Library of Presidential Rhetoric – serie

On September 3, 1919, Woodrow Wilson embarked upon one of the most ambitious and controversial speaking tours in the history of American politics: a grueling 8,000-mile, twenty-two-day tour across the Midwest and Far West in support of the League of Nations. Historians still debate Wilson's motivations for touring, but most agree with Thomas Bailey that the tour proved a ""disastrous blunder."" Not only did Wilson collapse before completing it but the treaty likely would have been defeated even if the tour had succeeded. In this masterful work, J. Michael Hogan offers the first detailed analysis of Wilson's speeches on the tour, including the most celebrated speech of the campaign, his address in Pueblo, Colorado. Assessing the tour in light of Wilson's own scholarly writings, Hogan provides a new understanding of this watershed event in the history of American public address. Over the course of the tour, Hogan argues, Wilson abandoned his own principles of oratorical statesmanship and increasingly resorted to the techniques of the propagandist and the demagogue. In the process, he subverted what he himself called the ""common counsel"" of public deliberation and foreshadowed some of the worst tendencies of the modern rhetorical presidency.

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States... Thus began not only the first of Franklin Roosevelt's celebrated radio addresses, collectively called Fireside Chats, but also the birth of the media era of the rhetorical presidency. Humorist Will Rogers later said that the president took ""such a dry subject as banking and made everyone understand it, even the bankers."" Roosevelt also took a giant step toward restoring confidence in the nation's banks and, eventually, in its economy. Amos Kiewe tells the story of the First Fireside Chat, the context in which it was constructed, the events leading to the radio address, and the impact it had on the American people and the nation's economy. Roosevelt told America, ""The success of our whole national program depends, of course, on the cooperation of the public - on its intelligent support and its use of a reliable system."" Kiewe succinctly demonstrates how the rhetoric of the soon-to-be-famous First Fireside Chat laid the groundwork for that support and the recovery of American capitalism.

Ronald Reagan's inability to sway the American public and press with his speeches at the former site of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and, later, at the U.S. Air Force base in Bitburg, Germany, has been marked by many as the first major failure of the Great Communicator's second term. Richard J. Jensen highlights the qualities of the speeches that make them, in his estimation, models of presidential discourse. But he also looks at the setting for the speeches - political and historical - that doomed them despite their eloquence. Telescoping in from the broadest perspective on Reagan's rhetorical career; to the circumstances surrounding the decision to make the speeches; to the drafting, delivery, and reception of the texts, Jensen contrasts these two speeches with two very successful ones Reagan had delivered in Normandy the previous year. The result is a vivid picture of a man and a moment in history. Students and all those interested in public discourse and the presidency will deeply benefit from this mature work by a major scholar of rhetoric.

In his televised and widely watched speech to the nation on November 3, 1969, Pres. Richard M. Nixon introduced a phrase—“silent majority”—and a policy—Vietnamization of the war effort—that echo down to the present day. Nixon’s appearance on this night framed the terms in which much of the subsequent civil conflict and military strategy would be understood.Rhetorical scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell analyzes this critically important speech in light of the historical context and its centrality to three other speeches–two earlier and one the following spring, when the announcement of the US invasion of Cambodia brought a far different response. She also sheds light on a discourse that generated much heat in a nation already seriously divided in its support of the war in Vietnam.The first single volume dedicated to this speech, this addition to the distinguished Library of Presidential Rhetoric provides the speech text, a summary of its context, its rhetorical elements, and the disciplinary analyses that have developed.