1st Edition

Rethinking the Rhetorical Presidency

Edited By Jeffrey Friedman, Shterna Friedman Copyright 2012
    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    296 Pages
    by Routledge

    In The Rhetorical Presidency, Jeffrey Tulis argues that the president’s relationship to the public has changed dramatically since the Constitution was enacted: while previously the president avoided any discussions of public policy so as to avoid demagoguery, the president is now expected to go directly to the public, using all the tools of rhetoric to influence public policy. This has effectively created a "second" Constitution that has been layered over, and in part contradicts, the original one. In our volume, scholars from different subfields of political science extend Tulis’s perspective to the judiciary and Congress; locate the origins of the constitutional change in the Progressive Era; highlight the role of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and the mass media in transforming the presidency; discuss the nature of demagoguery and whether, in fact, rhetoric is undesirable; and relate the rhetorical presidency to the public’s ignorance of the workings of a government more complex than the Founders imagined.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society.

    Introduction

    1. The Rhetorical Presidency in Historical and Conceptual Context, Jeffrey Friedman, government, University of Texas, Austin

    Essays

    2. The Practical Origins of the Rhetorical Presidency, Terri Bimes, political science, University of California, Berkeley

    3. Demagoguery, Statesmanship, and the American Presidency, James W. Ceaser, political science, University of Virginia

    4. The Layered Rhetorical Presidency, David A. Crockett, political science, Trinity University

    5. The Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency, John J. Diiulio, Jr., political science, University of Pennsylvania

    6. The Idea of an Un-Rhetorical Presidency, Bryan Garsten, political science, Yale University

    7. The Rhetorical Presidency and the Contemporary Media Environment, Susan Herbst, public policy, Georgia Tech University

    8. A Rhetorical Judiciary, Too? Kathleen Hall Jamieson, communications, University of Pennsylvania and Jeffrey Gottfried,

    9. Presidents’ Party Affiliations and their Communication Strategies, Mel Laracey, political science, University of San Antonio

    10. The Rhetorical Presidency and the Partisan Echo Chamber, Nicole Mellow, political science, Williams College

    11. The Rhetorical and Administrative Presidencies, Sidney M. Milkis, political science, University of Virginia

    12. The Puzzle of The Rhetorical Presidency, Thomas Pangle, political science, University of Texas, Austin

    13. Presidential Rhetoric from Wilson to "W": Popular Politics Meets Recalcitrant Reality, Richard M. Pious, political science, Barnard College

    14. When the President Speaks, How Do the People Respond?, Paul J. Quirk, political science, University of British Columbia

    15. Allegories of Reading Tulis, Diane Rubenstein, government, Cornell University

    16. "Publicity" and the Progressive-Era Origins of Modern Politics, Adam D. Sheingate, political science, Johns Hopkins University

    Reply

    17. The Rhetorical Presidency in Retrospect, Jeffrey K. Tulis, government, University of Texas, Austin

    Biography

    Jeffrey Friedman, a visiting scholar in the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, received a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. He is the author of Engineering the Financial Crisis (Penn, 2011, with Wladimir Kraus) and the editor of The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered (Yale, 1996), What Caused the Financial Crisis (Penn, 2011), and The Nature of Belief Systems (Routledge, 2011).

    Shterna Friedman received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa. They are, respectively, the editor and managing editor of Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society and the co-editors of Political Knowledge (Routledge, 2012).