the modern industrial state.”17
Huey Long’s ‘Share Our Wealth’ program promoted egalitarianism, as an
alternative to the existing distribution of wealth in the nation’s failing capitalist
economy, through rhetorical devices including hypothetical analogy and informal
modes of address. These devices dramatised and personalised the national economic
recession:
“Did that mean, my friends, that someone would come into this world
without having had an opportunity…to have hit one lick of work, should
be born with more than it...could ever dispose of, but that another one
would have to be born into a life of starvation?”18
Using these rhetorical devices, Long reinvented the recession as an injustice in
American society, to discredit Roosevelt. Long’s campaign received backing from a
diverse collection of the population including rural residents, the working class,
17
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982): p.xi
18
Huey P. Long, ‘Every Man A King, (Radio Address, February 23, 1934),’ ed. By Wendy Wolff,
Senate, 1789-1989, 3: Classic Speeches, 1830-1993, 3 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office,
1995): p.587
12
union members and professional, with more than seven million supporters joining
the national ‘Share Our Wealth Society’ by 1935.19
Coughlin exploited existing American ideologies, including anti-Communism and
the desire for independence, using dramatic metaphor and religious analogy to
discredit Roosevelt and the ‘New Deal’ reform programs:
“… everyone of you who is weary of drinking the bitter vinegar of sordid
capitalism and upon everyone who is fearsome of being nailed to the
cross of communism to join this Union which [must]…become a living,
vibrant, united, active organization, superior to politics and politicians.”20
Commanding in excess of ten million listeners,21 Coughlin used the population’s
sense of vulnerability during this period of economic decline to unsettle Roosevelt
through the guise of protecting the American population from political and economic
exploitation.
Coughlin and Long’s rigid, extreme government ideologies and exploitation of
national crisis manifested as dramatic rhetoric. As communicative strategies, their
speeches exhibited many qualities seen in the rhetoric of future President George W.
19
Snyder, Robert E., ‘Huey Long and the Presidential Election of 1936’, Louisiana History: The Journal
of the Louisiana Historical Association, 16.2 (Lafayette, LA: Louisiana Historical Association, 1975):
pp.121-122
William D. Pederson, The FDR Years, (New York, NY: Infobase Publishing, 2009): p.161
20
Father Charles Coughlin, ‘Address on the National Union for Social Justice (11 November 1934),’
Charles E. Coughlin, A Series of Lectures on Social Justice, (Royal Oak, MI: The Radio League of the
Little Flower, 1935): p.9
21
Peter H. Amann, ‘A 'Dog in the Nighttime' Problem: American Fascism in the 1930s,’ The History
Teacher, 19.4, (Notre Dame, IN: The Society for History Education, 1986): pp.572-573
Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982): 119
13
Bush. Whilst Bush used similar strategies to greater effect, the reassuring rhetoric of
Roosevelt and the dramatic language espoused by Coughlin and Long originally
permeated political conversation in the first half of the twentieth century. These
qualities developed into a common oratory style of U.S. Presidential rhetoric in
periods of threat to national security by 2001.
Roosevelt’s frank tone, blunt register of language and proactive legislative
changes satisfied the period’s demand for effective leadership. His peak approval
rating of 84% in January 1942 provided evidence of this.22 Roosevelt’s portrayal of
the United States as a victim of antagonism justified committing resources to a
foreign war effort, promoting interventionism to preserve national security. Whilst
Roosevelt’s reaction mirrored Bush’s response to 9/11, Roosevelt directly targeted
the forces that attacked Pearl Harbour using accurate information and a candid tone.
Bush dramatised the significance of 9/11 to justify invading countries that
accommodated the extremist Islamic movements responsible. The contrast of
Roosevelt’s measured, reactive approach with Bush’s proactive dramatic rhetoric
paralleled the different underlying agendas of each administration.
Following the economic depression and Pearl Harbor attacks, Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s novel communicative strategies in periods of threat to national security
marked the first shift towards more intimate crisis rhetoric and relations with the
national population. Pioneering concepts including Roosevelt’s ‘Fireside Chats’
transcended the domestic sphere whilst setting a precedent for national leaders
22
Jennifer Agiesta, ‘Presidential Approval Highs and Lows,’ The Washington Post, 2007. Online.
URL: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-thenumbers/2007/07/approval_highs_and_lows.html (16 August 2012)
14
succeeding him. Balancing the reassuring rhetorical qualities of his ‘Fireside Chats’
with formal elements of speech, Roosevelt maintained a public image as a
professional and attentive leader to motivate the national population, a notion
Richard Neustadt attested to: “FDR used fireside chats sparingly but with great effect
to build up a national audience.”23 Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush’s
communicative strategies conveyed the appeal of this emerging new intimate
approach to crisis rhetoric. Their willingness to adopt and develop these traits in their
own communicative strategies reflected this success.
23
Richard Neustadt, ‘The Weakening White House,’ British Journal of Political Science, 31.1,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001): p.7
15
II – Lyndon B. Johnson: Civil rights, social reform and debate
rhetoric.
Lyndon B. Johnson expanded on the interventionist ideology and communicative
precedents set by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Social reform programs designed to
eliminate poverty and racial injustice, known as ‘The Great Society’ programs,
coupled more intimate and persuasive rhetoric to assert Johnson’s influence in a
period of domestic social upheaval. Johnson’s methods sought to pre-empt social
stagnancy arising out of civil tension, contrasting Roosevelt’s reactionary, reassuring
rhetoric. Although the Vietnam War represented an ideological conflict between
capitalism and communism that arguably threatened national security, Johnson’s
approach to resolving the civil rights campaign more prominently exhibited the shift
towards more intimate and emotive Presidential crisis rhetoric between 1933 and
2001.
Johnson’s interventionist ‘Great Society’ programs served as an abstract
communicative strategy that imposed his political ideology on the national
population. This especially pertained to civil rights, where Johnson’s proactive
campaign for social reform paralleled the growth of the civil rights movement and
‘Black Power’ ideology. Through support measures including the Social Security
and Civil Rights Acts of 1965, Johnson met public demands and unified the
population under a national identity. His rhetoric also assumed a more persuasive
form, invoking reason over the imperative tone of Roosevelt, or emotive language of
Bush. Johnson’s civil rights agenda extended to opposing state authorities that
enforced racial oppression. Protecting protestors in the Selma to Montgomery Voting
16
Rights March, Johnson deployed federal forces including the U.S. Army, Alabama
National Guard, FBI and U.S. Marshall Service.1 Through verbal and physical means,
Johnson conveyed his political ideology using confident, persuasive rhetoric
alongside domestic policies.
“The American Promise,” Johnson’s televised message to the United States’
Congress and national population in 1965, exhibited linguistic and rhetorical devices
that reinforced Johnson’s progressive political ideology on racial parity.
The term “promise” is applied as a homonym – two identically spelled words
with distinct meanings - used repetitively to satisfy two separate definitions. In the
first instance, Johnson ascribed to a pledge made to the nation: “A century has
passed, more than a hundred years, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro
is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise. And the promise is
unkept.”2 With a second meaning however, Johnson’s use of “promise” also alluded
to the potential benefits the United States can gain from revolutionary social reforms:
“[The American Negro] has called upon us to make good the promise of America.
And who among us can say that we would have made the same progress were it not
for his persistent bravery, and his faith in American democracy.”3 Both
interpretations are relevant to Johnson’s speech, whilst homonyms typically
1
Townsend Davis, Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement, (London:
W.W. Norton, 1998): p.38
2
Lyndon B. Johnson, ‘Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise,’ March 15,
1965. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
3
Johnson, ‘The American Promise,’ The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
17
highlight focal points of speech.4 ‘Promise’ also characterises the country,
empowering it with the ability to perform an action through reification, similar to
personification or anthropomorphism. Combined with the intimate connotations of a
promise, this tactic sustained the abstract notion that the U.S. is most secure when its
citizens are united. Persuasive rhetorical methods signified a closer and more affable
relationship with the national population than predecessors including Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
Other poetic devices including repetition also highlighted important elements in
Johnson’s speech. Repetition and pseudo-dynamic verbs asserted Johnson’s
proactive nature, correlating with the ‘Great Society’ programs’ attention to poverty
and intolerance:
“I want to be the President who educated young children…I want to be the
President who helped to feed the hungry…I want to be the President who
helped the poor…I want to be the President who helped to end hatred
among his fellow men…I want to be the President who helped to end war
among the brothers of this earth.”5
This strategy combined neutral, less emotive rhetorical methods applied by
Roosevelt with the motif of personal interaction that Bush embellished in his own
4
Susan A. Duffy, Gretchen Kambe, and Keith Rayner, ‘The Effect of Prior Disambiguating Context on
the Comprehension of Ambiguous Word: Evidence From Eye Movements,’ On the Consequences of
Meaning Selection: Perspectives on Resolving Lexical Ambiguity, ed. David S. Gorfein, (Washington
D.C.: The American Psychological Association, 2002): pp.27-43
Morton A. Gernsbacher, Rachel R. Robertson and Necia K. Werner, ‘The Costs and Benefits of
Meaning,’ On the Consequences of Meaning Selection: Perspectives on Resolving Lexical Ambiguity,
ed. by David S. Gorfein, (Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2002): pp.119-137
5
Johnson, ‘The American Promise,’ The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
18
post-9/11 rhetoric, representing the gradual development of rhetorical style over the
twentieth-century.
Linguistic devices from the storytelling genre of literature presented information
clearly in “The American Promise,” whilst incorporating moral undertones.6
Historical, social and political analogies attempted to rationalise the passage of civil
rights legislation for all American citizens. Through this diverse collection of
American analogies, Johnson presented a speech resembling a debate argument to
persuade his audience to approve social progression. A transition away from the
candid, declarative tone of Roosevelt’s rhetoric, toward Johnson’s more personal and
persuasive rhetoric verified Presidential crisis rhetoric’s transition to a more intimate
and dramatic style.
Johnson’s pursuit of equal civil rights for all ethnicities, nationalities and genders
was presented using allusions towards historical moments of racial progress. This
included former President Abraham Lincoln’s declaration of slaves as free in the
Emancipation Proclamation: “It was more than a hundred years ago that Abraham
Lincoln, a great President of another party, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,
but emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact.”7
The reference to Lincoln reminded contemporary listeners that the 1960s civil
rights campaign was only the latest stage of a social endeavour that dated back to
slavery’s abolition in the early nineteenth-century. As a characteristic of Johnson’s
6
Paula Stoyle, ‘Storytelling - Benefits and Tips,’ Teaching English: British Council, (2003).
URL: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/articles/storytelling-benefits-tips (7 October 2012)
7
Johnson, ‘The American Promise’, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
19
rhetoric, this allusion affirmed the federal government’s capacity to address civil
unrest by empowering social progress.
Johnson also incorporated American Exceptionalism and patriotism into ‘The
American Promise’ through superlatives, declaring the United States: "the greatest
nation on Earth."8 This device appealed to the contemporary listener’s sense of
national pride to condemn racial repression. Johnsons exploitation of pre-existing
ideologies to assert his own agenda recycled Massachusetts’s Bay Colony founder
John Winthrop and former President John F. Kennedy’s use of a “City Upon a Hill”
metaphor to conceptualise American Exceptionalism:
“…wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eis of al people are upon
us…we shall be made a story and a a by-word through the world…”9
“…our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and
local, must be as a city upon a hill…aware of their great trust and their
great responsibilities.”10
This established ideology elevated the United States’ position in the world.
However, Johnson alluded to American Exceptionalism for a distinct purpose, to
challenge critical beliefs on racial discrimination in the United States. His
superlatives suggested that oppression based on criteria beyond the national identity
8
Ibid.
John Winthrop, ‘A Modell of Christian Charity,’ The American Intellectual Tradition: Volume I, 16301865, ed. David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006): p.14
10
John F. Kennedy, ‘City Upon a Hill,’ January 9, 1961. Online. The Miller Center: University of
Virginia
URL: http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3364
9
20
discredited the concept of American Exceptionalism. Johnson’s adaptation of
American Exceptionalism redefined this traditional concept for a new context in the
civil rights campaign. The reinterpretation of national ideology opposed Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s accurate and informative rhetoric. George W. Bush, however, developed
Johnson’s strategy in post-9/11 rhetoric, creating a new perception of reality through
wartime rhetoric to dramatise the scale of 9/11’s perpetrators. This comparison
exhibits Presidential crisis rhetoric’s evolution into to a more intimate and dramatic
style during periods of threat to national security between 1933 and 2001.
Popular idioms from the nation’s rhetorical history also strengthened Johnson’s
argument for civil rights and activist legislation in “The American Promise.”
Johnson interjected renowned phrases from U.S. history and reinterpreted these
quotations beyond their original context of addressing democracy: "All men are
created equal"; "Government by consent of the governed"; "Give me liberty or give
me death."11 . Instead, Johnson associated these terms with the plight of the African
American citizen. Another example of reapplying traditional ideologies to a new
situation, Johnson argued that racial discrimination disregarded the ideals of the
Founding Fathers who had pursued American liberty through democracy.
Citing idioms originally relating to the political system of democracy, Johnson
asserted that it was his obligation to continue enforcing this democratic system
through civil rights legislation: "the right to choose your own leaders" and “the
expansion of that right to all of our people."12 An imperative tone composed of
modal auxiliary verbs and short declarative statements also conveyed Johnson’s
11
Johnson, ‘The American Promise’, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
12
Ibid.
21
conviction:
"Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no
reason which [sic] can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty
that weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that
right."13
Johnson campaigned for civil equality in American society using his critics’
national political history against them. Combined with “Great Society” social
reforms, Johnson’s more conversational, debate-like rhetoric, complemented the
President’s interventionist approach to enforcing progressive social and political
ideologies. By alluding the nation’s history and collective sense of identity, Johnson
constructed an argument so well-protected that disputing it entailed disputing the
same values the United States was founded on, encompassed by the phrase: "fail as a
people and as a nation."14
“The American Promise” also used religious expressions to appeal to another
facet of American identity that transcended ethnicity and gender, faith. Johnson
referenced Matthew 16:26, a passage from the Bible, to argue the nation would lose
its ‘soul’ if its population failed to uphold the democratic model of government and
ensure equality: “For with a country as with a person, ‘What is a man profited, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’”15 Acknowledging Christianity
in his campaign, Johnson alluded to John Winthrop’s credit of North America as a
13
Ibid.
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
14
22
divine utopia free from religious persecution: "the first . . . in the history of the world
to be founded with a purpose."16 Religious citations added another staple of
American identity to Johnson’s speech, capturing the majority of citizens within its
scope, regardless of citizens’ physical differences. Associating his argument with
this concept of a higher authority, God, Johnson classified his progressive social
agendas under the United States’ divine purpose:
"Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says…'God
has favored our undertaking.'…It is rather our duty to divine His will. But I
cannot help believing that He truly understands and that He really favors
the undertaking that we begin here tonight."17
Johnson’s implication that a higher power approved of the ideology behind civil
rights legislation exploited perceptions of the United States’ divine relationship with
God. Through terminology from the semantic field of religion, Johnson exploited
three existing civil notions: the country’s citizens perceive themselves as selected
people,18 the nation has an exceptional purpose,19 and the United States’ founding
was a blessed act that uniquely tied the population to God.20 Religion was significant
in the newer, more intimate rhetoric espoused by Johnson and Bush as they
campaigned to reform social relations and mobilise the nation’s military,
respectively. Johnson’s incorporation of religion into public address is
acknowledged by American sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah as a reference for the
16
Ibid.
Ibid.
18
James J. Hennessey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United
States, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983): p.4
19
Roderick P. Hart, The Political Pulpit, (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1977): p.12
20
Russell B. Nye, This Almost Chosen People: Essays in the History of American Ideas, (East Lansing,
MI: Michigan State University Press, 1966): p.165
17
23
national population, not an indicator of the President’s own religious beliefs.21
Compared to religion’s more understated presence in Roosevelt’s crisis rhetoric
following the Pearl Harbor attacks, religion is featured, in Johnson and Bush’s
rhetoric, as evidence of the U.S. President’s evolving rhetorical style between 1933
and 2001, representing intimate and abstract topics that Olson alluded to.22
Another characteristic of the storytelling genre that Johnson integrated into his
comprehensive campaign for civil rights legislation is figurative language.
Metaphors embellished aspects of Johnson’s speech: “…let each of us look within
our own hearts and our own communities, and let each of us put our shoulder to the
wheel to root out injustice wherever it exists.”23 Combining a unified first person
plural voice with the conceptual metaphor of ‘physical toil in the name of justice,’
Johnson conveys the need for national unity in his effort to pass civil rights
legislation and outlaw discrimination. Through the depiction of physical labour,
Johnson suggested that racial imbalance is detrimental to the nation’s well-being,
requiring physical and figurative effort that could be applied elsewhere. Johnson’s
manipulation of figurative language represented a middle ground between the formal,
forthright register of Roosevelt and the emotive language applied by Bush.
Dynamic verbs allowed Johnson to imply the positive impact racial legislation
would make: “This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in all elections… It
will eliminate tedious, unnecessary lawsuits… no force can hold it back.”24 This
21
Robert N. Bellah, “Religion in America,” Daedalus, 96.1(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1967): pp.1-21
22
Olson et al, “The Teleprompter Presidency”: p.1406
23
Johnson, ‘The American Promise’, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26805. (21 July 2012)
24
Ibid.
24
rhetorical strategy combined with oxymoron to associate social progression and
government interventionism with justice. Oxymoron – the use of contradicting terms
in conjunction with one another - also communicated the importance of active
decision-making, weighing two opposite scenarios against one another. As rhetorical
devices, dynamic verbs and oxymoron linked social activism with benefits and social
stagnancy with hazards:
“Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to
right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. In our time we have come to live
with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate
about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and
depression”.25
These techniques highlighted the traditional theme of morality in government that
Roosevelt, Johnson and Bush all subscribed to during periods of threat to the
nation’s domestic or international security. The dramatic, bombastic qualities of
these devices, however, are indicative of the transition to more a more emotive
Presidential crisis rhetoric across time.
Johnson used temporal phrases to pressure his audience into supporting civil
rights legislation. These idioms encouraged the rapid passage of civil rights laws by
making assertions of time sensitivity: "This time, on this issue, there must be no
delay, no hesitation and no compromise with our purpose," "the time for waiting has
25
Ibid.
25
gone.”26 Johnson also conveyed immediacy using devices including the temporal
adverb ‘now’ and repeated use of ‘no’ in the context of delaying legislation: the
"time of justice has now come," "This time, on this issue, there must be no delay or
no hesitation or no compromise with our purpose."27 This urgency attempted to
persuade the national population to adopt Johnson’s social ideology on civil rights
and accelerate the passage of any relevant legislation. As a communicative strategy,
Johnson’s persuasive ‘time rhetoric’ echoed Roosevelt’s more neutral language,
whilst still actively campaigning for legislation in an aggressive fashion similar to
Bush’s pursuit of military mobilisation post-9/11.
The combined effects of these rhetorical strategies cultivated the notion that
unequal civil status and segregation opposed the ideological consensus of American
identity. Using social, political and religious references, whist conveying urgency,
“The American Promise” addressed listeners through a comprehensive argument that
deviated from Roosevelt’s strict imperative tone. Johnson’s speech is evidence of a
transition towards more intimate rhetoric in communicative strategies.
In spite of the civil rights movement’s infamy amongst social groups including
white Southerners, Johnson’s 1965 appeal to Congress and the national population
was well-received by the majority of the national population. Johnson recorded an
approval rating of 69% following the address, suggesting the president and his
speech successfully resonated with a majority of the national population.28
26
Ibid.
Ibid.
28
‘Presidential Approval Tracker’, USA Today, 2009.
URL: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/presidential-approval-tracker.htm (22 November
2012)
27
26
Reasons for the success of Johnson’s rhetorical style in “The American Promise”
are found in contemporary social context. Johnson’s efforts to amend social
imbalance using reform measures converged with the emergence of a ‘New Class’ of
individuals, who were raised in the affluent period of economic prosperity following
World War II.29 Former US ambassador Jeane K. Kirkpatrick argued this New Class
sought “the progressive involvement of broader cultural forces in politics,”
advocating “relatively high levels of education and income…found in professions
requiring verbal and communication skills.”30 These professionals, from scientific,
medical, legal, academic and media vocations, supported Johnson’s ‘Great Society’
domestic social agenda, on its merit of assisting less fortunate citizens by
reciprocating their affluence in other areas of society. Support from liberals, the
middle class and black Americans represented the ideological convergence between
the President and national population on domestic social issues in the 1960s.31
American economist Henry J. Aaron also alluded to this common political ideology:
“…The faith in government action, long embraced by reformers and
spread to the mass of the population by depression and war, achieved
political expression in the 1960s. This faith was applied to social and
economic problems, the perceptions of which were determined by
simplistic and naive popular attitudes...”32
29
Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘The New Class and the Professoriate,’ Society, 16.2, (New York, NY:
Springer, 1979): pp.31–38
30
Jeane K. Kirkpatrick, ‘Politics and the New Class,’ Society, 16.2, (New York, NY: Springer, 1979):
p.42
31
Gary Gerstle, ‘Race and the Myth of the Liberal Consensus,’ The Journal of American History, 82.2
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995): p.579
32
Henry J. Aaron, Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective, (Washington D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press, 1978): p.151
27
Johnson’s campaign against poverty and racial discrimination united with
aggressive Black Power ideology, exemplified by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and
Malcolm X. Black Power groups sought to re-define and empower African
Americans in the United States. Factions including the Black Panther Party
conveyed their racial ideologies through revolutionary means as extreme as gun
crime,33 justifying this study’s perception of the civil rights campaign as a threat to
national security. Interactive violence between white and black Americans
threatened the well-being of domestic society, as African Americans sought to
destabilise public perceptions of white superiority. Despite extremist social
tendencies, Black Power members shared a proactive outlook on social progression
with Johnson and the civil rights campaign. This extended to social outreach
programs. Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ reforms, including the Economic Opportunity
Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, paralleled
the Black Panther Party’s voluntary outreach to black communities. As a
representative of Black Power ideology, the Black Panther Party offered provisions,
education and physical aid to less privileged members of their social group, and
activism against racial injustice.34
Johnson correlated his campaign for civil rights legislation with quintessential
American ideals and values. These encouraged civilians to fulfil the ‘duties’ of their
nation, forefathers and religious faith through this appeal for social reform. The
success of Johnson’s campaign was reflected in the passage of legislation that
33
Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making And Unmaking of the Black Panther
Party, (Fayetteville, LA: University of Arkansas Press, 2006): p.xi
34
Ryan J. Kirkby “‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’: Community Activism and the Black Panther
Party, 1966–1971,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 41.1, (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2011): pp.25-62
28
drastically altered the legal perception of African American civil rights, including the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, twenty-fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Historical analogies, political allusions and figurative
language were means through which Johnson communicated with the national
audience and argued his case for civil rights legislation in a conversational format
akin to a debate. This balance of formal and dramatic speaking strategies elicited an
impassioned, and widely positive, reaction from listeners and strengthened the
notion of a transition towards more intimate, dramatic Presidential crisis rhetoric.
A potential reason for the evolution of Presidential crisis rhetoric, beyond
political ideology, was public scandals including ‘Watergate.’ The ‘Watergate’
scandal of 1972 tarnished the relationship between the United States’ national
population and the federal government, as senior politicians appeared to abuse their
influence to organise felonies for personal and professional gain.35 The lack of trust
resulting from this affair impacted the authority of Presidents who succeeded
Richard Nixon, which may have subsequently affected their rhetorical styles.
Neustadt alluded to factor, claiming:
“the formal powers of the presidency…were attacked by a Democrat-led
Congress intent upon removing the president’s discretionary powers…The
emergency powers that FDR used to instigate and accelerate economic
mobilisation in anticipation of war…are not available to President
Bush…”36
35
Michael J. Robinson, ‘The Impact of the Televised Watergate Hearings,’ Journal of Communication,
24.2, (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 1974): p.18
36
Neustadt, ‘The Weakening White House,’ British Journal of Political Science: p.319
29
The Nixon administration’s betrayal of its authority diminished the national
population’s faith in the federal government, leaving future presidential
administrations without the same authority as Roosevelt and Johnson. Bush
attempted to compensate for this deficit using emotive language to unite the federal
government and the public as victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
30
III – George W. Bush: ‘The War on Terror,’ globalisation and
emotive speech.
George W. Bush’s tenure as President was defined by a radical shift towards
dramatic and intimate Presidential crisis rhetoric regarding the nation’s foreign
policy agenda. These changes were motivated by the 9/11 attacks, a series of
organised terrorist attacks against the United States launched by the Islamist outfit
al-Qaeda in 2001. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush installed a new ‘rhetoric of fear’ to
impress neo-conservatism on the national population through communicative
strategies. Neo-conservatism, as an ideological movement, advocated the
international spread of democracy through economic and military influence. Bush’s
promotion of this foreign policy and its aggressive characteristics was more
emotionally manipulative than Roosevelt and Johnson’s rhetoric during periods of
threat to national security.
The evolution of technology since 1933 had precipitated a rise in mass media
outlets through mediums including television and the internet. Brigitte Lebens Nacos
alluded to the new scale of mass media toward the end of the twentieth-century,
which did not exist to the same extent under Roosevelt and Johnson:
“…the ‘CNN effect’ pointed to the ability of the first truly global
television network to inform the public instantly and continuously of news
from anywhere in the world and thereby force national decision makers to
31
deal with the reported problems and issues quickly.”1
In this period, where mainstream news overwhelmed the national audience with
information, Bush enhanced the influence of emotive language to assert himself as a
figure of strength in a period of American vulnerability following 9/11 whilst
promoting eo-conservatism.
Bush’s rhetoric played a fundamental part in endorsing international military
mobilisation to suppress terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda overseas. His
televised speech to the nation on 11 September and appeal to Congress on 20
September (televised via NBC News) informed the public audience of the terrorist
attacks and educated viewers on the perpetrators responsible. Televised speeches
were a primary communicative strategy through which Bush used emotive, dramatic
and intimate rhetorical methods to globalise the 9/11 attacks, exaggerate the
perpetrators and promote military mobilisation.
Linguistic analysis of Bush’s crisis rhetoric following 9/11 helps identify how he
communicated his ideological values effectively to a polarized and vulnerable
national audience post-9/11. Bush employed an aggressive, protective rhetoric
similar to the values in neo-conservatism. ‘The Bush Doctrine’ outlined the
President’s neo-conservative foreign policy ideology. Combining imperative modal
verbs and dynamic actions, the doctrine proposed military mobilisation in the
interest of long-term national defence: “We must deter and defend against the threat
1
Brigitte Lebens Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, Pierangelo Isernia, Decisionmaking in a Glass House: Mass
Media, Public Opinion, and American and European Foreign Policy in the 21st Century, (Lanham: MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2000): p.2
32
before it is unleashed . . . even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the
enemy's attack... The United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively.”2 This
language implied pacifist strategies were associated with weakness. American
political scientist Stephen Skowronek alluded to this comparison between neoconservative ideology, the Bush Doctrine and Bush’s distinct style of rhetoric:
“leadership by definition…the Bush Doctrine of preemption allowed the president to
define himself by being able to define his wars.”3
Bush incorporated terminology from the semantic field of war as he campaigned
for military mobilisation: "enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our
country".4 Classifying the 9/11 attacks as an ‘act of war’ instead of an extremist
ideological terrorist attack, Bush embellished the size and existence of the
perpetrators, formalising their presence as if it were a nation and implying war was
the only rational response. Bush’s post-9/11 rhetoric, with terms from the semantic
field of military warfare, suggested that the decision to commit to full-scale conflict
had already been made, before Congress or the nation’s popular majority had
formally approved: “…in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our
moment. Freedom and fear are at war…we will not fail”.5 This tactic conveyed the
significance of nationalistic patriotism as an ideology pertinent to the public’s
American identity. Bush successfully manipulated the concept of unity based on
2
George W., Bush, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, (Washington D.C.:
U.S. Department of State, 20 September 2002): p.14
3
Stephen Skowronek, “Leadership by Definition: First Term Reflections on George W. Bush’s Political
Stance,” Perspectives on Politics, 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 817-831
4
George W. Bush: ‘Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the United States’ Response to
the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,’ 20 September 2001. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=64731. (30 July 2012)
George W. Bush, ‘Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,’ 11 September 2001. Online by
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057. (28 July 2012)
33
nationality to deliver a speech that foreshadowed the Bush administration’s ‘War on
Terror’.
By distorting the scale and influence of al-Qaeda, Bush implied the country must
unite under a single foreign policy ideology to suppress this threat to national
security. His response even extended to condemning nations independent of the 9/11
attacks as antagonists, using terms conventionally associated with moral taboos:
“States like these [Iran, Iraq and North Korea] constitute an axis of evil,
arming to threaten the peace of the world…Our enemies send other
people’s children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace
tyranny and death as a cause and as a creed.”6
Bush’s consideration of the nation in a global context was a facet of American
identity he used to direct popular opinion. His approach promoted unity to prevent
division between federal government and the national population.
Similar to Johnson’s use of religion to unite the population, Bush added morality
to his dramatic neoconservative rhetoric. Political commentator Justin Rex’s asserted
that “framing the case for war in terms of good and evil and using language that
conjured the devil were key ways in which this group and Bush understood the
world.”7 Rex’s comments revealed an incentive for using emotive figurative
6
George W. Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” 29
January 2002. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29644 (12 August 2012)
7
Justin Rex, “The President's War Agenda: A Rhetorical View,” Presidential Studies Quarterly,
41.1, (Washington D.C.: Center for Study of the Presidency and Congress, 2011): pp.93–118
34
language linked to morality. By using imagery that “conjured the devil,” Bush’s
combination of abstract imagery with morality in his response to the 9/11 attacks
complemented the theory of increasingly intimate, accessible and dramatic approach
communicative strategies.
Religious allusions were also indicative of Olson’s suggestion that “antiintellectualism in modern presidential rhetoric is curiously…more abstract, relying
on religious and idealistic references” to become “more activist…inclusive
and…conversational.”8 The medium of religion applied by Bush had the dual benefit
of wide appeal, whilst empowering Bush’s neoconservative agenda through the
implication of religious connotations.
Bush also situated the scenario in a global context using parallelism: “America
and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the
world, and we stand together to win the war against terrorism.”9 This ‘good versus
evil’ dynamic associated the United States with positive qualities of ‘peace and
security,’ positioning the nation as a defender to al-Qaeda’s extremist aggression in
a context of formal warfare. This tactic justified future retaliation to appease
American opponents of foreign interventionism. Topic deviation towards Eastern
cultural customs unfamiliar in Western society dramatised the scale of Islamic
militant group al-Qaeda to validate military invasion. An asyndetic list format of
simple sentences conveyed Afghanistan repressive cultural values:
“Afghanistan's people have been brutalized. Many are starving and many
8
Olson et al, “The Teleprompter Presidency,” Social Science Quarterly: p.1409
George W. Bush, ‘Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks,’ 11 September 2001. Online by
Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057. (28 July 2012)
9
35
have fled. Women are not allowed to attend school. You can be jailed for
owning a television. Religion can be practiced only as their leaders dictate.
A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough.”10
Bush juxtaposed these scenarios against the Western audience’s understanding of
conventional social norms. This highlighted the ideological division between the U.S.
and Eastern nations loosely associated with the Islamic Extremist outfit al-Qaeda.
Richard Dowis validated the benefits of analogy as a rhetorical device: “Analogies
are especially useful in explaining something that is difficult for an audience to grasp.
It is easier to understand a concept if it is explained in terms of something you’re
already familiar with.”11 By manipulating the audience’s perception of the Islamic
extremists using analogy to Afghanistan’s culture, Bush intensified the viewer’s
resentment towards these targets in spite of no formal association between the global
Islamist military organisation and Afghanistan. Collectively, these devices supported
military intervention, a component of neo-conservative foreign policy ideology. Dan
Scroop affirmed the deceitful qualities of Bush’s exaggeration of U.S. targets in his
public address:
“Bush’s State of the Union addresses…compounded those fears by
making what began as a manhunt to ‘those folks who committed this act’,
and became an attack, focused on Afghanistan, against the Taliban and
Al Qaeda, into a general campaign against an ‘axis of evil’ made up of
states (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) that…do not bear any responsibility
10
George W. Bush: " United States’ Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11," 20
September 2001. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=64731. (28 July 2012)
11
Richard Dowis, The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write One, How to Deliver It, (New York,
NY: AMACOM, 2000): p.127
36
for the attacks of September 11th…”12
Bush’s intimate style of rhetoric employed metaphor and figurative language in a
melodramatic account of the 9/11 attacks and their perpetrator, to intensify
sentiments of neo-conservatism amongst the national population. Whilst figurative
language was a component of all three Presidents’ rhetoric, Bush’s dramatic, poetic
metaphorical constructions were distinct from the pragmatic alternatives that
Roosevelt and Johnson employed. Bush projected his aggressive foreign policies on
the national population using figurative language that justified his neo-conservative
agenda. Amongst some of the conceptual metaphors that Bush incorporated into his
rhetoric were ‘terrorism is a natural disaster,’ and ‘justice is a limb’: “[Iraq is] at the
epicentre of terrorism,” “…there’s no cave deep enough for the long arm of
American justice.”13 Through metaphorical utterances, Bush exploited the
conventional understanding of existing terms in the national lexicon to rationalise his
campaign for military mobilisation. Personification in ‘the long arm of American
justice’ also offered Bush’s audience the control and authority it craved after being
rendered so vulnerable by terrorist attacks on domestic soil.
Euphemisms also contributed to this reinvention of foreign policy in Bush’s
public addresses. American Professor David Bromwich cited euphemism’s ability to
“efface the memory of actual cruelties”14 surrounding 9/11. In “Euphemism and
American Violence,” Bromwich cited the “global war on terrorism” as an example
12
Scroop, ‘Uses of Presidential Power’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs: 320
George W. Bush, ‘Remarks on Proposed Citizen Service Legislation in Bridgeport, Connecticut
(April 9, 2002),’ Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States George W. Bush 2002 Book
I: January 1 to June 30 2002, (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2005): p.584
14
David Browmich, “Euphemism and American Violence.” New York Review of Books, (2008) Online.
URL: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/apr/03/euphemism-and-americanviolence/?pagination=false (12 February 2013)
13
37
of “simple-sounding and elusive” euphemism in Bush’s rhetoric.15 This abstract
concept presented the nation’s response to the terrorist attacks in the deceptive light
of a formal war; drawing on the national sentiment of patriotism. Social
psychologists Yla Tausczik and James Pennebaker verified this association of
deception with a less complex, more accessible rhetoric:
“Complexity may be reduced in deceptive speech because of the
cognitive load required to maintain a story that is contrary to experience,
and the effort taken to try and to convince someone else that something
false is true.”16
Deceptive euphemisms complemented the shift of rhetoric towards a more
personal, intimate alternative theorised in this study. A marked feature of Bush’s
intimate and dramatic rhetorical strategies was the distortion of truth that may be
conceived as dishonesty in the interest of promoting neo-conservatism. This
rhetorical strategy is a more dramatic and radical variation of Lyndon B. Johnson’s
use of historical, political and religious allusions to unite the population by
nationality, over race. Johnson’s arguments were openly comparative and did not
entail the deceptive features of Bush’s rhetoric. Bush’s exaggeration of the nation’s
adversaries in 2001 also contrasted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s informative, accurate
and candid rhetoric following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. This disparity exhibited
the evolution of rhetorical strategy in times of threat to national security between
1933 and 2001.
15
Bromwich, “Euphemism and American Violence,” New York Review of Books, Online.
URL: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/apr/03/euphemism-and-americanviolence/?pagination=false (12 February 2013)
16
Yla R. Tausczik and James W. Pennebaker, “The Psychological Meaning of Words: LIWC and
Computerized Text Analysis Methods,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, (New York, NY:
Sage Publications, 2010): p.34
38
Cultural scientist Daniel J. Sherman and political scientist Terry Nardin asserted
that the Bush administration had constructed a new American ‘reality’ based on the
radical portrayal of foreign policy following the 9/11 attacks that had “changed
everything.”17 Terror, Culture, Politics highlighted the rapid movement of neoconservative interpretations of 9/11 from the fringe of American culture into the
artistic mainstream, pervading popular forms of artistic media including the comic
book18. Henry Jenkin’s contribution, “Captain America Sheds His Mighty Tears”,
interpreted this shift to the mainstream as the American imperial agenda coming to
fruition and empowering the typical American citizen:
“The long-term impact of September 11 could also be seen in the
emergence of new comic book series that celebrate the heroism of
average citizens…a multiracial, multinational organization of ordinary
people who contribute their services on an ad hoc basis.”19
Artistic media’s more temperate depiction of neo-conservative ideologies,
through the likes of animation, appealed to the United States’ social mainstream.
Mass media asserted the federal government’s hard-line conservative approach in a
manner less prone to significant backlash from the national population, as Bush’s
rhetoric redefined American society’s reality using intimate and dramatic devices.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush engaged with the audience on a
17
Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin, Terror, Culture, Politics: Re-thinking 9/11, (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2006): p.4
18
Sherman and Nardin, Terror, Culture, Politics.
19
Henry Jenkins, ‘Captain America Sheds His Mighty Tears: Comics and September 11,’ Terror,
Culture, Politics: Re-thinking 9/11, ed. Daniel J.Sherman and Terry Nardin, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 2006): p.96
39
personal level to comfort the nation,20 foregrounding figurative language that
conveyed Bush’s emotive tone in his speech transcripts. Adjectives from the
semantic field of anger, “a series of deliberate and deadly attacks…lives were
suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terrors,”21 combined with abstract
characterising metaphors, “freedom itself is under attack,”22 to antagonise the
viewing audience. The concept of personal emotional engagement with the audience
is corroborated by Bush’s allusion to individual citizens. The rhetorical device of
first-person narrative allows Bush to personalise the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks:
“I will carry this: It is the police shield of a man named George Howard,
who died at the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to
me by his mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. This is my
reminder of lives that ended, and a task that does not end.”23
Framing his response to the 9/11 attacks around individual accounts accentuated
the intimacy of rhetoric in the modern presidency. Bush’s use of George Howard to
convey the national sense of loss arising out of the 9/11 attacks echoed SchonhardtBailey’s claim that “All presidents from Reagan onward have spoken more about
individuals, families, and children…[than] institutions (e.g., relations between the
executive and Congress, federalism).”24 Whilst this claim does not account for the
gradual evolution of rhetorical style between Roosevelt and Bush hypothesised in
20
Michael Nelson and Russell Lynn Riley, The President' Words: Speeches and Speechwriting in the
Modern White House, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2010): p.237
21
Bush: "Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks," The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58057. (28 July 2012)
22
Bush: "Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11", The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=64731. (28 July 2012)
23
Ibid.
24
Schonhardt-Bailey et al., ‘Yes, Ronald Reagan's Rhetoric Was Unique’: p.484
40
this study, it is an observation pertinent to the rhetoric of Bush, whose individual
accounts differed from Roosevelt and Johnson’s express focus on the nation as a
whole.
Bush also established unity through anaphora, the repetition of words and
successive phrases, repeating the phrase ‘I ask you’.25 Bush implemented phrases
associated with personal interaction through a first-person narrative, to create the
illusion of a mutually dependant relationship with the national audience. This
perception of a weakened Presidency accounted for political and ideological
considerations that did not exist during Roosevelt’s time in office. American
political scientist Richard Neustadt proposed four factors that had weakened the
authority of the President:
“Congress and the courts had stripped away some of the president’s
formal powers...the absence of domestic emergency and the end of the
Cold War had enabled Congress to reassert itself [as]the dominant
branch of government...the communications revolution, and the
concomitant rise of multi-channel entertainment-oriented television, had
reduced presidents’ ability to make direct, unmediated appeals to the
public.”26
Bush circumvented these weaknesses using emotive, dramatic and personalised
language to assert his neo-conservative foreign policy through communicative
25
George W. Bush: "Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11," The American Presidency
Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=64731. (28 July 2012)
26
Scroop, ‘Uses of Presidential Power’: p.317
41
strategies. These devices deviated from neutral, moderated language employed by
his presidential predecessors whilst eliciting a unified pro-active response from the
national population. Terminology from the semantic field of family and other
dramatic linguistic techniques contributed to an intimate rhetoric that represented the
final stages of the Presidency’s changing oratory style, in times of threat to national
security between 1933 and 2001.
As intellectual supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Robert G. Kaufman and Max
Boot’s remarks are a testament to the collective impact of 9/11 and Bush’s rhetorical
style on uniting Americans under a neo-conservative ideology:
“Americans wisely have repudiated [isolationist and political commentator
Patrick] Buchanan’s hostility to the notion of exporting the institutions of
freedom. From our founding, our great statesmen have always conceived
of the United States as an empire of liberty, a beacon for spreading
democracy elsewhere…”27
“[Bush is] right to say we can’t sit back and wait for the next terrorist
strike on Manhattan. We have to go out and stop the terrorists
overseas…play the role of the global policeman…shape the world much
more in our own image…be much more aggressive…”28
Contemporary Gallup Polls, which questioned sample audiences representing the
27
Robert Kaufman, In Defense of the Bush Doctrine, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky,
2007): p.17, p.99.
28
Max Boot, ‘The Bush Doctrine’, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, broadcast 7/11/2002 on PBS,
(Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2002).
42
national population, exhibited the public appeal of Bush’s rhetoric. “Terrorism
Reaction Poll#3 (2001)” asked a sample audience, “President Bush addressed…the
recent terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.…[how] would you
rate George W. Bush's speech to Congress and the nation on Thursday…?” 87.04%
of the 1005 answers were positive.29
“Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the
events surrounding the terrorist attacks…?” 86.65% of the audience
approved of Bush’s conduct in the aftermath of 9/11.30
Bush’s efforts to dramatise and personalise the ‘War on Terror’ would continue to
be evident into 2003. “December Wave 1” asked a sample audience of 1004,
“George W. Bush flew on a military fighter jet to an aircraft carrier. On that ship,
Bush gave a nationally televised speech in which he announced an end to major
fighting in the war with Iraq…good idea or a bad idea?” 56.45% of the audience
responded affirmatively.31
Sample poll statistics collectively suggested that the national population’s
majority reacted positively to Bush’s rhetorical communicative strategies in the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. A significant proportion of the population subscribed
to Bush’s emotive ‘rhetoric of fear’ and embraced a proactive, neo-conservative
approach towards foreign policy. Bush’s rhetoric and conduct drastically contrasted
the measured and practical linguistic devices of Roosevelt and Johnson.
29
‘Terrorism Reaction Poll #3’, Gallup, 22 September 2001. Online.
URL: http://brain.gallup.com/documents/questionnaire.aspx?STUDY=P0109036&p=3 (15 October
2012)
30
‘October Wave 1’, Gallup, 5 October 2001. Online.
URL: http://brain.gallup.com/documents/questionnaire.aspx?STUDY=P0110037&p=3 (15 October
2012)
31
‘December Wave 1’, Gallup, 7 December 2001. Online.
URL: http://brain.gallup.com/documents/questionnaire.aspx?STUDY=P0312052&p=4 (15 October
2012)
43
In spite of Bush’s approval ratings, the President’s new ‘rhetoric of fear’
provoked a polarised response from the intellectual sphere as some critics
condemned Bush’s neo-conservative communicative strategies and foreign policy.
These critics perceived his approach as one of self-serving interest.
Susan Sontag, political activist and critic of neo-conservatism, disregarded the
deceptive notion of warfare being a necessity. Instead, she suggested this style of
rhetoric contradicted the system of democracy that structured the country’s politics:
“We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall.
A wide spectrum of public figures…strongly opposed to the policies being
pursued abroad by this Administration…The unanimity of the
sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials
and media commentators in recent days seems…unworthy of a mature
democracy”.32
Sontag argued that the Bush administration compromised a fundamental ideology
in U.S. society, the democratic representation of all national citizens to project their
ideals and grievances. Sontag represented intellectual and academic discontent with
Bush’s communicative strategies, including the mass media as an informal extension
of Bush’s authority that subscribed to his ‘rhetoric of fear.’ Professor Mark Danner
also referenced the manipulative qualities of Bush’s emotive crisis rhetoric,
substantiating intellectual discord with the Bush administration’s communicative
32
Susan Sontag, ‘The Talk of the Town,’ The New Yorker, September 24, 2001. Online.
URL: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/09/24/010924ta_talk_wtc (13 October 2012)
44
strategies:
“A democratic empire is an odd beast. If one longs to invade Iraq to
restore the empire’s prestige, one must convince the democracy’s people
of the necessity of such a step. Herein lies the pathos of the famous
weapons-of-mass-destruction issue. Bush lied, and the war was born of
lies and deception…”33
Danner questioned the Bush administration’s respect for the traditional American
democratic system of politics. In particular, he critically cited the authenticity of
Bush’s communication with the national population; associating the President’s
rhetoric with ‘lies and deception’.
In her feminist commentary on the effects of 9/11, The Terror Dream, Susan
Faludi alluded to how well Bush’s emotive rhetoric was received by the mass media.
Faludi implemented a superhero motif to convey the mass media’s embracing of
Bush’s rhetoric:
“The media seemed eager to turn our designated guardians of national
security into action toys and superheroes…The president’s vows to get
the ‘evildoers’ won him media praise...UPI’s national political analyst,
Peter Roff, said ‘This is just the kind of hero America needs right
now,’...comic book language ‘rallies the nation to even greater
33
Danner, Mark, ‘Words in a Time of War: Taking the Measure of the First Rhetoric-Major
President’. MarkDanner.com, May 10 2007. Online.
URL: http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/words_in_a_time_of_war (14 August 2012).
45
accomplishments and sacrifice…’”34
These comments suggested the president’s reassuring tone in his reaction to 9/11
was an attempt to assert himself as an inspiring and comforting leader, amidst the
new sense of vulnerability felt by the nation. Dan Scroop also suggested Bush
manipulated the public’s interpretation of the 9/11 attacks by asserting his own
emotions within a venue designed to inform:
“Bush’s early comments suggested a retributive notion of justice and the
implication that the US mission was primarily a personal war between
Bush, acting on the nation’s behalf, and the ‘faceless’ assailants. On
September 11th, and on several occasions since, Bush has framed the
American response as a manhunt…”35
Invoking the personal sentiment of retribution into his rhetoric, Bush reinvented
the 9/11 attacks as an individual attack on each American citizens. Using the fragile
emotional condition of American society, Bush justified a neo-conservative ideology
on foreign policy.
The Bush administration also cultivated national sentiments of American
patriotism through public address and mass media, to assert neo-conservatism and
earn public support. Olson’s study of Bush’s public speech verified this dominating
presence of foreign policy fear rhetoric’:
34
Susan Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, (New York, NY:
Metropolitan Books, 2007): p.47
35
Scroop, ‘Uses of Presidential Power,’ Cambridge Review of International Affairs: p.324
46
“President George W. Bush spent almost 50 percent of his [State of the
Union Address] talking about terrorism and homeland security. The
speech had the effect of priming the public’s evaluation of his
presidency…[directing attention towards]…his handling of the war on
terrorism.”36
By cultivating public support through the proactive measure of establishing a
‘rhetoric of fear,’ Bush’s neoconservative agenda out-weighed the left-wing
intellectual opinions who critically opposed his ‘deceitful’ language. Critics of
Bush’s post-9/11 neo-conservative foreign policy were too disjointed to effectively
counter this rhetorical ideological output. Professor Thomas Palaima alluded to this
scenario: “American intellectuals were either inactive or ineffective in using public
intellectual discourse to influence the political process.”37 Palaima’s case also
includes Professor Robert Jenson’s division of the intellectual political spectrum into
five spheres. Jenson suggested only the far left and the far right proponents of
foreign policy actively spoke against Bush’s foreign policy. The far right defended
neo-conservatism as the far left rejected “the intellectually and morally bankrupt
claims of the far right.”38 From Jenson’s model, a stalemate between the two extreme
wings of U.S. foreign policy becomes apparent. In this deadlock, critics of the
President’s foreign policy failed to sway popular opinion as the federal government
continued its neo-conservative agenda. This intellectual disparity reflected the
evolution of U.S. society. Candid fringe groups created a diverse intellectual
36
Olson et al., ‘The Teleprompter Presidency': p.1410
Thomas G. Palaima, ‘The Texas Professoriate and Public Political Discourse Before and After 9/11,’
Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1.1, (London: Routledge Publishing 2004 ): pp.89–99
38
Palaima, ‘The Texas Professoriate and Public Political Discourse Before and After 9/11’: p.90
37
47
spectrum, catalysed by the emergence of globalisation and denouncement of
isolationism.39 Bush’s more intimate communicative strategies suppressed these new
fringe groups using emotive language and dramatic literary devices with wide appeal.
Intellectual opposition struggled to present an effective counter-argument to the
social and political mainstream like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin had when
Franklin Roosevelt was in office. Bush capitalised on this polarity in the intellectual
sphere to assert his own radical foreign policy ideologies through intimate and
dramatic rhetoric that verified the notion of a transition away from the formal
register and candid tone employed in Roosevelt and Johnson’s public address.
The mass media supplemented the success of Bush’s intimate and dramatic
rhetoric in 2001, projecting the President’s dynamic, evocative response to the
events of 9/11. Contrary to Roosevelt, who had harnessed radio exposure through
‘Fireside Chats’ to directly address the national population, Bush adopted mass
media as an indirect extension of his neo-conservative communicative strategies.
Gallup polls exhibited Bush’s harnessing of public support in the aftermath of 9/11.
The President’s approval rating increased from 39% to a peak 90% between
September 7 and September 21, 2001.40
The projection of the 9/11 attacks on television screens nationwide through news
programming subjected the United States’ population to the figurative notion of
America’s newfound vulnerability. This notion is substantiated by academic Staci
Rhine’s research on the Bush administration’s influence on mass media:
39
Manuel Castells, “Globalization and changing cultural identities,” Journal of Contemporary Culture,
(Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2006): p.63
40
‘Presidential Approval Ratings - George W. Bush’, Gallup, 2009. Online.
URL: http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx. (8
August 2012)
48
“The Pew Research Center asked a random sample of American
adults…immediately after [9/11] which medium they turned to first for
news about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, 88 percent said
“television”…an instrument of simplicity in a world of complexity…the
stories are often framed around the [government’s] administration, its
goals and its statements.”41
Professor Daniel R. Labrecque also validated the media’s influence as an indirect
communicative strategy of federal government. Labrecque examined mass media’s
potential to dictate which topics dominated public attention, examining the media’s
coverage of Bush’s rhetoric between 2002 and 2006. He credited the President’s
‘rhetoric of fear’ as a propellant of widespread vulnerability in the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks, suggesting: “when the level of fear in the political climate is low, the
level of fear rhetoric in the president’s campaign speech is high.”42 This inverse
correlation saw Bush invoke dramatic, intimate language to sustain national fear and
increase his approval rating. This ‘rally effect’ united citizens against forces that
threatened the traditional model of the United States. The fear that Franklin D.
Roosevelt sought to eradicate from society using his rhetoric was the same emotion
Bush empowered though consistent attention on a public platform. This revelation
discredits scholarly claims of rhetorical consistency across the twentieth-century,
such as Barbara Hinckley’s assertion of similarity between different rhetorical
41
Staci Rhine, Stephen Bennett and Richard Flickinger, ‘After 9/11: Television Viewers, Newspaper
Readers and Public Opinion,’ The Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
(Boston, MA: The American Political Science Association, 2002): p.4, p.12, p.13
David R. Gergen, ‘Diplomacy in a Television Age: The Dangers of Teledemocracy’, The Media and
Foreign Policy, ed. Simon Serfaty, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1990): p.50
42
Daniel R. Labrecque, Fearing Terror: The Effects of the Political Climate on George W. Bush’s Use of
Fear Rhetoric, (Storrs, CT: University of Connecticut, 2009).
49
models of the U.S. presidency across time.43
Bush’s declining approval rating correlated with the rising number of terms from
the semantic fields of violence and warfare in mainstream outlets New York Times,
USA Today, and The Washington Post. This relationship suggested Bush used
rhetoric and the mass media to manipulate the public’s perception of foreign policy.
“Terrorist,” “Terrorism,” “Al Qaeda,” and “Osama Bin Laden” were the most
prominent examples language pertaining to a ‘rhetoric of fear’ in these
publications.44 A 7.21% increase in the ratio of sentences containing fear rhetoric to
total sentences issued by the President between 2002 and 2006 verified Bush efforts
to use ‘rhetoric of fear’ and an intimate register of language to cultivate political
support. Similarly, Bush’s falling approval rating paralleled the drop in sample
audiences’ perceived likelihood of terrorism. In late 2001, 85% of a sample audience
declared a domestic terrorist attack ‘Very likely,’ compared to 35% in late 2005.45
Whereas Roosevelt and Johnson applied formal rhetoric to inform and persuade
the passage of legislation, Bush used rhetoric to deceptively assert a neoconservative national ideology. Roosevelt, especially, had used ‘Fireside Chats’ to
distinguish his voice from the media and directly address the national audience. Bush
used mass media to promote a neo-conservative foreign policy using an intentional,
intimate and dramatic ‘rhetoric of fear/war’. Formal support eventually allowed
43
Hinckley, The Symbolic Presidency: p.133
Labrecque, Fearing Terror: p.8
45
Lydia Saad, ‘Americans' Fear of Terrorism in U.S. Is Near Low Point,’ Gallup, 2011. Online.
URL: http://www.gallup.com/poll/149315/americans-fear-terrorism-near-low-point.aspx (14
October 2012)
44
50
Bush to control an inflated military budget46 and pass the Patriot Act; indicators of
neo-conservatism’s prominence. These measures empowered Bush’s status as
President and Commander-in-Chief. Compared with the candid, almost understated
rhetoric of Roosevelt, or the confident debate of Lyndon Johnson’s “The American
Promise”, Bush’s emotive language exaggerated the truth to instil neo-conservative
values. Such a transition represented President’s evolving rhetoric of style between
1933 and 2001 in periods of threat to national security.
46
‘Big boost for US military spending’, BBC News, 24 January 2002. Online.
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1778681.stm. (10 October 2012)
51
Conclusion.
Analysing nuances of Roosevelt, Johnson and Bush’s crisis rhetoric, this study
reveals an evolutionary transition from a methodological and precise use of language
in communicative strategies to a more informal and emotive alternative. Figurative
language and personal sentiments became some of the more popular facets of the
U.S. President’s rhetoric as the twentieth century progressed. In contrast, U.S.
national leaders discarded systematic and impersonal tactics as antiquated forms of
communication that no longer engaged as effectively with the United States’ national
population in times of crisis or threat to national security.
Insight into the development of crisis rhetoric also allows one to hypothesise the
long-term direction of the President’s interaction with the national population. The
sustained empowerment of American institutions and emotive depiction of national
threats will continue to dictate interaction between the two parties. Evidence of
continued intimate and dramatic rhetoric already exists in today’s Presidential
television debates, political rallies and promotional campaign videos; ingrained into
social media services through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. As an example,
President Barack Obama’s first campaign video of 2012 incorporated the same firstperson plural narrative voice that Bush applied in post-9/11 foreign policy rhetoric.1
The video promoted Obama’s leadership as a pseudo-collaborative effort with the
national population, similar to Bush’s personalised account of the 9/11 attacks.
In addition to political ideology or the influence of mass media, the diminished
1
‘Obama Campaign Ad: Read My Plan,’ (27 September 2012) Online. YouTube.com
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZJ5K0zo7dc (15 February 2013)
52
role of the intellectual in federal government has also coincided with the President’s
direction towards more intimate and dramatic communicative strategies. Tevi Troy, a
senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, cited Roosevelt’s use of a ‘Brain Trust,’ elite
academic intellectuals who “helped…design the programmatic substance of the New
Deal and to shape the administration's early case for it.”2 Johnson’s, however,
deviated from the traditional norms of intellectual assistance. Tension between
Johnson and intellectuals on crisis issues including the civil rights campaign and the
Vietnam War converted leading academic intellectuals from affiliates of the federal
government to pioneers of liberalism.3 Bush formally discarded the notion of
external intellectual advisors, selecting advisors that shared his government ideology,
as Troy alluded to:
“Bush [drew] on the conservative intellectual community that had
developed as an alternative to the increasingly liberal world of the
academy…religiously inclined and culturally conservative writers and
scholars who embodied…"compassionate conservatism."4
Analysis of the polarised intellectual response to Bush’s extreme neoconservative
foreign policy ideology substantiates this claim. Professor Stephen Zunes
highlighted this disparity between the Bush administration and external intellectuals,
conveying the cost at which ideological opponents spoke out against neoconservative militarisation:
2
Tevi Troy, ‘Bush, Obama and the Intellectuals’, 3 (2010) Online. National Affairs.
URL: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20100317_Troy.pdf (18 February 2013)
3
Donald R. Palm, ‘Intellectuals and the Presidency: Eric Goldman in the Lyndon B. Johnson White
House,’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 26.3 (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 1996): pp.708-724
4
Tevi Troy, ‘Bush, Obama and the Intellectuals’, 3 (2010) Online. National Affairs.
URL: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20100317_Troy.pdf
53
“[The federal government] portray our analysis as being the result of a
calculated ideological agenda or…a perverse subculture…caus[-ing]
political leaders, journalists and millions of ordinary citizens to not trust
some of the country's most critical intellectual resources in formulating
policies in the subsequent decade”.5
Zunes’ claim can be tied to the Presidency’s heightened exposure and interaction
with the national population, following mass media’s growth. In light of mass
media’s expansion, the government no longer relied on intellectuals to convey the
public’s interests. Professor Damon Linker alluded to Bush’s personalised rhetoric as
an alternative means of engaging with the national audience:
“…[Bush’s] economically libertarian and socially conservative policies to
his swaggering gait, mannered Southern drawl, and studied
inarticulateness — was intended to convey the message that he was "one
of us," an average American bringing his hard-won common sense to
bear on the most challenging problems of our time…”6
The decline of independent intellectuals communicating the nation’s needs to the
President between 1933 and 2001 coincided with an increasingly intimate and
dramatic rhetorical style in public speech. This suggests crisis rhetoric’s evolution is,
partially, a consolatory response the intellectual’s decreased role in federal
5
Stephen Zunes, ‘The Legacy of 9/11 and the War on Intellectuals,’ Truthout, 2011.
URL: http://truth-out.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=3247:the-legacy-of-911-andthe-war-on-intellectuals. (12 September 2012)
6
Damon Linker, ‘Against Common Sense,’ November 30 2009. Online. The New Republic.
URL: http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/damon-linker/against-common-sense (19 February 2013)
54
government. The dichotomy between the President and national intellectual forces
between 1933 and 2001 would be grounds for further study beyond this project.
An increasingly intimate relationship between the federal leader and the public
validates the project’s thesis, exhibiting the gradual reformation of communicative
strategies in federal office. Economic depression, national warfare, the formalisation
of the civil rights campaign, terrorism and the development of mass media impacted
communication between the president and the national population. Although all three
Presidents demonstrated proactive political ideologies in response to threats to
national security, their rhetorical styles are shaped in reaction to a complex
combination of the period’s national context and each President’s political ideologies.
Changes to the nation’s economy, social landscape and foreign policy combined with
developing mass media to influence rhetorical strategy. This suggests that each
President’s choice of language and the ideologies they perpetuated were reactive
measures. Roosevelt’s formal, measured rhetoric candidly rationalised centralised
government and deconstructed isolationism as a foreign policy ideology in the
aftermath of a foreign attack on Pearl Harbor. Johnson’s more conversational debate
rhetoric paralleled his interventionist ‘Great Society’ domestic reforms. Bush’s
emotive rhetoric dramatised the scale and threat of international terrorist outfits to
justify his neoconservative approach to foreign policy. Beyond the basic intent to
protect the U.S., these former Presidents exhibited separate rhetorical styles and
political agendas in periods of threat to national security that contradicted Craig and
Kathy Smith’s assertion of “an unusually concordant value system”7 in Presidential
public speech.
7
Smith and Smith, “Presidential values and public priorities,” Presidential Studies Quarterly: p.749
55
Whilst certain parameters dictated that only three U.S. Presidents could be
examined in depth, brief allusions toward other Presidential figures also verify the
development of intimate and dramatic rhetorical strategies during periods of threat to
national security. Former president Ronald Reagan, the ‘Great Communicator’, was
another modern proponent of figurative language. Reagan harnessed abstract
concepts including religion in his Cold War rhetoric. Michael Weiler and W. Barnett
Pearce’s research supported this claim, revealing “over half (59%) of the discourse
in [Reagan’s] seminal speeches and 48% of the same in his State of the Union
speeches focus on themes of civil religion.”8 Current U.S. President Barack Obama
continued the transition towards intimate and dramatic rhetoric in his 2013
inauguration speech. Acknowledging the nation’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as
well as national economic recession, Obama applied rhetorical strategies including
individual analogy and the characterisation of the United States: ““a little girl born
into the bleakest poverty,” “America must choose between caring…and investing.”9
Obama’s figurative and emotive register of language reaffirms that intimate and
dramatic rhetorical strategies have become a central part of the U.S. President’s
crisis rhetoric, an evolution from the informative and literal language used by
Roosevelt in 1933.
8
Schonhardt-Bailey et al., ‘Yes, Ronald Reagan's Rhetoric Was Unique,’: p.484
Michael Weiler and W. Barnett Pearce, “Ceremonial Discourse: The Rhetorical Ecology of the Reagan
Administration.” In Reagan and Public Discourse in America, ed. M. Weiler and W. B. Pearce.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992): 29
9
Barack Obama, ‘Inaugural Address,’ January 21, 2013. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T.
Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
URL: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=102827 (February 18 2013)
56
As a contribution to the intellectual discussion on the content and format of crisis
rhetoric, this study suggests direct, personal and dramatic rhetorical strategies
suppressed intellectual criticism and impartial media coverage of economic, racial
and foreign policy crisis, allowing the President to assert his ideological political
agenda on the national population, independent of external outlets that may criticise
or restrict his message.
57
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