The Bully Pulpit, Presidential Speeches, and the Shaping of Public Policy 1498501966, 9781498501965

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The Bully Pulpit, Presidential Speeches, and the Shaping of Public Policy

The Bully Pulpit, Presidential Speeches, and the Shaping of Public Policy Edited by Jeffrey S. Ashley and Marla J. Jarmer

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2016 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-0195-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-0196-5 (ebook) TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To all of the uppity women who have come before me and who I have known, may I someday live up to your examples. To my colleagues, teachers, and students, thank you for the constant education. I hope to never graduate. To all of my friends and family, thank you for your love, kindness, and encouragement in all of my endeavors. To Poli-Sci Guy and Rhet-Gyrl, keep fighting the good fight, for all you hold dear. The battle will surely be worth it. To ATJ, I’ll love you forever, and I’ll like you for always... And, to CMJ, I love you most. It’s in print now, so it has to be true. — Marla Jarmer To my precious grandmother who is the matriarch of our family and has been alive for every president in this work except for Teddy. To my mom who has always been by my side through the lows and highs of life. To my daughters, Rachel and Tessa, you make me so proud! To Mj for helping me learn about myself and encouraging me to grow. — Jeff Ashley

Contents

Introduction

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1 Theodore Roosevelt: Conservationism Melinda A. Mueller 2 William Howard Taft and the Conservation of the Republican Party in 1912 Eric Morris 3 Woodrow Wilson: Women’s Suffrage Marla J. Jarmer 4 Warren G. Harding: Return to Normalcy David H. Carwell 5 Calvin Coolidge: Regime Articulation through Expectations Joshua M. Scacco 6 Herbert Clark Hoover: Farm Relief Stephen F. Robar 7 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Inauguration of the New Deal Richard G. Frederick 8 Harry S. Truman: Veto of Taft-Hartley Act Michael Shirley 9 Dwight Eisenhower: Farewell Address Paul Franz Testa 10 John F. Kennedy: Civil Rights Marita Gronnvoll 11 Lyndon Baines Johnson: Vietnam and “Peace Without Conquest” Edmund Wehrle

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15 27 41 53 67 81 93 103 115 125

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12 Richard Nixon and American Indian Policy Jeffrey S. Ashley 13 Gerald Ford: Plan to Whip Inflation Now Jason A. Edwards 14 Jimmy Carter: Human Rights as “The Soul of Our Foreign Policy” Teresa Maria Linda Scholz 15 Ronald Reagan and American Drug Policy Emily Schnurr 16 George H. W. Bush and the Persian Gulf War Elizabeth A. Dudash-Buskirk and Nicholas J. Nickols 17 Bill Clinton: Race and the Crisis of the American Spirit Kevin R. Anderson 18 George W. Bush: Terrorism and American Security Dani May Nier-Weber 19 Barack Obama and Hate Crime Legislation: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act Grant Walsh-Haines

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Bibliography

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Index

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About the Editors and Contributors

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153 167 179 191 203 217

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This is a book about how presidents use the power of words to promote agendas and shape public policy. While American presidents have a delineated number of formal, constitutional powers, they also wield a number of informal powers and tools. Among these, one of the most important is the presidential speech. This informal power places the president in a unique position to address Congress or take his/her message directly to the American people. This allows the president to frame issues, define problems, set agendas, and shape policy in a way offered to no other government official. Presidents, especially modern presidents with TV, newspapers, radio, and, of course, the internet are able to carry their message to a large number of people in a very short amount of time. They understand that words are powerful and that language carries meaning. If done properly, the president can appeal to logic, emotion, or whatever is necessary to persuade. Thus, presidents, especially modern presidents, choose their words and manner of delivery with great care. In doing so, whether they realize it or not, presidents are continuing a tradition of rhetoric that has been studied for centuries. RHETORIC What is rhetoric? Simply put, rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion. The term sometimes appears to lack a precise definition because of multiple uses, such as the practice of speaking, the study of effective speaking, the use of language in order to persuade, effective writing, etc. Despite these slight variations, rhetoric is, and always has been, about persuasion and has been central to public affairs and government since before the time of Christ. This was especially true of ancient Greece where virtually every man of means in ix

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Greek society was expected to engage in public affairs through speeches and debates. Therefore, it only stands to reason that the study of rhetoric can be traced to speeches which, according to Bizell and Herzberg, are the format which allows the greatest opportunity to persuade and for “the sensual power of word magic to create belief.” 1 The Greek Rhetoricians laid the foundation for modern day political speech with the work of the Sophists and later philosophers such as Aristotle. From the very beginning, the study of rhetoric and speech was a political endeavor. All political decisions were made in The Forum, and these decisions were made after members took turns attempting to persuade the others on a particular course of action. Therefore, the manner of speech, the techniques employed, and the basic appeal were critical to political success. The Sophists were initially tutors who sold their services to those who wished to become better political speakers. Sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus travelled from place to place and charged those who could afford it for courses in oratory and persuasion. 2 They claimed that they could teach those who listened how to defend or debunk any position—even those positions that seemed untenable. They taught people how to make weak arguments appear to be strong and, conversely, how to attack strong arguments in an attempt to make them look weak. 3 There is no denying that some of the tools of the Sophists can be found in modern political speaking. While Aristotle and Cicero are often viewed as the first to write on ways to enhance rhetorical skills, the first to formally address the enhancement of oratory were the Sophists. Following on the heels of the Sophists, is Aristotle who is generally considered the father of classical rhetorical study. While Aristotle did not completely abandon the tools of the Sophists, he felt that the role of the speaker was to both persuade and to convey truth. In attempting to develop a more deliberate attempt to break down the components of speech and persuasion, Aristotle, in his classic treatise Rhetorica establishes three areas of appeal: ethos, logos, and pathos. 4 • Ethos is establishing credibility with the audience. Why should they listen to someone who knows nothing about the topic, has no experience, or does not represent their interests? Early rhetoricians felt that this should be the first part of a speech—after all, if one did not establish credibility, there was no point in continuing. There are various strategies that speakers can employ here. They can discuss their accomplishments and experiences in the topic which will place them in the position of the expert. They can also downplay such accomplishments if they feel that the audience will view them as elitist and out of touch with reality. Therefore, ethos is an art—the art of reading the audience and establishing trust. Once trust had

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been established, speakers need to move the audience in a desired direction. In order to do this, an appeal must be made to pathos and logos. • Logos is the appeal to reason or logic. This does not mean that an argument is inherently logical, but rather that it appeals to what the audience will see as a logical progression of thought. Discussing causes, consequences, and potential solutions to problems are generally seen as appeals to logos. To Aristotle and other philosophers, reason should be the primary area of appeal and all arguments should be won or lost on this basis alone, although they did recognize that there might be times when the audience was too uneducated or unsophisticated to fully grasp the logic of an argument, so pathos, or the appeal to emotion, could not be entirely discounted. • Pathos is the appeal to the sense of identity or interest of the audience and plays upon emotion. Love, pity, fear, anger, compassion, belonging, and so on are all emotions that humans can feel and are areas that can be reached through speech. Statements such as “friends” or “colleagues,” are attempts at creating a sense of identity and belonging and are geared toward pathos. Similarly, language that paints an image that elicits compassion or anger is also an appeal to pathos. The Roman, Cicero, adds to the understanding of political persuasion with what are often referred to as the five canons of rhetoric. According to Cicero, “There is a certain political science which is made up of many and important particulars. A very great and extensive portion of it is artificial eloquence, which men call rhetoric. . . . But the duty of this faculty appears to be to speak in a manner suitable to persuading men; the end of it is to persuade by language.” 5 Such persuasion, to Cicero, is enhanced through the proper structure and delivery of the speech. While not discounting the earlier contributions of the Sophists or Aristotle, he provides us with a formula for constructing a persuasive speech. This formula has the speech structured around five prescribed components which are invention (inventio), arrangement (disposition), style (elocution), memory (memoria), and delivery (actio). 6 • Invention is the heart of the speech. The introduction of certain ideas and presenting them as something which is true, or at least probable or plausible is the goal of invention. By presenting a problem in a certain way, the orator is then able to also present probable solutions that will resonate with the audience. • Arrangement is the framework for the speech and the order in which ideas, facts, an so on are laid out. The idea is to move the audience from one place to another in a logical manner which reinforces the goal (invention) of the speech—persuasion and support for a particular course of action.

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The invention is the idea and the arrangement is the roadmap for getting the point across in the most persuasive manner. • Style, or elocution, is the use of rhetorical tools such as metaphor, simile, allusion, and so on, and words which will enhance the message. Style is where we often see the introduction of certain catch phrases that become attached to the idea. This is often the hook or what people often take away from a speech. • Memory is practicing a speech so that it comes across effortlessly. Beyond simply memorizing a specific speech, however, memory in this sense involves obtaining additional information such as quotations or statistics that can be drawn upon if necessary. • Delivery is the development and practice of the appropriate manner for connecting with a particular audience. Given this topic (invention), arrangement, and choice of language (style), how is this best presented? What manner of voice does the speaker use? Are certain hand gestures or pronunciations appropriate? Is shouting or a more subdued approach likely to appeal to this particular audience? These are questions for delivery. POLITICAL RHETORIC: PROBLEM DEFINITION, ISSUES FRAMING, AND SYMBOLISM Presidents therefore utilize the structure, tools, and approach of the Sophists, Aristotle, Cicero, and other rhetoricians in order to persuade their audiences that a given policy is the right one for the nation. They do this by using the power of the word to frame issues and define problems in such a way that appeals to emotion and logic and that predetermines the solution (the policy that he/she wishes to promote). Issue framing or problem definition is the intentional use of words or symbols in a manner that is likely to elicit agreement and response. Such activity is commonplace and frames are a political reality and omnipresent, yet many people fail to recognize the subtle manipulation of the mind that takes place. Issues, actions, and policies take on meaning and the public is able to determine whether or not something is “good” through language. 7 The way in which the issue is presented and framed, and how the problem is defined, is vitally important because the frame dictates how something is received by the public and decision makers, and the definition of the problem will largely dictate any potential solution to a perceived problem. In this, language cannot be understated. For example, when those opposed to public schools, unions, and so on, and in favor of market mechanisms such as competition and privatization, the “schools of choice” movement gained ground largely because the word choice carries so much weight. After all, who does not like to have choices? The frame is one in which we

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either continue the status quo, which is framed as a failure, or we do something else. The problem is defined as the result of no competition and the inability of parents to have a say in the future of their children. Such a frame and definition of the problem opens the door to the preferred solution, or policy, which is the expansion of vouchers, charter schools, and other options which will force competition. The problem is defined as a lack of competition and the status quo that is protected by the inability for parents to place their children in the school of their choosing. The only real option, then, is to allow for choice through charter schools, vouchers, etc. Scholars such as Riker, Schattschneider, and Lakaff have long known that, as a general course of action, political actors should use framing as a rhetorical strategy to focus on those aspects of an action or issue that will resonate with the public and give them an advantage. 8 Others, such as Rochefort, Birnbaum and Murray, and Light, have taken this and devoted attention to how the issue frame and definition of the problem has been applied in specific areas such as social welfare policy, 9 social security, 10 and tax reform. 11 Above all, these scholars—led by Deborah Stone, Murray Edelman, and George Lakaff, to name a few 12—note the critical role of language and controlling rhetoric in political decision making. THE BOOK The chapters that follow examine speeches from every president beginning with Theodore Roosevelt and continuing through Barack Obama in order to show how they have each used carefully constructed speeches in order to push agendas and get their policies enacted. Roosevelt is picked as the point of embarkation because he truly is a transitional figure when it comes to rhetoric and the presidency. Jeffrey Tulis, author of The Rhetorical Presidency, notes that beginning with the Roosevelt administration, rhetoric and speaking became a primary tool in exercising presidential leadership. 13 Such a view is reinforced by David Greenberg, who states that, “Unlike most of his predecessors, TR grasped that effective presidential leadership required shaping of public opinion.” 14 Therefore, it becomes apparent that Theodore Roosevelt makes a perfect point of departure for our study. Relying on the viewpoint of contributors from a wide variety of academic disciplines—political science, history, English, and communication studies—each of the subsequent chapters will begin with background on the issue/problem the president is addressing followed by a transcript of their speech. The chapter will then include an analysis of how the speech appealed to logic and/or emotion, how the speech was used to frame an issue, and how the speech attempted to define a problem in order to encourage movement toward a given policy. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of how

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successful the speech really was in accomplishing the goal. In the end, it will provide us with a broader understanding of presidential power, the bully pulpit, and the power of words in making or breaking public policy. NOTES 1. Bizzell, P., and B. Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000, p. 6). 2. Barret, H., The Sophists (Novato, Ca: Chandler and Sharp, 1987), p. 6. 3. Kerferd, G. B., The Sophistic Movement (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 32–33. 4. Roberts, W. Rhys (trans), Rhetorica: The Works of Aristotle, Vol. 11. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). 5. Yong, C. D. (trans), De Inventione: The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero (London: George Bell & Sons, 1888). 6. Ibid. 7. Edelman, M., “Political Language and Political Reality,” in PS, Winter 1985. 8. See, for example, Riker, W. H., The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986); Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (Hindsdale, IL: Dryden, 1960); Lakaff, G., Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Rochefort, D., and R. Cobb, The Politics of Problem Definition (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1994). 9. Rochefort, D. American Social Welfare Policy: Dynamics of Formulation and Change (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986). 10. Light, P., Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform (New York: Random House, 1985). 11. Murray, A., and J. Birnbaum, Showdown at Gucci Gulch (New York: Random House, 1987). 12. See Edelman, M., “Political Language and Political Reality,” PS, Winter 1985; Lakaff, G., Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and Stone, D., Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988). 13. Tulis, J., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). 14. Greenberg, D., “Beyond the Bully Pulpit,” The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2011, p. 24.

Chapter One

Theodore Roosevelt Conservationism Melinda A. Mueller

THE BACKGROUND Through much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, environmental policy was not a dominant theme on the U.S. political agenda. Early colonial policies limiting hunting and logging reflected the settlers’ recognition that resources were not limitless. 1 However, as the nation expanded, bolstered by Manifest Destiny, policy-makers and citizens were optimistic that westward expansion would provide the necessary resources to maintain our economic and social interests. However, a number of factors led to a shift in those beliefs. The rapid development and urbanization during the Industrial Revolution led to an exponential growth in the taking of natural resources, including timber, minerals, species, and water. At the same time, as levels of education increased and modes transportation expanded, particularly for the very wealthy, more Americans were able to better appreciate the unique natural beauty in the sparsely populated western states and territories. 2 As the nineteenth century neared its end, two key philosophies about environmental policy developed in the United States. Conservationists argued that scientific management must be used to conserve natural resources for their continued use by future generations. Gifford Pinchot, a leading conservationist forester and policymaker, argued that natural resources should be regulated “for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time.” 3 On the other hand, preservationists, led by naturalist John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, argued against the exploitation of any natural resources, in favor of protecting nature for its educational and recreational value. 4 These two themes were not necessarily mutually exclusive, and 1

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were both important in shaping modern environmental policy. Ultimately though, conservationists were more flexible in environmental policy, allowing regulated natural resource use for economic development, while preservationists preferred to restrict natural resource use. Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency demonstrates how the conservationists’ and preservationists’ philosophies could both bring about significant policy changes. Theodore Roosevelt’s ascendency to the presidency in 1901 brought together a number of opportunities and policy problems, leading to significant changes in U.S. environmental policy. Roosevelt was well-situated to lead on the issue of the environment. He was wealthy, well-educated, and welltraveled, having lived in the western states for some time. Roosevelt was essentially a conservationist, having faith that science could help us manage natural resources. In addition, many natural resources—especially timber— were in a state of crisis, demanding state and federal action. The issue of resource overuse was a significant concern for the nation. At the same time, Roosevelt’s commitment to national parks like Yosemite suggests a strong preservationist streak. In 1903, Roosevelt visited Yosemite, guided by naturalist John Muir, who encouraged the president to protect unique ecosystems, such as the giant sequoias in Yosemite. 5 Finally, the nation was on a brink of a communications revolution. Roosevelt was well aware that while his rhetoric about the environment was aimed at an elite audience, national newspapers could bring his ideas to the masses, providing him with important political support. 6 Roosevelt was the first president to truly lead on the environment. His reliance on scientists, like Gifford Pinchot, rather than partisan politicians, indicated a shift in policymaking. Under Roosevelt, Muir served as the first chief of the United States Forest Service, where he argued that scientific management could preserve and conserve natural resources for future use. 7 Roosevelt addressed natural resources in his first State of the Union Address, indicating his long-term commitment to the environment. 8 Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt had acted to protect the environment, creating new national parks and the National Forest Service, and signing the Antiquities Act of 1906, providing presidents with the power to declare national monuments. Much of Roosevelt’s work was at the national level, yet he recognized the next step was to expand commitment at the state and local level. In 1908, approaching the end of his second term in office, Roosevelt placed conservationist policies on the agenda through a White House conference. The Conference of Governors on the Conservation of Natural Resources included governors, members of Congress, Roosevelt’s chief advisor, Gifford Pinchot, a specialist in conservation management, and other leaders on this issue. Roosevelt prepared a speech to persuade the states to take on this issue, as a matter of national crisis and patriotic duty. While his primary goal focused on protecting the environment, Roosevelt’s words and

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rhetoric also reflect expansive presidential powers, which would ultimately develop a major shift in policymaking and power in American politics. THE SPEECH 9 Governors of the several States; and Gentlemen: I welcome you to this Conference at the White House. You have come hither at my request, so that we may join together to consider the question of the conservation and use of the great fundamental sources of wealth of this Nation. . . . With the rise of peoples from savagery to civilization . . . there comes a steadily increasing growth of the amount demanded by this average man from the actual resources of the country. . . . [A]t the same time that there comes that increase in what the average man demands from the resources, he is apt to grow to lose the sense of his dependence upon nature. He lives in big cities. He deals in industries that do not bring him in close touch with nature. He does not realize the demands he is making upon nature. For instance, he finds, as he has found before in many parts of this country, that it is cheaper to build his house of concrete than of wood, learning . . . that he has allowed the woods to become exhausted. That is happening . . . in parts of this country at this very time. . . . From the first beginnings of civilization . . . the industrial progress of the world has gone on slowly, with occasional set-backs, but on the whole steadily, through tens of centuries to the present day. . . . But of late the rapidity of the process has increased at such a rate that more space has been actually covered during the century and a quarter occupied by our national life than during the preceding six thousand years. . . . When the founders of this nation met at Independence Hall in Philadelphia the conditions of commerce had not fundamentally changed from what they were when the Phoenician keels first furrowed the lonely waters of the Mediterranean. . . . It is almost impossible for us in this day to realize how little our Revolutionary ancestors knew of the great store of natural resources whose discovery and use have been such vital factors in the growth and greatness of this Nation, and how little they required to take from this store in order to satisfy their needs. Since then our knowledge and use of the resources of the present territory of the United States have increased a hundred-fold. Indeed, the growth of this Nation by leaps and bounds makes one of the most striking and important chapters in the history of the world. Its growth has been due to the rapid development, and alas that it should be said! to the rapid destruction, of our natural resources. Nature has supplied to us . . . and still supplies to us, more

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kinds of resources in a more lavish degree than has ever been the case at any other time or with any other people. . . . Yet our fathers, though they knew so little of the resources of the country, exercised a wise forethought in reference thereto. Washington clearly saw that the perpetuity of the States could only be secured by union, and that the only feasible basis of union was an economic one; in other words, that it must be based on the development and use of their natural resources. Accordingly, he helped to outline a scheme of commercial development, and by his influence an interstate waterways commission was appointed by Virginia and Maryland. . . . It was in Philadelphia that the representatives of all the States met for what was in its original conception merely a waterways conference; but when they had closed their deliberations the outcome was the Constitution which made the States into a nation. The Constitution . . . thus grew in large part out of the necessity for united action in the wise use of one of our natural resources. The wise use of all of our natural resources . . . is the great material question of today. I have asked you to come together now because the enormous consumption of these resources, and the threat of imminent exhaustion of some of them, due to reckless and wasteful use, once more calls for common effort, common action. We want to take action that will prevent the advent of a woodless age, and defer as long as possible the advent of an ironless age. Since the days when the Constitution was adopted, steam and electricity have revolutionized the industrial world. . . . The discovery and utilization of mineral fuels and alloys have given us the lead over all other nations in the production of steel. The discovery and utilization of coal and iron have given us our railways, and have led to such industrial development as has never before been seen. The vast wealth of lumber in our forests, the riches of our soils and mines, the discovery of gold and mineral oils, combined with the efficiency of our transportation, have made the conditions of our life unparalleled in comfort and convenience. . . . The steadily increasing drain on these natural resources has promoted to an extraordinary degree the complexity of our industrial and social life. . . . The demand for efficiency in the great task has given us vigor, effectiveness, decision, and power, and a capacity for achievement which in its own lines has never yet been matched. . . . This Nation began with the belief that its landed possessions were illimitable and capable of supporting all the people who might care to make our country their home; but already the limit of unsettled land is in sight, and indeed but little land fitted for agriculture now remains unoccupied. . . . We began with an unapproached heritage of forests; more than half of the timber is gone. We began with coal fields more extensive than those of any other

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nation and with iron ores regarded as inexhaustible, and many experts now declare that the end of both iron and coal is in sight. The mere increase in our consumption of coal during 1907 over 1906 exceeded the total consumption in 1876. . . . This is a striking fact: Thirty years went by, and the mere surplus of use of one year over the preceding year exceeded all that was used in 1876–and we thought we were pretty busy people even then. The enormous stores of mineral oil and gas are largely gone; and those Governors who have in their States cities built up by natural gas, where the natural gas has since been exhausted, can tell us something of what that means. Our natural waterways are not gone, but they have been so injured by neglect, and by the division of responsibility and utter lack of system in dealing with them, that there is less navigation on them now than there was fifty years ago. Finally, we began with soils of unexampled fertility, and we have so impoverished them by injudicious use and by failing to check erosion that their crop-producing power is diminishing instead of increasing. In a word, we have thoughtlessly, and to a large degree unnecessarily, diminished the resources upon which not only our prosperity but the prosperity of our children and our children’s children must always depend. We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources. . . . But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation. These questions do not relate only to the next century or to the next generation. One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men is foresight; we have to . . . exercise foresight for this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that foresight, dark will be the future! We should exercise foresight now, as the ordinarily prudent man exercises foresight in conserving and wisely using the property which contains the assurance of well-being for himself and his children. We want to see a man own his farm rather than rent it, because we want to see it an object to him to transfer it in better order to his children. . . . We need to exercise it in some fashion ourselves as a nation for the next generation. The natural resources . . . can be divided into two . . . classes. . . . Mines if used must necessarily be exhausted. . . . Therefore in dealing with the coal, the oil, the gas, the iron, the metals generally, all that we can do is to try to see that they are wisely used. . . . We can trust that it will be deferred long enough to enable the extraordinarily inventive genius of our people to devise means and methods for more or less adequately replacing what is lost; but the exhaustion is sure to come. The second class of resources consists of those which can not only be used in such manner as to leave them undiminished for our children, but can actually be improved by wise use. The soil, the forests, the waterways come

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in this category. Every one knows that a really good farmer leaves his farm more valuable at the end of his life than it was when he first took hold of it. So with the waterways. So with the forests. . . . [I]n dealing with the soil and its products man can improve on nature by compelling the resources to renew and even reconstruct themselves in such manner as to serve increasingly beneficial uses. . . . Just let me interject one word as to a particular type of folly of which it ought not to be necessary to speak. We stop wasteful cutting of timber; that of course makes a slight shortage at the moment. To avoid that slight shortage at the moment, there are certain people so foolish that they will incur absolute shortage in the future, and they are willing to stop all attempts to conserve the forests, because of course by wastefully using them at the moment we can for a year or two provide against any lack of wood. That is like providing for the farmer’s family to live sumptuously on the flesh of the milch cow. Any farmer can live pretty well for a year if he is content not to live at all the year after. We can . . . add enormous tracts of the most valuable possible agricultural land to the national domain by irrigation in the arid and semi-arid regions, and by drainage of great tracts of swamp land in the humid regions. We can . . . increase our transportation facilities by the canalization of our rivers so as to complete a great system of waterways on the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf coasts and in the Mississippi Valley, from the Great Plains to the Alleghenies, and from the northern lakes to the mouth of the mighty Father of Waters. But all these various uses of our natural resources are so closely connected that they should be coordinated, and should be treated as part of one coherent plan and not in haphazard and piecemeal fashion. We are coming to recognize . . . the right of the Nation to guard its own future in the essential matter of natural resources. In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change. As a people we have the right and the duty . . . of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources. . . . Any right thinking father earnestly desires and strives to leave his son both an untarnished name and a reasonable equipment for the struggle of life. So this Nation as a whole should earnestly desire and strive to leave to the next generation the national honor unstained and the national resources unexhausted. There are signs that both the Nation and the States are waking to a realization of this great truth—On March 10, 1908, the Supreme Court of Maine rendered an exceedingly important judicial decision. . . . in response to questions as to the right of the Legislature to restrict the cutting of trees on

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private land for the prevention of droughts and floods, the preservation of the natural water supply, and the prevention of the erosion of such lands, and the consequent filling up of rivers, ponds, and lakes. . . . Such a policy will preserve soil, forests, water power as a heritage for the children and the children’s children of the men and women of this generation; for any enactment that provides for the wise utilization of the forests, whether in public or private ownership, and for the conservation of the water resources of the country, must necessarily be legislation that will promote both private and public welfare; for flood prevention, water-power development, preservation of the soil, and improvement of navigable rivers are all promoted by such a policy of forest conservation. The opinion of the Maine Supreme Bench sets forth unequivocally the principle that the property rights of the individual are subordinate to the rights of the community, and especially that the waste of wild timber land derived originally from the State, involving as it would the impoverishment of the State and its People and thereby defeating a great purpose of government, may properly be prevented by State restrictions. The Court says that there are two reasons why the right of the public to control and limit the use of private property is peculiarly applicable to property in land: First, such property is not the result of productive labor, but is derived solely from the State itself, the original owner; second, the amount of land being incapable of increase, if the owners of large tracts can waste them at will without State restriction, the State and its people may be helplessly impoverished and one great purpose of government defeated. . . . We do not think the proposed legislation would operate to “take” private property within the inhibition of the Constitution. While it might restrict the owner of wild and uncultivated lands in his use of them, might delay his taking some of the product, might delay his anticipated profits and even thereby might cause him some loss of profit, it would nevertheless leave him his lands, their product and increase, untouched, and without diminution of title, estate, or quantity. He would still have large measure of control and large opportunity to realize values. He might suffer delay but not deprivation. . . . The proposed legislation . . . would be within the legislative power and would not operate as a taking of private property for which compensation must be made. The Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey has adopted a similar view, which has recently been sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States. In delivering the opinion of the Court on April 6, 1908, Mr. Justice Holmes said: The State as . . . representative of the interests of the public has a standing in court to protect the atmosphere, the water, and the forests within its territory, irrespective of the assent or dissent of the private owners of the land most immediately concerned. . . . It appears to us that few public interests are more

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obvious, indisputable and independent of particular theory than the interest of the public of a State to maintain the rivers that are wholly within it substantially undiminished, except by such drafts upon them as the guardian of the public welfare may permit for the purpose of turning them to a more perfect use. . . . Not as a dictum of law, which I cannot make, but as a dictum of moral, I wish to say that this applies to more than the forests and streams. The learned Justice proceeds: We are of opinion, further, that the constitutional power of the State to insist that its natural advantages shall remain unimpaired by its citizens is not dependent upon any nice estimate of the extent of present use or speculation as to future needs. The legal conception of the necessary is apt to be confined to somewhat rudimentary wants, and there are benefits from a great river that might escape a lawyer’s view. . . . Finally, let us remember that the conservation of our natural resources, though the gravest problem of today, is yet but part of another and greater problem to which this Nation is not yet awake, but to which it will awake in time, and with which it must hereafter grapple if it is to live—the problem of national efficiency, the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the Nation. When the People of the United States consciously undertake to raise themselves as citizens, and the Nation and the States in their several spheres, to the highest pitch of excellence in private, State, and national life, and to do this because it is the first of all the duties of true patriotism, then and not till then the future of this Nation, in quality and in time, will be assured. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Roosevelt recognized that his speech would reach millions of newspaper readers in addition the conference attendees. His rhetorical frames reflect his interest in influencing citizens as well as policymakers. Using repetition, Roosevelt consistently appealed to patriotism, civic duty, and a sense of cultured citizenship, as he calls upon his audience to attend to natural resources. He framed the United States as a great economic power, due to the benefits of industrialization, emphasizing how steel production, mineral extraction, and the railroad had all brought great “comfort and convenience” to the country. Citizens are unaware of their wastefulness, as growing urbanization caused them to be out of touch with nature. Once good citizens were made aware, however, they would naturally want to protect natural resources for their children and future generations to enjoy. Good citizens would sacrifice some “unrestricted individualism” for the good of their country. Good

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citizens have the “foresight” to protect resources for future generations. By consistently appealing to the positive qualities of patriotism and citizenship, Roosevelt presented an appealing frame to both his direct audience, and the wider mass audience. With repeated references to future generations, and “children’s children,” Roosevelt also framed his speech in conservationist thinking. He called for careful management of nonrenewable resources, such as coal, oil, and minerals. With renewable resources, such as water and timber, Roosevelt called for careful “coordination” and management. He did not ask listeners to give up their occupations or to abandon the market system, but to behave more prudently in how they use necessary resources, so that their occupation and the market system are sustainable. Here Roosevelt offers his audience implicit reassurance that their “way of life” would not dramatically change. Landowners would still enjoy their private land, facing restrictions rather than “takings.” Citizens would still generally enjoy the benefits of timber, iron ore, and mineral extraction. It’s notable that preservationists like Muir were not invited to attend this conference, whose emphasis on limited use would have likely created discord. 10 Finally, Roosevelt also used some rhetorical frames from preservationist thinking, though they did not dominate the speech. For instance, when speaking of the Constitutional power of a state to protect its natural resources, he stated that legal minds may define natural resources in terms of economic interests, or “rudimentary wants,” while “there are benefits from a river that might escape a lawyer’s view.” Here he appeals to the beauty of nature by considering the unmeasurable value of a river. This preservationist frame was important to help him convince stakeholders that nature had value beyond economic self-interest. Ultimately, conservationist frames dominate the preservationist frames in Roosevelt’s speech. Since conservationist policy allowed “wise use” over “restricted use,” it was more popular among states and industries, and was a more acceptable policy change for those present at the conference. Had Roosevelt called for a complete halt in natural resource use, he would have faced significantly higher levels of opposition. Instead, by focusing on “wise use,” Roosevelt called for pragmatic, gradual restrictions, with continued use of natural resources. Definition of the Problem Roosevelt’s rhetoric about the farmer’s family living sumptuously off of the flesh of the milch cow for one year reflects the “tragedy of the commons” problem, where human behavior is driven to overuse commonly shared goods, such as forests and waterways. We tend to act as free-riders with commonly shared goods, assuming that someone else will take care of that

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resource, and using even more of it if we think the resource is in short supply. 11 Just as we often solve these collective action problems today through government regulation and management, Roosevelt defined the problem of natural resource overuse as a call for state and federal government action. To address natural resource overuse, Roosevelt defined this problem as one of national importance, demanding a place on the national policy agenda. His speech consistently defined conservationism as a national problem that has existed throughout the nation’s history. George Washington’s interstate waterway commission, the waterways conference in Philadelphia that paved the way for the Constitutional Convention, and ultimately, the Constitution itself, reflect a lasting commitment to natural resources. Rather than perceiving environmental policy as a new agenda item for an expanding federal government, this issue was part of an extensive historical commitment to conservationism. Roosevelt was concerned that any regulation of natural resource use would be seen by opponents as a restriction on their freedom or a “taking” of their private property. By appealing to his audience’s patriotic ideals, Roosevelt encouraged them to make some sacrifices for the common good. However, he also provided a legal rationale for protection, providing examples from the court system in Maine where justices found Constitutional justification for resource protection, ruling that resource overuse threatened the state’s wealth, therefore demanding government action. While landowners may face some restrictions due to regulation, Roosevelt argued that these sacrifices are minimal compared to the gains for future generations, especially when considering the economic future of the state. Roosevelt continued this legal definition of natural resource protection at the federal level, where the court ruled that the state has standing to protect both publically and privately owned natural resources. Overall, Roosevelt’s rhetoric defines the problem of natural resources as a collective action problem, requiring government intervention. Furthermore, according to Roosevelt, the shortages of timber, iron ore, minerals, and water were no different than past problems of waterway management throughout American history. As the government regulated waterways historically, so the government should regulate natural resources once again. Ultimately, according to Roosevelt, the government was constitutionally justified to protect natural resources. The Impact In many respects, Roosevelt was uniquely situated to address the issue of conservationism during his tenure in office. Unlike many previous presidents, he had extensively traveled and lived in western states and territories,

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and had a great love for the unique treasures in the nation. So he had the passion. Transportation and communication technology both had expanded in his lifetime, permitting people—especially the very wealthy, like Roosevelt—to be more aware of and informed about the natural beauty of the United States. So part of Roosevelt’s drive to develop environmental policy stemmed from an appreciation of nature, and an understanding of the costs of mismanagement and overuse. Roosevelt’s speech to the White House Conference of Conservation of Natural Resources was a culminating point in his presidency, establishing his legacy as the first environmentalist president. Over the course of his presidency, he protected approximately 230 million acres of public land, including fifty-one federal bird reservations, five national parks (Crater Lake, Wind Cave, Sullys Hill, Platt, and Mesa Verde), four national game reserves, one hundred fifty national forests, and eighteen national monuments. 12 By framing conservationism as a patriotic duty, and key focus of the government, Roosevelt’s speech led to further institutionalization and policy expansion at the state level. The conference responded to Roosevelt’s speech with a unanimous declaration of support, culminating with a National Conservation Commission, led by Pinchot. 13 Within one year, forty-one states had established their own state-level commission, 14 expanding opportunities for research, dialogue, and policy. After Roosevelt’s presidency, further conservationist and preservationist policies were passed, including the establishment of the National Park System, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Soil Conservation Service, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. 15 While many more environmental policies in the United States would not develop until the late 1960s and 1970s, Roosevelt’s rhetoric served as a catalyst for institutionalizing conservationism within the federal and state governments. Roosevelt’s speech illustrates many of the ongoing debates in environmental policy. First, in his discussion of natural resource restrictions in the Maine and New Jersey court rulings, Roosevelt addresses the issue of “takings.” According to the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the government should compensate the taking of private property for public use, a concept referred to as eminent domain. If a government restricts the use of natural resources on private property, should the government be required to compensate the landowner? Roosevelt makes an impassioned plea in his speech to prevent this approach, which can end up limiting the impact of any environmental policy that affects private property. Today, the court system continues to grapple with this debate, increasingly favoring private landowners over environmental restrictions. 16 Second, Roosevelt addresses the ongoing debate over short-term and long-term impacts. His speech consistently refers to the importance of protecting resources for future generations, an issue that the United States continues to debate today with climate change policy, endangered species protection, and water policy, among a

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myriad of other issues. Should the United States limit carbon emissions today, in order to limit climate change for future generations? If climate change were an issue in Roosevelt’s time, he would have likely favored at least some restrictions today, in order to avoid long-term negative impacts. Ultimately, Roosevelt’s rhetoric reaches beyond natural resource and environmental policy, and reflects a different, evolving perspective about the role of the presidency. Most traditional eighteenth and nineteenth century presidents took on a fairly limited role as a policymaker, allowing members of Congress to take the lead on setting the national policy agenda. These presidents were committed to carefully following the presidential role described in Article II of the United States Constitution, where presidential powers include signing and vetoing bills, serving as commander-in-chief, making appointments, signing treaties, granting pardons, and executing the laws through the federal bureaucracy. This more traditional presidency generally responded to congressional action; it would be highly unusual for a nineteenth century president to pursue his own policy agenda. While some exceptions exist (e.g., notably George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln), most of the early presidents were not notable for policy leadership or agenda-setting. Theodore Roosevelt held a significantly different view about the role of the presidency. His “Stewardship Presidency” was founded on the belief that presidents could go beyond the bounds of the Constitution, as long as the Constitution did not expressly forbidden those actions, and as long as the president’s actions served the public good. 17 Roosevelt’s conservationist beliefs fit his philosophy of presidential power well. The Constitution does not directly charge the president with protecting natural resources, but the Constitution also does not forbid a president from pursuing such protection. Further, Roosevelt’s speech lays out the groundwork for why natural resource protection was necessary for serving the public good. Indeed, Roosevelt argued that if he had been denied the right to regulate public lands, we would face a “calamity.” 18 If access to natural resources, such as timber, water, and minerals, were essential to the future of the nation, then it was appropriate for the president to protect those resources, and to encourage Congress to protect those resources as well. Theodore Roosevelt, and later Woodrow Wilson, paved the way for the modern presidency, institutionalized by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. Theodore Roosevelt’s perspective on conservationism is only one example of the policies he pursued in office, including expanded foreign policy powers, business regulation, and early progressive era reforms. While pundits and scholars today decry or analyze the growth in the president’s powers, Roosevelt’s stewardship philosophy served as a solution for a rapidly growing country to solve its key problems, including natural resource overuse and abuse. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a traditional president, following

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Taft’s concept of a strict constructionist president, 19 serving in modern times. The public fully expects presidents to possess and pursue policy agendas, to serve the public good. Through his speech, Roosevelt not only established conservationism as a leading policy frame for the twentieth century, continuing today, but also clearly established the president’s role as an expansive policy leader and agenda-setter. NOTES 1. Vaughn, Jacqueline. 2011. Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth). p. 8–10. 2. Ibid. p. 11. 3. Pinchot, Gifford. 1910. “Chapter IV. The Principles of Conservationism,” in The Fight for Conservationism. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11238/11238-h/11238-h.htm#2HCH6 4. Vaughn, Jacqueline. 2011. Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth). p. 12. 5. The Sierra Club. “The John Muir Exhibit.” http://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir _exhibit/people/roosevelt.aspx. 6. Sheffield, Jessica. 2010. “Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Conservation as a National Duty.’” Voices of America 5: 89–108. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ sheffield-roosevelt.pdf. p. 97. 7. Vaughn, Jacqueline. 2011. Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions (Boston, MA: Wadsworth). p. 12. 8. Udall, Stewart. 2000. “How the Wilderness Was Won.” American Heritage 51(1): 92–97. 9. Theodore Roosevelt: “Conservation as a National Duty.” At the Opening of the Conference of Conservation of National Resources at the White House. May 13, 1908. Found at the Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project (http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/theodoreroosevelt-conservation-as-a-national-duty-speech-text/). Some of the speech has been edited for space reasons, but the editing does not alter the tone, direction, or frame of the speech. 10. Smith, Zachary. 2009. The Environmental Policy Paradox. 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson), p. 18. 11. Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–48. 12. National Park Service. “Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation.” http://www.nps.gov/ thro/historyculture/theodore-roosevelt-and-conservation.htm. 13. Sheffield, Jessica. 2010. “Theodore Roosevelt, ‘Conservation as a National Duty.’” Voices of America 5: 89–108. http://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ sheffield-roosevelt.pdf. p. 103. 14. Vaughn, Jacqueline. 2011. Environmental Politics: Domestic and Global Dimensions. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth). p. 12. 15. Ibid. p. 13. 16. Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council. 505 U.S. 1003 (1992). 17. Roosevelt, Theodore. 2009. “The Stewardship Presidency.” In James Pfiffner and Roger Davidson’s Understanding the Presidency 5th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman). 18. Ibid. p. 45. 19. Taft, William Howard. 2009. “The Strict Constructionist Presidency.” In James Pfiffner and Roger Davidson’s Understanding the Presidency 5th ed. (New York: Pearson Longman).

Chapter Two

William Howard Taft and the Conservation of the Republican Party in 1912 Eric Morris

THE BACKGROUND Although Theodore Roosevelt is widely viewed as the origin of what Tulis refers to as the Rhetorical Presidency, 1 the legacy of Roosevelt would be quite different but for the actions of William Howard Taft. While Roosevelt was masterful in shaping public opinion, 2 Taft is considered by some to be a failed president. No other sitting president has lost in an overwhelming landslide. In fact, by the time of Taft’s acceptance speech over a month after the conclusion of the 1912 Republican Convention, Roosevelt and his Bull Moose followers had broken away from the Republican party, and Taft’s chances for re-election were considered nearly zero. 3 While Taft himself was viewed as a weak rhetor, at least in comparison to those who directly preceded and followed, he retained considerable respect within the Republican party and was eventually the only former president to be appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. While Taft’s loss in 1912 was overwhelming by historical standards, it could have been much worse. Taft was the conservative candidate, and was out-voted by progressive turnout at a 3-1 margin. 4 Yet as the candidate without hope, 5 Taft achieved his limited objective 6 in the fall campaign—to protect the Republican party and conservative ideals by denying his mentor and former friend, Theodore Roosevelt, both the Republican nomination and re-election to a third term. The election of 1912 is regarded as a watershed election 7 in American history—the only time in which three presidents (past, present, and future) have squared off in a single general election. 8 Taft 15

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achieved what some have called the “discipline of defeat” 9 by recognizing the possibilities and limitations in his political situation, and systematically dissuading hundreds of thousands 10 of Roosevelt supporters from abandoning the Republican party as well as his vision of the party’s ideals. Taft’s acceptance speech on August 1, 1912, was one of his few campaign speeches in 1912. It was still customary that sitting presidents did not campaign for re-election 11 and thus very few campaign speeches were given following an acceptance speech. In fact, Taft’s were so widely discounted after the Bull Moose revolt that the acceptance speech was regarded as a rare opportunity for media coverage. Taft’s re-nomination was nearly inevitable, as Roosevelt entered the race late and would have needed to persuade Taft’s own nominees to defect. Originally, there were allegations of impropriety in the nomination process, but Taft deleted his originally planned refutation of those charges because the allegations had faded in political significance. Taft gave the speech from the White House, after receiving “official” notification of his nomination by Senator Root (New York). The venue insulated Taft from the potential embarrassment of speaking to a small crowd. Taft’s acceptance speech was self-written, and Taft himself was unusually isolated in the summer of 1912, having lost the support of Roosevelt and having lost mutual friend and advisor Archibald Butt in the Titanic disaster. Although Taft did not mention Roosevelt by name in this section, his primary objective was to deny long-term control of the Republican Party to progressive populists, whose rapid rise dramatically impacted both the Republican and Democratic nominations in 1912. Taft was concerned that progressives in either party might enact policies to confiscate wealth, weaken protection of private property, and move the United States toward socialism. Although he considered himself sympathetic to progressive ideals, he feared the rhetorical trajectory 12 as well as the ambiguity of the progressive movement. A rhetorical trajectory is the general direction of potentiality suggested by rhetorical formations. President Taft noted the lack of a detailed policy proposal by progressives in 1912, and analyzed the synergies between the general trajectory of progressive political rhetoric and the emerging popular mood to speculate about how those rhetorical trajectories might manifest if they received wide endorsement. In a sense, Taft was demonstrating that the absence of a tailored and balanced policy agenda was itself dangerous, as ideals (in this instance progressive ideals) have a certain entelechy—or inherent potential—to manifest destructively when pursued without an attempt to balance competing interests. Leland Griffin’s work illustrating the rhetorical trajectories which led to the Kennedy assassination demonstrates the destructive potential of militant enthusiasm when pursued outside of a pragmatic frame. Using the terms from Griffin’s work, Taft could be viewed as suggesting that political rhetoric with ambiguous parameters can be tested, reductio ad absurdum, by

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showing the destructive potential if a singular perspective is prioritized in a manner to dismiss or sidestep legitimate competing interests. It could be argued that Taft, in pointing out the potential of progressive rhetoric to trump other claims, laid the groundwork for the emergence of a productive channeling of progressive ideals into pragmatic reforms during succeeding administrations. If so, then it is important for rhetorical scholars to study not only rhetoric which has a demonstrably productive effect, but also rhetoric which counters the productive potential of other rhetoric, particularly if the production might have been destructive. Taft’s most succinct and detailed refutation of this trajectory was outlined in a segment of his acceptance speech, entitled “Popular Unrest.” THE SPEECH 13 Popular Unrest In the work of rousing the people to the danger that threatened our civilization from the abuses of concentrated wealth and the power it was likely to exercise, the public imagination was wrought upon and a reign of sensational journalism and unjust and unprincipled muckraking has followed, in which much injustice has been done to honest men. Demagogues have seized the opportunity further to inflame the public mind and have sought to turn the peculiar conditions to their advantage. We are living in an age in which by exaggeration of the defects of our present conditions, by false charges of responsibility for it against individuals and classes, by holding up to the feverish imagination of the less fortunate and the discontented the possibilities of a millennium, a condition of popular unrest has been produced. New parties are being formed, with the proposed purpose of satisfying this unrest by promising a panacea. In so far as inequality of condition can be lessened and equality of opportunity can be promoted by improvement of our educational system, the betterment of the laws to insure the quick administration of justice, and by the prevention of the acquisition of privilege without just compensation, so far as the adoption of the legislation above recited and laws of a similar character may aid the less fortunate in their struggle with the hardships of life, all are in sympathy with a continued effort to remedy injustice and to aid the weak, and I venture to say that there is no national administration in which more real steps of such progress have been taken than in the present one. But in so far as the propaganda for the satisfaction of unrest involves the promise of a millennium, a condition in which the rich are to be made reasonably poor and the poor reasonably rich by law, we are chasing a phantom; we are holding out to those whose unrest we fear a prospect and a dream, a visions of the impossible.

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In ultimate analysis, I fear, equal opportunity which is sought by many of those who proclaim the coming of so-called social justice involves forced division of property, and that means socialism. In the abuses of the last two decades it is true that ill-gotten wealth has been concentrated in some undeserving hands, if it were possible to redistribute it on any equitable principle to those from whom it was taken without adequate or proper compensation, it would be a good result to bring about. But this is obviously impossible and impracticable. All that can be done is to treat this as one incidental evil of a great expansive movement in the material progress of the world and to make sure that there will be no recurrence of such evil. In this regard we have made great progress and reform, as in respect to secret rebates in railways, the improper conferring of public franchises, and the immunity of monopolizing trusts and combinations. The misfortunes of ordinary business, the division of the estates of wealthy men at their death, the chances of speculation which undue good fortune seems often to stimulate, operating as causes through a generation, will do much to divide up such large fortunes. It is far better to await the diminution of this evil by natural causes than to attempt what would soon take on the aspect of confiscation or to abolish the principle and institution of private property and to change to socialism. Socialism involves the taking away of the motive for acquisition, saving, energy, and enterprise, and a futile attempt by committees to apportion the rewards due for productive labor. It means stagnation and retrogression. It destroys mainspring of human action that has carried the world on and upward for 2,000 years. I do not say that the two gentlemen who now lead, one the Democratic party and the other the former Republicans have left their party, in their attacks upon existing conditions, and in their attempt to satisfy the popular unrest by promises of remedies, are consciously embracing socialism. The truth is that they do not offer any definite legislation or policy by which the happy conditions they promise are to be brought about, but if their promises mean anything, they lead directly toward the appropriation of what belongs to one man, to another. The truth is, my Friends, both those who have left the Republican party under the inspiration of their present leader, and our old opponents, the Democrats, under their candidate, are going in a direction they do not definitely know, toward an end they cannot definitely describe, with but one chief and clear object, and that is of acquiring power for their party by popular support through the promise of a change for the better. What they clamor for is a change. They ask for a change in government so that government may be restored to the people, as if this had not been a people’s government since the beginning of Constitution. I have the fullest sympathy with every reform in governmental and election machinery which shall facilitate the expression of the popular will as the short ballot and the reduction the number of elective offices to make possible. These gentlemen propose to reform the government, whose present defects, if any, are due to the failure

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of the people to devote as much time as is necessary to their political duties, by requiring a political activity by the people three times that which thus far the people have been willing to assume; and thus their remedies, instead of exciting the people to further interest and activity in the government, will tire them into such an indifference as still further to remand control of public affairs to a minority. But after we have changed all the governmental machinery so as to permit instantaneous expression of the people in constitutional amendments, in statutes, and in recall of public agents, what then? Votes are not bread, constitutional amendments are not work, referendums do not pay rent or furnish houses, recalls do not furnish clothing, initiatives do not supply employment or relieve inequalities of condition or of opportunity. We still ought to have set before us the definite plans to bring on complete equality of opportunity and to abolish hardship and evil for humanity. We listen for them in vain. Instead of giving us the benefit of any specific remedies for the hardships and evils of society they point out, they follow their urgent appeals for closer association of the people in legislation by an attempt to cultivate the hostility of the people to the courts and to represent that they are in some form upholding injustice and are obstructing the popular will. Attempts are made to take away all those safeguards for maintaining the independence of the judiciary which are so carefully framed in our Constitution. These attempts find expression in the policy, on the one hand, of the recall of judges, a system under which a judge whose decision in one case temporarily displeases the electorate is to be deprived at once of his office by a popular vote, a pernicious system embodied in the Arizona constitution and which the Democrats of the House and Senate refused to condemn as the initial policy of a new State. The same spirit manifested itself in the vote by Democratic Senators on the proposition, first, to abolish the Commerce Court, and, second, to abolish judges by mere act of repeal, although under the Constitution their terms are for life, on no ground except that they did not like some of the court’s recent decisions. Another form of hostility to the judiciary is shown in the grotesque proposition by the leader of the former Republicans who have left their party, for a recall of decisions, so that a decision on a point of constitutional law, having be submitted to popular vote to determine whether it ought to be sustained. Again, the Democratic party in Congress and convention show, its desire to weaken the courts by forbidding the use of the writ of injunction to protect a lawful business against the destructive effect of a secondary boycott and by interposing a jury in contempt proceedings brought to court’s order and decrees. These provisions are really class legislation designed to secure immunity for lawlessness in labor disputes on the part of the laborers, but operating much more widely to paralyze the arm of the court in cases which do not involve labor disputes at all. The hostility to the judiciary and the measures to take its power and its independence constitute

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the chief definite policy that be fairly attributed to that class of statesmen and reformers control the Republican party escaped at Chicago and to whom the Democratic party yielded at Baltimore. The Republican party stands for none of these innovations. It refuses to make changes simply for the purpose of making change, and cultivating popular hope that in change something beneficial, undefined, will take place. It does not believe that human nature has changed. It still believes it is possible in this world that the fruits of energy, courage, enterprise, attention to duty, hard work, thrift, providence, restraint of appetite and of passions will continue to have reward under our present system, and that laziness, lack of attention, lack of industry, the yielding to appetite and passion, carelessness, dishonesty, and disloyalty will ultimately find their own punishment in the world here. We do not deny that there are exceptions, and that seeming fortune follows wickedness and misfortune virtue, but, on the whole, we are optimists and believe that the rule is the other way. We do not know any way to avoid human injustice but to perfect our laws for administering justice, to develop the morality of the individual, to give direct supervision and aid to those who are, or are likely to be, oppressed, and to give as full scope as possible to individual effort and its rewards. Wherever we can see that a statute which does not deprive any person or class of what is his is going to help many people, we are in favor of it. We favor the greatest good to the greatest number, but we do not believe that this can be accomplished by minimizing the rewards of individual effort, or by infringing or destroying the right of property, which, next to the right of liberty, has been and is the greatest civilizing institution in history. In other words, the Republican party believes in progress along the lines upon which we have attained progress already. We do not believe that we can reach a millennium by a sudden change in all our existing institutions. We believe that we have made progress from the beginning until now, and that the progress to continue into the far future: that it is reasonable progress that experience has shown to be really useful and helpful, and from which there is no reaction to something worse. The Republican party stands for the Constitution as it is, with such amendments adopted according to its provisions as new conditions thoroughly understood may require. We believe that it has stood the test of time, and that there have been disclosed really no serious defects in its operation. It is said this is not an issue in the campaign. It seems to me it is the supreme issue. The Democratic party and the former Republicans who have left their party are neither of them to be trusted on this subject, as I have shown. The Republican party is the nucleus of that public opinion which favors constant progress and development along safe and sane lines and under the Constitution as we have had it for more than one hundred years, and which believes in the maintenance of an independent judiciary as the

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keystone of our liberties and the balance wheel by which the whole governmental machinery is kept within the original plan. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT Although this volume is an exploration of the bully pulpit, it’s important to consider the insights of scholars critical of the concept. Rex 14 suggests that bully pulpits have an agenda-setting function, and that in the context of war rhetoric the bully pulpit serves to foreclose public deliberation. Mervin 15 claims that presidents often fail because of their unwillingness or inability to effectively attempt to use the bully pulpit. Edwards 16 argues that audiences are able to, and often do, tune out presidential uses of the bully pulpit. His view is that presidents only succeed under narrow conditions, either by moving quickly with a large mandate and partisan majority or by moving quietly to facilitate leaders of both parties who are open to compromise. In the first instance, the electoral success itself was more effective as public messaging than directing the attention of the bully pulpit to the president’s side of a controversy. In the second instance, the attempted use of the bully pulpit is counter-productive, since it alters the incentive structure for those in the opposite party—those opposed to compromise are given the opportunity to grandstand, while those who seek compromise find greater restrictions on their ability to maneuver. Edwards does not conclude that the bully pulpit has no positive effect, but instead suggests that it is often limited to either preaching to the converted or influencing elite opinion even though ostensibly aimed at the masses. Even if Edwards is largely correct, the Taft example demonstrates that presidents can use the bully pulpit effectively if their purposes for doing so can be served with either elite opinion or the energy of the converted. The Frame Taft’s frame in this address is cooptive refutation, which seeks to coopt progressivism while refuting progressives. Speaking near the height of the progressive movement, he attempts to both align his administration and the Republican Party with the concept of progress. Near the end of the section, he repeatedly emphasizes the Republican Party’s view that progress has been, and will continue to be, built from the extension of currently effective institutions. However, he does not directly embrace or attack the term progressive, instead finding other ways to refer to Roosevelt’s break away Bull Moose Party (neither its name nor Roosevelt’s appear in the section). The Democratic Party is mentioned by name, but its nominee is not. Given that the term “progressive” was in wide use at the time, and is also used retrospectively to describe the entire era, this terminology is undoubtedly

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significant. In a sense, Taft is equating progress with progression, a slow moment in a better direction, instead of ceding the term to progressives, who advocated changes that he viewed as “sudden” and destructive. Beyond the particular term progress, Taft also finds agreement with many of the material aims of progressive reformers, and implies that their differences relate more to means than ends. Taft argues that the Republican Party’s view of progress is superior to either the Democratic Party, Bull Moose Party, or general progressive perspective for a variety of reasons. First, he claims that known reform proposals will make both legislators and judges immediately and dangerously accountable to the whims of the masses through recall and direct referendum— similar to proposals adopted in the newly founded state of Arizona. Taft views these as a threat to judicial independence and Constitutional order. Second, he advocates that the ambiguity of the progressive agenda creates the potential to confiscate private property and lead the nation toward socialism. Third, he argues that those fomenting popular discontent do so for narrow political gain, but will be unable to sustain the political interest or a program to actually enhance the economic prospects for the poor and oppressed. Taft’s speech is certainly not the only major political speech to use a frame of refutation in order to lay out a contrasting vision. Lincoln used this approach in his 1860 Cooper Union Address, which was a significant step toward his nomination later that year. Unlike Lincoln, Taft’s refutation centered on a far less precise controversy—the larger agenda or possibilities of progressivism. Taft used uncertainty about the political agenda of progressivism to suggest that it would lead to socialism, confiscation of legitimately earned private property, and abolition of judicial independence, while failing to make a substantial contribution to inequality of opportunity or outcome. Taft, however, spoke about his political opponents in the 1912 race not so much as leading this movement (and even once partially exonerated them— “I do not say that the two gentlemen who now lead, one the Democratic party and the other the former Republicans have left their party, in their attacks upon existing conditions, and in their attempt to satisfy the popular unrest by promises of remedies, are consciously embracing socialism”). However, they appear to be framed as two demogogues (among many) who “have seized the opportunity further to inflame the public mind” and thus expand a legitimate fight against “incidental evil” into an illegitimate crusade against private property and free enterprise more generally. In Aristotelian terms, Taft’s appeals to logos sought to enhance his ethos while directly diminishing that of his adversaries.

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Definition of the Problem In a sense, Taft attempts to redefine the problem of the moment so that popular unrest itself, and not the conditions to which it reacts, is the central problem. The widely quoted second paragraph begins with “We are living in an age in which by exaggeration of the defects of our present conditions, by false charges of responsibility for it against individuals and classes, by holding up to the feverish imagination of the less fortunate and the discontented the possibilities of a millennium, a condition of popular unrest has been produced.” Thus, the dangers of appeal to popular unrest are more concerning than the danger of the wealthy imposing their power on the political system. Of course, this definition of the problem might itself be viewed as impolitic—the problem is, in some sense, the people themselves. The people responded by awarding Taft the electoral votes from Utah, Vermont, and no other states. However, Taft’s definition of the problem could also viewed from the lens of stasis. Stasis is the point of disagreement—the definition of the argumentative problem. Argument can explore a wide range of important topics without a productive engagement with any of them, but individual arguments (warranted claims) become interactive arguments at the point where stasis is attained—where the parties come to agreement about what central thesis they are disputing. In some cases, identification of the point of stasis can resolve an argument because the parties either decide they do not disagree, or they agree to disagree (and thus leave the dispute itself unresolved). Although one could simplify the question to say the point of stasis in a political campaign boils down to which side should be elected, a more robust perspective would find stasis when parties agree which question should be prioritized in a given election. Taft’s proposal for stasis concludes the “Popular Unrest” section: “The Republican party stands for the Constitution as it is . . . .It is said this is not an issue in the campaign. It seems to me it is the supreme issue.” The negotiation of stasis is thus closely related to the agenda-setting function of the bully pulpit. The Impact Unfortunately for Taft, neither votes nor the other candidates accepted his stasis proposal, and the campaign instead centered upon differences between the progressivism of Wilson and Roosevelt, with Taft relegated to the role of spoiler. It is from this spoiler role that Taft’s rhetoric had its greatest impact. Taft’s acceptance speech, as a whole, is viewed by some as mundane—at least relative to the political climate. It lacked resonance; it lacked in pathos. Instead of rising to the occasion, it focused more on “conserving” Taft’s conservative vision of the Republican Party’s purpose than on maintaining

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the Republican Party’s hold on the presidency. 17 It spoke effectively to no one, except for those firmly committed to Taft’s vision prior to its delivery. Of course, in this instance, speaking to the converted meant speaking to party elites remaining with the Republican Party after the Bull Moose split. After losing the general election, Taft claimed victory in some circles 18 after his electoral defeat for pulling enough votes away from Roosevelt to deny his faction either the presidency (in the short term) or control of the Republican Party (in the longer term). The Bull Moose Party had been tied closely to Roosevelt, and faded quickly after the 1912 election. While the internal contest between conservatives and progressives continued over several election cycles, future elections paved the way for other conservatives, such as Warren Harding (who had introduced Taft at the 1912 convention and risen to a Senator in 1914 as progressivism began to fade). Once a significant faction of the Republican Party splintered off to Roosevelt, Taft’s chances for re-election were extremely low. Taft’s more significant legacy, by his own admission, was his service as the only past president to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In his first year, President Harding nominated his former mentor for the position, and the confirmation was secured by a lop-sided secret vote on the same day as the nomination. Chief Justice Taft sought to secure the same principles of judicial independence he articulated in 1912, and oversaw at three major reforms which transformed the Supreme Court into the co-equal branch that it remains today. First, the Court moved to hearing only cases where a writ of certiorari was accepted—a practice directly advocated by Taft to enable the Court to control a growing caseload. Second, the court system was unified, with Supreme Court justices sitting above appeals courts instead of having to circuit-ride some courts while others maintained separate jurisdictions. Finally, the Supreme Court materialized its role as an edifice in American government by having a separate building and bureaucracy instead of operating within the Congress. Chief Justice Taft played a substantial role in each step enacting his vision from the 1912 acceptance speech, even though he didn’t live to see the completion of the building itself. A Republican Party which had acceded to Roosevelt’s principles in 1912 might have achieved electoral victory, but would be a very different Republican Party in both the progressive era and the present era. To a bully pulpit pessimist, it would be easy to take the Taft presidency as a counter-example to a strong rhetorical presidency. The “Popular Unrest” section of Taft’s acceptance speech was ineffective in either stopping the outflux of Republican support to the Bull Moose Party or in securing his reelection. As with many examples of failed presidential proposals and initiatives, it may be uninteresting if compared against a baseline of complete success. However, by taking a narrower view of Taft’s purpose—one sup-

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ported by his statements after his defeat—another dimension of the bully pulpit is revealed. Bully pulpit optimists, such as Hudkins, 19 claim that presidential rhetoric can have not only an agenda-setting function (in this instance, defining the meaning of Taft’s campaign and Roosevelt’s defeat), but also functions to communicate resolve by demonstrating that the president has calculated audience costs and is nonetheless committed to a course of action. In this instance, defining his re-nomination in defensive terms—to protect Republican institutions from the excesses of progressivism—demonstrated the resolve to put Taft’s principles of governance ahead of political expedience. Thus, Republican elites who agreed with Taft—the converted—were mobilized to stand shoulder to shoulder, sacrificing an election (if necessary) to protect the party in the long term. Taft was successful in this limited mission, as the Republican party in the decades following his defeat more closely resembled the rhetorical trajectory articulated by Taft than the one articulated by Roosevelt. NOTES 1. Tulis, J. The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). 2. Greenberg, D., “Beyond the Bully Pulpit,” The Wilson Quarterly 35, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 22–29. 3. Gould, L. L. The William Howard Taft Presidency, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009). 4. Coletta, P. E. William Howard Taft: a Bibliography, (Westport, CT: Meckler, 1989). 5. Pringle, H. F. The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), p. 818. 6. Ross, I. An American Family: The Tafts 1678 to 1964, (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1964), p. 257. 7. Burton, D. H. Taft, Roosevelt, and the Limits of Friendship, (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005). 8. McHale, F. President and Chief Justice: The Life and Public Services of William Howard Taft, (Philadelphia: Dorrance and Co., 1931), p. 274. 9. Duffy H. S. William Howard Taft, (Minton, Balch and Co: New York, 1964), p. 299. 10. Coletta, 1989. 11. Gould, 2009. 12. Griffin, L. “When Dreams Collide: Rhetorical Trajectories in the Assassination of President Kennedy.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984), 111–31. 13. Blumenberg, M. W. Official Report of the Proceedings of the Fifteen Republican National Convention, Held in Chicago, IL June 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22, 1912 Resulting in the Nomination of William Howard Taft, of Ohio, for President and the Nomination of James Schoolcraft Sherman, of New York for Vice-President, (New York City: The Tenny Press, 1912) pp. 418–22. The original speech accepts the nomination, lists legislative accomplishments from past years, includes the quoted section entitled “The Popular Unrest,” identifies the actions and positions of the Taft Administration on many issues of the day, and concludes. The section was selected from a far longer acceptance speech because it seeks to define the meaning of the present moment and the election. At the time of its delivery, it was widely believed by many, probably including Taft himself, that re-election to a second term was impossible. Taft remained in the race to save the Republican party, as he understood it, by both fighting against

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the spirit of the times for conservative ideals and by splitting enough votes to deny the breakaway Bull Moose Party the presidential election victory. 14. Rex, J. “The President’s War Agenda: A Rhetorical View,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no.1, (March 2011): 93–118. 15. Mervin, D. “The Bully Pulpit II,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 25, (Winter 1995): 19–23. 16. Edwards, G. E. On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). 17. Coletta, 1989, pp. 240–41. 18. Ross, 1964, p. 257. 19. Hudkins, J. M. “Presidential Action and the ‘Bully Pulpit’: Crisis Creation of Crisis Response?” The Florida Communication Journal 41, (Spring 2013): 29–36.

Chapter Three

Woodrow Wilson Women’s Suffrage Marla J. Jarmer

THE BACKGROUND The Progressive Era (1890–1913) was characterized by the struggle of oppositional forces. By 1910, women had full voting rights in only four states (Utah, Washington, Colorado, and Idaho). Women labored and organized diligently with other movements inspired by economic and class struggles, yet the harder they worked to erode gender boundaries in political participation, the stauncher the resistance was from social and political forces. A surge in racism and nativist nationalism counteracted the new rhetorical presidency which encouraged stronger participation from minority groups. Western states which had seemed more generous in granting female suffrage were now concerned about extending those rights to Chinese-Americans. Southern women, as well as men, were troubled by female suffrage which would include black women. As social movements worked to expand voting rights, they became more narrowly defined. Jim Crow laws were established to prevent African-Americans from voting while literacy and education tests disenfranchised recent immigrants. Property and tax requirements did the same for several working class and poor whites. Native American participation at the polls was discouraged through strict assimilation laws. It was in the midst of this political climate that the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Association, which had been working as competitive organizations for the latter half of the nineteenth century, merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Under the direction of Carrie Chapman Catt, NAWSA found their efforts to be successful on the local and state levels, particularly in western 27

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states. Despite the prevalent racism, even among some of the NAWSA members, African-American women also found success in women’s clubs during this period. Mary Church Terrell was elected as the first president of the National Association of Colored Women in 1895. Other African-American suffragists such as Anna Julia Cooper and Fannie Barrier Williams fought for inclusion within the woman suffrage movement by forcing white women to confront the intersectionality of black women’s oppression while still working to establish a common identity with white women. In 1910, President Taft addressed the NAWSA annual convention, and by 1912 suffrage was a popular idea within the Republican Party and had been endorsed by the Progressive Party. Seven more states (Washington, California, Arizona, Alaska, Oregon, Montana, and Nevada) granted suffrage by 1914. A draft of a national suffrage bill was brought to the senate floor for the first time since 1893 that same year. Success of the suffrage movement during this period was due in large part to its alliance with labor and settlement house movements. Growing internationalism of both of these movements brought militancy to the foreground in them. Witnessing the successes militant tactics had in other countries spurred a similar movement in the United States that was led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who formed the National Women’s Party (NWP) and agitated for full inclusion through antagonistic and often combative means. 1 The pro-suffrage coalition in the progressive era was made up of members from the major political parties as well as several different social movements. However, support from members or regions within these groups was inconsistent and few of them contributed substantial materials to further the suffrage cause, even when they officially endorsed it. Prohibition activists (especially the WCTU), the Populist Party, and the Progressive Party were the biggest contributors of tangible support. Since the public linked suffrage with these causes, railroads, liquor, and business interests were often antisuffrage. Southern populists were also anti-suffrage since they felt it would ruin chances of the People’s Party’s efforts to fuse with the Democrats, which was their only chance at real power. Suffragists relied on three basic tactics to engender legislative support: testify at hearings on suffrage, petition legislatures, and lobby individual legislators and try to pressure party platforms. After 1910, however, suffragists spent much less time testifying and petitioning as a means to influence legislators. Petition drives were seen as a means of affecting public opinion rather than that of lawmakers. They focused their efforts on direct lobbying as well as acting as legislative whips and swaying social groups to which legislators belonged. In 1913, NAWSA established Suffrage Schools to train women in parliamentary law, publicity, suffrage arguments, and organizational skills. After 1914, the NWP concentrated their efforts in openly trying to defeat anti-suffrage candidates and holding the Democratic Party responsible for the lack of a national amend-

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ment. NAWSA rejected attacking the Democratic Party, but did support trying to defeat anti-suffrage candidates. Eighteen of the twenty-four states which franchised women before the Nineteenth Amendment was passed, had well organized state level organizations which used these aggressive lobbying tactics. 2 After the turn of the century, suffragists became increasingly singleminded, unyielding, and resolute in their demands. NAWSA literature from this period stressed taking advantage of ready-made audiences for agitation and unlike in previous times, organizing strategies didn’t mention any nonsuffrage activities. The NWP best exemplified the new inflexibility. In addition to condemning partial success (enfranchisement in some states) as responsible for the lack of a national referendum, they refused to suspend their efforts when the United States entered World War I and used war rhetoric as a weapon when picketing the White House. Even the rhetoric of the moderate NAWSA became more rigid and public in its demands. NAWSA adopted the use of public parades which had been a successful rhetoric tool in the temperance movement. Their 1913 parade during Wilson’s inauguration attracted more attention than the installation of the new president. Five thousand women marched in the parade, and the military had to be dispatched from Fort Myer to safeguard them from the hostile crowd when the local police failed to protect them. Actions from the NWP were even more confrontational. They picketed the White House, even going so far as to refer to the president as “Kaiser Wilson.” 3 When picketers were arrested and jailed, several staged hunger strikes to call attention to the cause. Gone were the days of hoping for compromise and using indirect methods to achieve the vote. 4 For well over one hundred years women had been framing their arguments for the vote in the context of human rights, yet despite all of their efforts they had full voting rights in only twelve states and the territory of Alaska at the time of Wilson’s speech. 5 As Wilson acknowledges near the beginning of his speech, both major political parties had planks in their platforms which supported woman suffrage. Despite this, the proposed amendment for which Wilson is advocating barely passed out of the House of Representatives the previous January with a vote of 274 to 136. 6 Wilson’s own support for the cause can be described as tepid at best. In 1876, he wrote that suffrage was “at the root of every evil in this nation.” 7 By the time he was president, his views on the subject had been tempered quite a bit. However, in the tradition of most southern Democrats, he favored state control over voting rights rather than a national amendment controlling them, for women or anyone else. This spoke more to political expediency for Wilson who needed the support of the southern Democratic block than it did of perhaps his personal views on suffrage or how suffrage should be awarded. 8 His speech before the 1916 Suffrage convention in New Jersey was hardly an endorsement for the cause. Rather, it was simply an acknowl-

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edgment that the time for woman suffrage was coming, that it was an event that could not be avoided given the momentum for it the suffrage movement and the progressive era had built. The bulk of the speech focused on recounting connections between changing views on government in the United States and growth in the suffrage movement. Wilson ended the speech by reminding his listeners that government works by “moving the masses” not individuals, and that while it’s good to be out in front of things, summoning others to your cause, sometimes you just have to be willing to wait for them to catch up to you. 9 These final words made for a rather bland validation from a man who had written extensively on the topic of rhetoric and the need for better training in it if American leaders were going to be able to “move people down the path history had laid out.” 10 Then in May of 1917, Wilson wrote a brief note to North Carolina representative Edward W. Pou, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Rules Committee concerning the creation of the Committee on Women Suffrage. In one passage, Wilson states that the creation of the committee would be “a very wise act of public policy,” yet in another one, he states that “. . . it is none of my business, and I have not the least desire to intervene in the matter. . . . ” At no point in the memo does he indicate his feelings for or against the specific topic of suffrage; he only addresses the creation of this committee. 11 There is much discussion over which aspect of the suffrage movement, NAWSA or the NWP, finally made headway with Wilson and spurred him to declare for the cause. Writers from both factions claim their work was instrumental in swaying him. However, Joseph Tumulty who served as Wilson’s private secretary for eleven years wrote a memoir of his time at the White House with Wilson in 1921. In it he discusses several different items on Wilson’s political agenda; however, there is no mention of the issue of suffrage or of any of the key figures in the movement, despite their interactions with Wilson. 12 If Wilson had reconsidered his position of suffrage or saw it as a crucial focal point of his presidency, it seems logical that would have been worth at least a passing mention, if not more, in Tumulty’s work. Therefore, to truly understand Wilson’s speech before the Senate in 1918 and to understand his choice of frame for it, perhaps it would be helpful not to view this as a speech for suffrage in and of itself, but rather as a speech in which Wilson uses suffrage as a vehicle to another political end. THE SPEECH 13 GENTLEMEN OF THE SENATE: The unusual circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged in the view not only of our own people and our own consciences but also in the view of all nations and peoples will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to

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bring to you. I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have led me to that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of every circumstance and element involved in this momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it. I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women. There is and can be no party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties are pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of the country. Neither party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute federal initiative for state initiative, if the early adoption of the measure is necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and if the method of state action proposed in the party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if practicable at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of the objects for which the war is being fought. That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they seem to me. This is a peoples’ war and the peoples’ thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions. Our professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is asked for, – asked for in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through diplomatic channels; not by Foreign Ministers. Not by the intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same things that they do. I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone the voices of statesmen and of newspapers that reach me, and the voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all. Through many, many channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war falls. They are looking to the great, powerful, famous Democracy of the West

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to lead them to the new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we reject measures like this, in ignorance or defiance of what a new age has brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to believe in us; they will cease to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own governments accept this interpretation of democracy,—seen old governments like that of Great Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily and as of course this justice to women, though they had long before refused it, the strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain, to governments as well as to peoples. Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give,—service and sacrifice of every kind,— and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? This war could not have been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the women,—services rendered in every sphere,—not merely in the fields of effort in which we have been accustomed to see them work, but wherever men have worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either conform or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others. The women of America are too noble and too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it them. I propose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the suffrage, the men fighting in the field for our liberties and the liberties of the world, were they excluded. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them. Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary war measure, and do you need further proof? Do you stand in need of the trust of other peoples and of the trust of our own women? Is that trust an asset or is it not? I tell you plainly, as the commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant men in our fleets, as the present spokesman of the people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now our

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partners, as the responsible head of a great government which stands and is questioned day by day as to its purposes, its principles, its hopes, whether they be serviceable to men everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself answer these questionings or be shamed, as the guide and director of forces caught in the grip of war and by the same token in need of every material and spiritual resource this great nation possesses,—I tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle. And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle immediately, when the war is over. We shall need them in our vision of affairs, as we have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed. Without their counsellings (sic) we shall be only half wise. That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not now possess, which I sorely need, and which I have daily to apologize for not being able to employ. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Since the inception of our country, those pressing for woman suffrage had contextualized their arguments within the framework of rights—first as a natural right and then later as a legal one guaranteed under the Constitution and its amendments. Wilson’s speech, however, utilizes a strikingly different tactic. He mentions enfranchisement being a right at only one point in his speech, and equates it with justice merely twice. He focuses instead on placing the issue within the larger concern of winning World War I and our subsequent foreign relations. He reminds the Senate that he is not only speaking to them as the president, but also as “spokesman of the people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now our partners” (our allies and the civilians we will potentially influence toward a democratic society after the war) and as the commander-in-chief of the

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armed forces. In a speech that runs just under eight minutes, the word “war” is used eighteen times throughout the speech, and the suffrage movement is referred to as a battle or struggle three times. Additionally, Wilson emphasizes the contributions and sacrifices women have made to the war five different times. Also, phrases referring to other peoples, other nations, and their governments are referenced a total of thirteen times. Further underscoring the idea that foreign relations is an impetus for his appeal, Wilson declares that it is not the “voices of foolish and intemperate agitators” which have brought him before the Senate, but rather “the anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same things that they do.” The war, he argues, has created a new reality where things cannot be what they once were and where “in their logical simplicity” those peoples have deduced that a democratic society is one in which women as well as men participate in governing. Therefore, if the United States is going to be “the great, powerful, famous Democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for which they have so long waited” then passing a national amendment for woman suffrage is imperative. Finally, Wilson makes the case that in order to secure our safety after the war is won, we will need “the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the world” in a way that we never have. Enfranchising our women will serve the twofold purpose of gaining women’s trust and sympathy and allowing for their full participation in the necessary restructuring of society in the post-war period. To understand why Wilson chose to construct a speech advocating for woman suffrage through the perspective of militarism and foreign relations instead of human rights, it’s essential to understand the rhetorical concept of deliberative rhetoric. Aristotle divided rhetoric into three types or branches— forensic, epideictic, and deliberative. Forensic rhetoric or judicial rhetoric is associated with matters of prosecution or defense. The speaker’s goal is to convince the audience that events did or didn’t happen at some point in the past. Epideictic rhetoric, being the speech of ceremony and celebration, has the purpose of delighting its audience in the present moment. It’s used at weddings, funerals, and other formal events. Deliberative rhetoric seeks to convince audience members to either undertake or refrain from a particular course of action in the future. Furthermore, Aristotle delineated two ways practitioners of deliberative rhetoric can be effective. The first is to convince their audience that the action under discussion is the right or moral thing to do. The second is to convince the audience that taking said action is in their best interests. The most refined speakers will accomplish both tasks with their oration. 14

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Definition of the Problem In his 1890 essay, “Leaders of Men,” in which he discussed the lack of qualified leadership in government, Wilson wrote that it was a leader’s job to be able to formulate a vision for the public’s will and “to illuminate a path” which leads them in the “historical direction in which that spirit is moving. 15 This was precisely what he was doing. However, it was the path toward a particular foreign policy Wilson was enlightening rather than that of woman suffrage. Suffrage proved to be his torch to help light the way. Wilson’s problem was figuring out how to be a leader, not only as the president, but on the world stage as World War I came to an end. Rhetoric from the colonial and founding periods of our nation often referred to the United States in terms such as “a city on a hill” referencing our ability to stand for something better than what had been accomplished in Europe or the Old World. However, our history demonstrated that was to be an example from a distance rather than from our direct intervention in European affairs. Jefferson, in his inaugural address warned that we should cultivate “honest friendships” with all nations while avoiding enmeshing alliances with any of them. 16 The first significant case of US intervention in foreign relations didn’t occur until the Spanish American War in 1898 after the United States intervened in the Cuban war for independence against Spain. Following that, Theodore Roosevelt’s administration was instrumental in the Panamanian fight for independence from Colombia. While both of these incidents showed US involvement in foreign affairs, they both were also in the Western Hemisphere which was proclaimed as under protection of the United States in the Monroe Doctrine. Therefore, we made alliances with the Cuban and Panamanian revolutionaries out of our own self-interests due to their country’s proximity to our borders. When it came to European affairs outside of our hemisphere, however, the United States managed to remain uninvolved throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wilson campaigned for re-election on the platform of keeping the United States out of the war, and negotiated to effectively do so for three years. How would he now, in 1918, move the United States from being on the periphery of world policy to the center of it in a leadership position? And, how could he do so in a way that would be credible with the nations he needed to follow his lead? This was the problem as Wilson defined it that shaped the framework for his speech. On January 8, 1918, Wilson outlined his Fourteen Points which he hoped would serve as the basis of any peace negotiations at the end of the war. The following day, Wilson met with Democratic leadership to urge them to support the upcoming suffrage amendment vote in the House of Representatives. He alluded to Britain’s recent extension of suffrage to women who were at least thirty and married as essential to winning the war. 17 Because of our late entrance into the war and our refusal to officially join the Allied forces, the

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other Allied countries were innately distrustful of the United States. Suffrage was another area in which the United States appeared to be lagging behind the rest of the allies. Non-indigenous women in Australia and Canada had the right to vote. Russian women gained the right to vote in 1917 when the provisional government was established after the Czar was removed from power, and it looked as if Germany and Austria were even going to extend suffrage to women. (Both countries did extend it before the end of 1918, in November and December respectively.) As Wilson stated in his speech, the new concept of a democracy which was emerging from the ruins of the war was one where women as well as men were active participants in their government. The question of suffrage was tightly intertwined with the issue of credibility on the part of the United States if it wished to shape international policy. The Impact Using deliberative rhetoric to link suffrage with the war effort was not a novelty in Wilson’s speech. Jeanette Rankin, congresswoman from Montana, did this when speaking in favor of the amendment before the House when she asked the rhetorical question, “How shall we answer the challenge, gentlemen: how shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” 18 Another example of this can be found in state level governmental rhetoric that same year. In light of the United States’ growing involvement in World War I, Governor Norbeck called a special session of the South Dakota legislature in March. One of his primary concerns was the fact that South Dakota was one of six states in the union which allowed alien residents the right to vote after they had filed their first papers to become citizens. Previously, this had been an enticement to attract immigrants to settle in sparsely populated states such as South Dakota. However, with 22.4 percent of the state’s population claiming German heritage, the country being at war with Germany, and many of the state’s non-alien men absent due to the war effort (first paper aliens were not called for military service), many people were afraid of the influence aliens would have through their voting rights. To remedy this situation, Norbeck proposed that the suffrage amendment to the state constitution be revised to grant women the right to vote and to limit voting rights to naturalized citizens. The wording of the amendment, as well as propaganda released by the South Dakota Universal Franchise League and other suffragist organizations took advantage of the national anti-German sentiment and cornered anti-suffragists into the position of voting against suffrage at the risk of being identified as enemy sympathizers. 19

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Considering all of this, was Wilson’s choice to contextualize his call for suffrage within the frame of militarism and foreign relations a good one? Looking at the immediate impact of Wilson’s speech on the issue of suffrage, the answer seems obvious since the Nineteenth Amendment wasn’t ratified for another two years. Comparing Wilson’s strategy with that of Norbeck’s illustrates why the use of deliberative rhetoric worked in South Dakota, which would pass Amendment E and grant suffrage to women when it came to a vote later that year, whereas it did not work for Wilson. Remember, the success or failure of deliberative rhetoric hinges on the rhetorician’s ability to accomplish two tasks: 1) convincing his or her audience that either taking or refraining from the proposed action is the moral or right thing to do, and 2) convincing his or her audience that it is in their best interests to do so. To understand why this worked in one case and not the other, take into account George Yoos’ observation that unlike logical appeals, those of persuasion do not depend on what is explicitly stated to be successful. Instead, persuasive appeals which are fundamental to the success of deliberative rhetoric, “sketch the form of their arguments in a context of linguistic, communicative, and cultural presumptions that audiences intuitively grasp.” 20 How did this theory practically manifest itself in these two situations to determine the outcome of the vote in each? When legislators considered the question in South Dakota, they were dealing with a population that was mainly rural and centered on agriculture. The majority of the population descended from immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia who had been through a series of economic hardships and natural disasters which bound them together. Extending suffrage to women in their case meant granting the right to vote to a population which the legislators generally understood to hold the same beliefs and goals as they did. At the same time, the initiative granted them the added benefit of personal and state security by withholding the vote from the alien/other who was not to be trusted, whose home country was currently our national enemy, and was the force against which many South Dakota men were in a fight for their lives. In this case, a vote against suffrage was not only a vote against enfranchising women, it was also a vote against the United States and the men from South Dakota who were fighting on her behalf. The portion of Wilson’s speech which probably came the closest to achieving Yoos’ methods of persuasion is the section where he appeals to the Senate on the grounds that women will be needed after the war because “We shall need their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed.” Women were seen as the cultural standard bearers of morality and purity while war was seen as the mark of male evil. 21 Wilson combined the cultural expectations surrounding women in this section with a

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practical call as to why women deserved enfranchisement based on the services and sacrifices they had performed for the war effort in order to try to accomplish the first tenet of deliberative rhetoric—the desired action, extending suffrage, was the right thing to do. It wasn’t just women in general who supported the war. Many suffragists who were members of the Woman’s Peace Party and other pacifist organizations broke ranks to support the war when they saw that socialists and other radicals lost their freedom of speech and other civil liberties. Carrie Chapman Catt instructed NAWSA members to work for both suffrage and in support of the war. NAWSA supported relief efforts at a hospital in France, its members sold Liberty Bonds, and they worked to obtain and organize supplies for the Red Cross. They claimed they had earned their citizenship rights through “making the world safe for democracy.” 22 Wilson’s acknowledgment of this in his speech was his claim that voting for suffrage was the right thing to do. His appeal and use of deliberative rhetoric, however, failed under the burden of trying to establish the same context of linguistic, communicative, and cultural presumptions which upheld the South Dakota amendment. He tried to overcome this obstacle by moving the cause into the realm of foreign relations and discussing goals which, ideally, all in the Senate could support. Unfortunately, the hard political reality of the day was that unlike in South Dakota where Amendment E protected voters from “the other,” national suffrage would extend the vote to the other. 23 Senator John S. Williams, one of Wilson’s strongest supporters in the Senate and a senator from Mississippi remarked after the vote, “I love the President of the United States more than any other man in this Senate,” but he simply couldn’t endorse a measure that would give, “Chinese, Japanese, and nigger women” the right to vote. 24 As abrasive and distasteful as his remarks might appear, they cut to the heart of the issue. A national amendment for universal suffrage did nothing to protect those in power from the other. Instead, it would make them vulnerable to the potential power of the other as well as to the anger of a constituency who wanted to limit enfranchisement rather than expand it. Therefore, even if the argument could be made that enfranchisement was the moral or right thing to do, it still was not in the senators’ best interests to do so. Whatever stood to be gained in the international arena by passing the amendment was not worth the risk of what they would lose at home. While his speech failed to secure suffrage, Wilson’s rhetorical practices and body of rhetoric impacted future presidential rhetoric in two main ways. In the area of policy rhetoric, Wilson changed the nineteenth century practice of written addresses to Congress to the new oral addresses in front of Congress where the public at large rather than just the congressional body was the intended audience. The second major change dealt with form and content of presidential rhetoric. Wilson believed that it was imperative for a president to be inspirational in his rhetoric. Modern leaders, he believed, needed to be

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able to draw on the public will and to inspire an excitement in the public for policy. To this end, Wilson molded nineteenth century rhetorical practices into what Tulis refers to as the “policy-stand speech.” Derived from Wilson’s belief that government should be transparent in its policies and accountable to the people, rhetoric in this type of speech is focused on clearly articulating what the president intends to do or what his position on particular issues of the day are. The policy-stand speech is an often used rhetorical tool by many presidents and other politicians today. Like Wilson before them, though, many have found it a difficult form to master as it is hard to be both specific concerning policy and inspiring to the public in the same speech. 25 NOTES 1. Belinda A. Stillion Southard, Militant Citizenship: Rhetorical Strategies of the National Woman’s Party, 1913–1920 (Texas A&M University Press, 2011), 47–52. 2. Lee Ann Banaszak, Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage, (Princeton University Press, 1996), 98–140. 3. The NWP took even more aggressive actions in 1919 by burning effigies of Wilson and the texts of his speeches he’d made on democracy. Detailed accounts of their actions can be found in Southard’s, Evans’, and Banaszak’s works as well as others. 4. Banaszak, 158–65. 5. “Centuries of Citizenship: A Constitutional Timeline,” National Constitution Center, Last updated 2006, Accessed May 26, 2015, http://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/ cw08_12159.html. 6. “The House’s 1918 Passage of a Constitutional Amendment Granting Women the Right to Vote,” History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, Accessed May 26, 2015, http://history.house.gov/HistoricalHighlight/Detail/35873. 7. Quoted from Wilson’s “Shorthand Journal” in Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 201. 8. In 1914, a vote came before the Senate to consider the question of woman suffrage at the national level. Cooper states in his work, Reconsidering Woodrow Wilson: Progressivism, Internationalism, War, and Peace, (139) that only four of the south’s twenty senators voted for suffrage. For them, and for the president, suffrage in the south was as much about race as it was gender. So, despite the measure being supported by a majority of the senate, the southern block was able to fail the amendment which needed support from two thirds of the legislative body. This trend was borne out again a year later when the vote came before the House of Representatives. While regional support for the amendment ranged from 100 percent support in the Pacific Coast delegations to 40 percent in the border states, only 2 percent of the southern coalition supported the amendment. Cooper also contends that Wilson’s perceived change of heart on the matter between 1915 and 1918 had little to do with his personal beliefs on the matter and more to do with his deference to the racial and gender politics of the south, the direction of the Democratic Party, and his ire at the NWP (142–44). Also, Pestritto argues in Chapter 3 of Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism that Wilson’s body of policies and practices demonstrated that he was not a defender of states’ rights, but rather his writings and actions showed that he believed through history and progress, America had overcome the limitations of states’ rights defenders. 9. Woodrow Wilson, “Address of President Wilson at Suffrage convention, Atlantic City, N.J., September 8, 1916,”Internet Archive, Washington, Govt. Print. Office, 1916, Uploaded to the Internet Archive May 27, 2008, Accessed May 26, 2015, https://archive.org/details/addressofpreside07wils. 10. Pestritto, 204–6.

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11. Woodrow Wilson, “Woodrow Wilson, The White House, Washington, May 14, 1917, to Edward W. Pou, House of Representatives, Washington.” North Carolina Digital Collections, State Library of North Carolina and State Archives of North Carolina, Accessed 26 May 2015, http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15012coll11/id/322. 12. Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson as I Knew Him, (Literary Digest, 1921). 13. http://www.public.iastate.edu/~aslagell/SpCm416/Woodrow_Wilson_suff.html 14. Aristotle, Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts (New York: Modern Library, 1984), 1358b. 15. Pestritto, 207. 16. Thomas Jefferson, “The First Inaugural Address” (March 4, 1801), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Princeton University, Accessed May 31, 2015, https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/first-inaugural-address-0. 17. “Wilson Backs Amendment for Woman Suffrage.”New York Times, January 10, 1918. 18. “The House’s 1918 Passage . . . ” 19. Patricia O’Keefe Easton, Woman Suffrage in South Dakota: The Final Decade, 1911–1920, (South Dakota State Historical Society, 1983), 223–25. 20. Buchanan, Lindal. Rhetorics of Motherhood, (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013). 21. Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 170. 22. Ibid, 171. 23. For more information on the impact of otherness in the political arena, I would suggest consulting works such as Pinder’s The Politics of Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Americanization, De-Americanization, and Racialized Ethnic Groups or Sweet’s Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One Drop Rule. 24. “Suffrage Beaten by the Senate.”New York Times, October 2, 1918. 25. Jeffrey K.Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton University Press, 1987), 132–37.

Chapter Four

Warren G. Harding Return to Normalcy David H. Carwell

BACKGROUND In the spring of 1920 Warren Harding’s quest for the Republican presidential nomination was still a longshot. With an electorate increasingly tired of President Wilson and the social upheavals of World War I, 1920 appeared to be a year favorable for a Republican candidate. This wasn’t the most important aspect of the election to Harding at the time, however. In order to challenge the Democratic nominee in November, Harding would first have to win the Republican nomination. A second-tier candidate at best, Harding’s delegate count was far behind not just front-runners Leonard Wood and Frank Lowden, but other long-shot candidate Hiram Johnson. The Republican nomination was seen as wide open. Had Theodore Roosevelt lived, it was widely assumed he would have been the party’s candidate, so his death left the party with no clear “heir apparent.” Warren Harding’s strategy for the nomination was to hope for a deadlocked convention, and then emerge as a compromise candidate. It was clear that he would not have the resources to compete with the front-runners. Leonard Wood and Frank Lowden had financial and organizational assets that Harding would not be able to match. Financial reports show Harding with a fraction of the monies of the front-runners. 1 Frank Lowden, governor of Illinois and married to an heiress of the Pullman fortune was viewed favorably by the wealthy eastern Republican establishment. Leonard Wood, Medal of Honor winner, former Army Chief-of-Staff, and organizer of the “Rough Riders” along with Roosevelt, campaigned across the country in his uniform, claiming the mantle of the Roosevelt “Progressive” wing of the 41

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party. Hiram Johnson, senator from California, had been Roosevelt’s running mate on the Bull Moose ticket. As such, while he actively fought Woods for the label of the party’s “true” progressive and heir to Roosevelt, he would also always be anathema to some party regulars who would not forgive his role in splitting the party earlier and allowing for the election of Wilson. Harding and campaign manager Harry Daugherty were counting on a hard nomination campaign. Lowden and Woods disliked each other. It would be difficult to persuade delegates pledged to either of the front-runners to agree to support the other. If no candidate could muster the necessary delegates to win on the first few ballots, the convention would be deadlocked. This was the scenario that Harding was hoping for. Warren Harding could then emerge as the party’s nominee, acceptable to all, as everyone’s second choice. Harding had no real control over the first few ballots. Either Wood or Lowden would accrue the necessary delegates to win, or they wouldn’t. If they didn’t, Harding had to make himself everyone’s second choice. In order for this strategy to be successful, Harding had two tasks. First, Harding needed to make himself acceptable to all major factions of the Republican Party. He didn’t want to adopt policy positions that would make him unacceptable to any delegates, or to the party leaders that controlled many of them. He didn’t so much have to win the nomination, as he had to make sure he didn’t lose it. Secondly, Harding had to make himself a credible candidate against the Democratic party’s nominee. If his strategy was successful, and he won the nomination, it would be clear he wasn’t the first choice of the vast majority of the delegates. While not a total unknown, he wasn’t well known outside of his home state of Ohio. His Senate record was passable at best. He had no major accomplishments or legislation to his name. Harding would need something to rally support to his side from voters other than Republican stalwarts, but at the same time not something which would alienate factions of his party that would deny him the nomination. Harding’s strategy had hit a wall in early spring. He had largely avoided the primaries, and specifically avoided campaigning against “favorite son” candidates to avoid conflict and build support for himself as a possible compromise choice. Harding had been convinced to contest primaries in neighboring Indiana and his home state of Ohio. He did not win either. In Indiana he ran a distant fourth behind Wood, Lowden, and Johnson. In his home state he was able to keep Wood from carrying Ohio, but was not able to keep Wood from winning delegates. As somewhat of a “Favorite Son” candidate, this was a serious blow to his electability argument. How can you defeat the Democrat in November when your organization cannot even carry your own state? There was a serious consideration by Harding to drop out of the presi-

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dential race entirely and concentrate on his re-election campaign for the Senate. 2 It was in this environment that Harding travelled to Massachusetts to deliver an address to the Boston Home Market Club on May 14, 1920. THE SPEECH 3 There isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired by cataclysmic war. Poise has been disturbed and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity and men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction. Here, in the United States, we feel the reflex, rather than the hurting wound, but we still think straight, and we mean to act straight, and mean to hold firmly to all that was ours when war involved us, and seek the higher attainments which are our only compensation that so supreme tragedy may give mankind. America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by a military autocracy, because the infinite God never intended such a program, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life and all life’s acquirements. The world called for peace, and has its precarious variety. America demands peace, formal as well as actual, and means to have it, regardless of political exigencies. And campaign issues. If it must be a campaign issue, we shall have peace and discuss it afterward, because the actuality is imperative, and the theory is only illusive. We challenged the proposal that an armed autocrat should dominate the world; it ill comes to us to assume that a rhetorical autocrat should direct all humanity. The republic has its ample tasks. If we put an end to false economies which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of world leadership today. If we can prove a representative popular government under which a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals, we shall do more to make democracy safe for the world than all armed conflict ever recorded. The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation,

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and that the quality of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship. The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government, and no eminent page of history was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. More, no government is worthy of the name which is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by intimidation on the other. Nothing is more vital to this republic to-day than clear and intelligent understanding. Men must understand one another, and government and men must understand each other. For emergence from the wreckage of war, for the clarification of fevered minds, we must all give and take, we must sympathize and inspire, but we must learn griefs and aspirations, we must seek common grounds of mutuality. There can be no disguising everlasting truths. Speak it plainly, no people ever recovered from the distressing waste of war except through work and not denial. There is no other way. We shall make no recovery in seeking how little men can do, our restoration lies in doing the most which is reasonably possible for individuals to do. Under production and hateful profiteering are both morally criminal, and must be combated. America cannot be content with minimums of production today, the crying need is maximums. If we may have maximums of production we shall have minimums of cost, and profiteering will be speeded to its just punishment. Money values are not destroyed, they are temporarily distorted. War wasted hundreds of billions, and depleted world storehouses, and cultivated new demands, and it hardened selfishness and gave awakening touch to elemental greed. Humanity needs renewed consecrations to what we call fellow citizenship. Out of supreme tragedy must come a new order and a higher order, and I gladly acclaim it. But war has not abolished work, has not established the process of seizure or the rule of physical might. Nor has it provided a government panacea for human ills, or the magic touch that makes failure a success. Indeed, it has revealed no new reward for idleness, no substitute for the sweat of a man’s face in the contest for subsistence and acquirement. There is no new appraisal for the supremacy of law. That is a thing surpassing and eternal. A contempt for international law wrought the supreme tragedy, contempt for our national and state laws will rend the glory of the republic, and failure to abide the proven laws of to-day’s civilization will lead to temporary chaos. No one need doubt the ultimate result, because immutable laws have challenged the madness of all experiment. But we are living to-day. And it is ours to save ourselves from colossal blunder and its excessive penalty. My best judgment of America’s needs is to steady down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the right path. Let’s get out of the fevered delirium of war, with the hallucination that all the money in the world is to be

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made in the madness of war and its aftermath. Let us stop to consider that tranquility at home is more precious than peace abroad, and that both our good fortune and our eminence are dependent on the normal forward stride of all American people. Nothing is so imperative today as efficient production and efficient transportation, to adjust the balances in our own transactions and to hold our place in the activities of the world. The relation of real values is little altered by the varying coins of exchange, and that American is blind to actualities who thinks we can add to cost of production without impairing our hold in world markets. Our part is more than to hold, we must add to what we have. It is utter folly to talk about reducing cost of living without restored and increased efficiency or production on the one hand and more prudent consumption on the other. No law will work the miracle. Only the American people themselves can solve the situation. There must be conscience of labor in efficiently producing, there must be a public conscience in restricting outlay and promoting thrift. Sober capital must appeal to intoxicated wealth, and thoughtful labor must appeal to the radical who has no thought of the morrow, to effect the needed understanding. Exacted profits, because the golden stream is flooding, and pyramided wages to meet a mounting cost must be halted, will speed us to disaster just as sure as the morrow comes, and we ought to think soberly and avoid it. We ought to dwell in the heights of good fortune for a generation to come, and I pray that we will, but we need a benediction of wholesome common sense to give us that assurance. I pray for sober thinking in behalf of the future of America. No worthwhile republic ever went the tragic way to destruction, which did not begin the downward course through luxury of life and extravagance of living. More, the simple living and thrifty people will be the first to recover from a war’s waste and all its burdens, and our people ought to be first recovered. Herein is greater opportunity than lies in alliance, compact, or supergovernment. It is America’s chance to lead in example and prove to the world the reign of reason in representative popular government where people think who assume to rule. No overall fad will quicken our thoughtfulness. We might try repairs on the old clothes and simplicity for the new. I know the tendency to wish the thing denied, I know human hunger for a new thrill, but denial enhances the ultimate satisfaction, and stabilizes our indulgence. A blasé people is the unhappiest in all the world. It seems to me singularly appropriate to address this member ship an additional word about production. I believe most cordially in the home market first for the American product. There is no other way to assure our prosperity. I rejoice in our normal capacity to consume our rational, healthful consumption.

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We have protected our home market with war’s barrage. But the barrage has lifted with the passing of the war. The American people will not heed today, because the world competition is not yet restored, but the morrow will soon come when the world will seek our markets and our trade balances, and we must think of America first or surrender our eminence. The thought is not selfish. We want to share with the world in seeking becoming restoration. But peoples will trade and seek wealth in their exchanges, and every conflict in the adjustment of peace was founded on the hope of promoting trade conditions. I heard expressed, before the Foreign Relations Committee of the senate, the aspirations of nationality and the hope of commerce to develop and expand aspiring peoples. Knowing that those two thoughts are inspiring all humanity, as they have since civilization began, I can only marvel at the American who consents to surrender either. There may be conscience, humanity and justice in both, and without them the glory of the republic is done. I want to go on, secure and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance and confident of the supreme American fulfillment.” 4 THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Rhetoric, and especially political rhetoric, is not a neutral medium. Political rhetoric’s very nature is to define and advocate. Perhaps the best way of viewing Harding’s use of the term “normalcy” is as a figurative trope. Tropes are a process through which one makes unfamiliar concepts more familiar. This is a task which politicians often have, translating something as vague as “popular opinion” or “public sentiment” into specific policies which would then hopefully be embraced by a majority of the electorate. In this case, the problem appears to be the underlying unease that the great changes in American social and economic culture in recent years had brought about. But, how, exactly to label, and then hopefully harness, this perceived underlying unease among the electorate? Especially when it clearly did not have a single source or constituency. “Normalcy” would become the figurative shorthand for this general unease, and therefore a “return to it,” the solution for that unease, regardless of how it was narrowly defined in the mind of any individual voter. “Normalcy” becomes a metaphorical stand-in for many of the political ills of modern society. It doesn’t really require a rigid definition. One could go so far as to say that its very success is predicated on its lack of a rigid definition. The phrase “Return to Normalcy” is a key slogan in Harding’s campaign, and the fact that no one, including the candidate himself, offers a solid, rigid definition of exactly what a “return to normalcy” would entail,

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other than things being better than they are now, gives some evidence to this view. Given its widespread use throughout the campaign, its value as a metaphor for the political ills of America appear to have been widely embraced. Long before Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America,” or Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change,” the “Return to Normalcy” Harding promotes in his 1920 address to the Home Market Club of Boston illustrates a candidate seizing upon an idea that resonates with the voting public, even if an actual hard definition of that idea is hard to articulate. Metaphor has a long history in political discourse, and its use here is effective in putting a label on what would otherwise be an amorphous discontent. The very sentence where the phrase is situated is filled with somewhat wandering alliteration, yet one cannot help but think of an audience in the immediate aftermath of World War I and its accompanying social transformations listening and nodding in agreement, “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.” In order to harness political unease among the electorate, first one must make that electorate aware of what exactly that unease is. Political rhetoric creates political reality. Harding’s rhetoric gives a name to this inchoate feeling, and is therefore the first step in creating an organized political movement from what had previously been multiple individual political perceptions. It is equally easy to believe, however, that same audience, when asked exactly what the candidate was proposing should he be elected, coming up with widely differing interpretations. As is the case with many campaign speeches, especially those early in a campaign before voters truly know the candidate, Harding doesn’t wish to give anyone a reason not to support him. This is part of the political value of “normalcy.” It could mold itself to many different political perceptions. While not a political unknown, Harding was still a rather minor national political figure, and was seen as a Dark Horse for the Republican nomination. This put even greater pressure on Harding. If Harding was to be nominated as a compromise candidate after the front runners faded, he could ill afford to alienate any significant faction of the party. Normalcy, as a campaign slogan, offers little for detractors of Harding to point to. The speech, unlike a presidential address concerning a specific policy area, is clearly a campaign speech. Yet to dismiss it as “just” a campaign speech would miss the impact that it had. Indeed the very phrase, “The Era of Normalcy,” is often applied to the post–World War I era in the United States. While addressing the Home Markey Club Harding is clearly not putting forth a blueprint of a Harding Administration. At the same time, however, he is

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attempting to give insight into how Warren Harding perceived the problems of the country. And hopefully in such a way as to make him acceptable as a possible president, regardless of any specific policy any individual voter might advocate. Harding had to both win the Republican nomination, and if successful there, then win a general election in November. The Republican Party was still reeling from the split with Roosevelt, divisions over the proposed League of Nations, and solutions to the nation’s economic and social woes. To secure the Party’s nomination, and then, if successful, to win the general election, Harding would have to position himself to be acceptable to a wide electoral audience. Avoiding being locked into clear positions on as many controversial issues as possible would make this task easier. Harding clearly dances around the League of Nations question in his address. While arguing against “submergence in internationality” and in support of “triumphant nationality,” in the very next passage Harding states “It is one thing to battle successfully against world domination by military autocracy, but it is quite another thing to revise human nature and suspend the fundamental laws of life.” In other words, the League as currently constituted and presented is unacceptable, but that in another iteration, it may well be acceptable. This is far from the strict isolationists position often ascribed to the Republican Party in the inter-war years. Which is Harding’s true position? Clearly, it can easily reside in the eye of the beholder. You can see this appeal to all possible views as well when examining Harding’s view on the relationship of the citizenry and the government. The importance of representative government where “a citizenship seeks what it may do for the government rather than what the government may do for individuals” not only presages similar sentiments found later in John Kennedy’s inaugural address, it could hardly be characterized as embracing antiprogressive ideals. Yet a few scant sentences later Harding asserts that “The problems of maintained civilization are not to be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizenship to government.” Hardly a ringing endorsement of government’s abilities to solve the nation’s ills. Yet neither statement is such that it automatically negates the other. Like the League question, it is simply a matter of degree. Government can and should work for the good of the citizenry, but ultimate responsibility for government success would by necessity rest with the same citizenry. And regardless of where one might position themselves on an ideological spectrum, it is a concept that strikes at the very heart of being “an American.” Government is responsible to us, but we are ultimately responsible for the government. While Harding’s speaking style was often maligned by the likes of H. L. Mencken, William McAdoo, and Woodrow Wilson, this was a view that was not necessarily widely shared. President Taft had called upon Harding to deliver his nominating speech at the 1912 convention. Indeed such contem-

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porary observers as the New York Times and Calvin Coolidge were impressed with Harding’s skills as an orator. The former made the point that “Mr. Harding is not writing for the super-fine weighers of verbs and adjectives, but for the men and women who see in his expressions their own ideas, and are truly happy to meet them.” 5 This quality is clearly seen in the “Normalcy” speech. His language allows the listener to project his own ideas and definitions onto the broad strokes of Harding’s oratory. Given the audience, The Home Market Club of Boston, an organization based on protecting US business interests from foreign competition, the speech is remarkable for its lack of emphasis on tariffs or other protectionist legislation. Harding’s brief remarks toward the end of his speech, where he acknowledges his immediate audience, can itself be easily characterized as little more than campaign rhetoric. It follows the speech’s pattern of a lack of any specifics, and an appeal to as broad an audience as possible. “I believe most cordially in the home market first” and “We must think of America first or surrender our eminence” expressed positions that few would disagree with, yet Harding doesn’t include any specific actions or even hints at how he would support the home market or guarantee “America’s eminence.” The speech was clearly designed for a larger audience. This is not surprising as it is occurring about a month before the Republican Nominating Convention, and Harding had recently lost two primaries in Indiana and Montana outright, while splitting the Ohio contest with Wood. While primaries were not as important in determining the nominee in 1920 as they would become, still, they were seen as a measure of a candidate’s strength among the electorate and organizational abilities. An argument can be made that the reason behind the timing of the Boston speech was to overcome any perceived weakness of Harding as a candidate among those who would be casting votes at the convention. Definition of the Problem Probably the greatest difficulty in “defining” the problem Harding was attempting to solve was what exactly “Normalcy” was. Harding himself offered little clarification. When asked on the campaign trail how he defined “normalcy,” Harding responded, “By normalcy I don’t mean the old order. But a regular steady order of things. I mean normal procedure, the natural way, without excess. I don’t believe the old order can or should come back, but we must have normal order, or as I have said, ‘normalcy.’” 6 The country had seen drastic political and social upheavals in the previous years, probably more so than the Civil War. World War I, women’s suffrage, violent anarchism, labor agitation, racial violence, the Boston Police strike, Attorney General Palmer’s campaign against the “Reds,” it is easy to see how a return to a more settled and tranquil period in the nation’s history would be wel-

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comed by many. But even in this, Harding allows the listener to pick and choose what they do and do not like about current social and economic conditions. Harding plainly states he doesn’t mean “the old order,” but a more natural way, one without “excess.” By not clearly defining the problem, Harding invites the listeners to project their own view of just what this entails. Everyone is free to determine for themselves what determines normal order. Whatever new directions in society the listener saw as detrimental was what needed to be changed, while those changes the listener viewed as favorable are part of necessary and valuable progress. Many took the term to just be shorthand for being opposed to Wilson and his policies. Regardless, this very vagueness almost guaranteed that Harding would not be expected to offer specific remedies. As a metaphor for the general political problems of the day, a literal meaning is almost superfluous. The Impact Clearly the “Normalcy” speech had an impact on Harding’s nomination and subsequent election. The phrase “A Return to Normalcy” became Harding’s campaign slogan. Albert Lasker, the Chicago advertising executive who would manage campaign publicity for what is often seen as the first “modern” media campaign, widely popularized the slogan in print. While it was not the only slogan used by Lasker, it was clearly the most memorable. The success of Harding’s speech to the Boston Home Market Club is dependent, like the speech, on what one saw in it. If its goal was to win Harding the nomination, and then the general election, it would be hard to argue against its success. The very ubiquitous nature of the phrase is such that it is hard to ignore. Indeed, other than scandals, it is probably the most remembered aspect of Harding’s truncated presidency. If you are looking for something more concrete, the answer is far more problematic. Many saw the term simply as shorthand for being opposed to Wilson and his policies. What exactly Harding meant by the term “normalcy” is open to interpretation with every new audience This vagueness, while it offers little insight as to what exactly Warren Harding meant by the term, does offer some insight into the complaints that reporters and citizens alike voice when they argue that politicians will not clearly answer questions asked of them. As Harding illustrates, this is obviously not a new phenomenon. NOTES 1. Samuel Hopkins Adams, “Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1939), p. 129. 2. John W. Dean, “Warren G. Harding” (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2004), p. 56.

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3. No recordings of the speech appear to have been made, and Harding himself did not release an “official” transcript. Since Harding was not in office when the speech was delivered, it is not recorded in any official government documents or records. 4. Frederick E Schortemeier, “Rededicating America: Life and Recent Speeches of Warren G. Harding” (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merril Co, 1920) p. 41–43. 5. Robert K. Murray “The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration” (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969), p. 122. 6. New York Times, July 21, 1920, p. 7.

Chapter Five

Calvin Coolidge Regime Articulation through Expectations Joshua M. Scacco

Few studies of presidential rhetoric include an in-depth discussion of Calvin Coolidge’s executive communication. The thirtieth President of the United States, described as “rhetorically restrained” and referred to as “Silent Cal,” is rarely admired for his oratorical prowess. 1 Political scientist James David Barber claimed that Coolidge possessed a “passive-negative” style, meaning that the president put little effort into his executive work and derived little pleasure in the process. 2 In the historical development of a presidential communication style that became prominent with Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge often is overshadowed. Yet, what researchers do know is that President Coolidge’s communications were influential before, during, and after his presidency. Then-Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge was selected as the vice presidential running rate for Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding in 1920 in part because of Coolidge’s public comments regarding a police strike in Boston. 3 Ascending to the presidency following the death of Harding, Coolidge understood the importance of but disdained the practice of public communication. He is quoted as saying, “One of the most appalling trials which confront a President is the perpetual clamor for public utterances.” 4 Coolidge spoke to the public, nonetheless. In his 1925 inaugural address, the president shaded his prior support for women’s suffrage by reconstituting separate gender spheres. 5 As communication scholar Vanessa Beasley explains, Coolidge’s focus on economic and business prosperity meant that his brief mention of women’s voting rights reflected “a larger public anxiety about women’s changing roles in the years immediately following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.” 6 This almost singular focus on economic affairs 53

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infused his public communications with business-based topics. Coolidge’s thematic emphases on low national taxes, individual responsibility, and public morality not only found prominent billing in his rhetorical acts, but also inspired the public communication of President Ronald Reagan a half century later. 7 In several ways, the development of the rhetorical presidency, including the increasing ties between presidential communication, public visibility, and leadership, continued in the Coolidge presidency. Coolidge became the first president to broadcast his annual message and inaugural address on radio. 8 The high-pitched, nasal tone of his radio messages was well-received by the public, according to historical accounts. 9 His actions presaged presidents’ later use of mass media to reach the public. Despite his reserved demeanor, Coolidge averaged a greater number of presidential press conferences per month than President Franklin Roosevelt and continued to use radio throughout his presidency. 10 Calvin Coolidge did not, however, match technological with rhetorical innovation in his communications. Coolidge was the last president after 1920 to forgo a full-time speechwriter. 11 When speech ghostwriter Judson Welliver left the Coolidge White House, the president hired F. Stuart Crawford. THE BACKGROUND President Coolidge governed at a time of relative economic ease for the United States, especially for business interests. The notion of prosperity was popularly expressed by political leaders, but felt by few individuals. Income inequality in the United States peaked during Calvin Coolidge’s term, when the top one percent of individuals held 24 percent of pre-tax income. 12 Moreover, citizens had yet to develop expectations that the president directly engage in actions to correct issues like income inequality, much less the national economy. 13 Amid this backdrop, the president reflected the popular prosperous feeling while maintaining a “hands off” approach to government intervention in economic matters. Assuming office during economic “good times” can present its own unique set of challenges for a president. Political scientist Stephen Skowronek argues that Calvin Coolidge was an affiliated president, or a leader responsible for maintaining and articulating the established political order. 14 “They [affiliated presidents] galvanize political action with promises to continue the good work of the past and demonstrate the vitality of the established order in changing times.” 15 How Coolidge articulated the status quo is critical to understanding the ultimate success of his policies related to taxation, debt reduction, and international affairs.

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In domestic economic affairs, President Coolidge advanced a conservative strand of Republicanism that sought to reduce taxes and public debt. He reorganized government personnel following the scandals of the Harding administration and simultaneously elevated business interests to key government posts. 16 His public communications, particularly the speech examined in this chapter, emphasized how economic justice could meet the goal of social justice, a nod to the elements of progressive Republicanism that remained in the 1920s. 17 According to the president, these goals would only be achieved with business and governmental interests occupying rather separate spheres of influence. Internationally, Calvin Coolidge navigated the currents of isolationism and engagement both within the Republican Party and the broader public. Historian Lewis Gould notes that the defeat of the League of Nations in 1919 sunk President Woodrow Wilson’s prospects while buoying isolationist voices within the Republican Party. 18 President Coolidge sided with eastern Republican lawmakers in advancing foreign engagement through the Permanent Court of International Justice as well as post-World War I loan restructuring with European nations. Coolidge’s public statements reflected the need for American international engagement while acknowledging isolationist sentiments. The task for President Coolidge was to articulate a domestic and international framework that seemed to be successful for the nation. Coolidge’s speech to the New York Chamber of Commerce illustrates one of the rhetorical strategies he used to constitute and support the present course: expectations. By framing the principles associated with future commercial and governmental actions, the president articulated the status quo while advocating for a set of policies designed to strengthen the established economic and international regime. THE SPEECH 19 Mr. President and Members of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York: This time and place naturally suggest some consideration of commerce in its relation to government and society. We are finishing a year which can justly be said to surpass all others in the overwhelming success of general business. We are met not only in the greatest American metropolis, but in the greatest center of population and business that the world has ever known. If anyone wishes to gauge the power which is represented by the genius of the American spirit, let him contemplate the wonders which have been wrought in this region in the short space of 200 years. Not only does it stand un-

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equaled by any other place on earth, but it is impossible to conceive of any other place where it could be equaled. The foundation of this enormous development rests upon commerce. New York is an imperial city, but it is not a seat of government. The empire over which it rules is not political, but commercial. The great cities of the ancient world were the seats of both government and industrial power. The Middle Ages furnished a few exceptions. The great capitals of former times were not only seats of government but they actually governed. In the modern world government is inclined to be merely a tenant of the city. Political life and industrial life flow on side by side, but practically separated from each other. When we contemplate the enormous power, autocratic and uncontrolled, which would have been created by joining the authority of government with the influence of business, we can better appreciate the wisdom of the fathers in their wise dispensation which made Washington the political center of the country and left New York to develop into its business center. They wrought mightily for freedom. The great advantages of this arrangement seem to me to be obvious. The only disadvantages which appear lie in the possibility that otherwise business and government might have had a better understanding of each other and been less likely to develop mutual misapprehensions and suspicions. If a contest could be held to determine how much those who are really prominent in our government life know about business, and how much those who are really prominent in our business life know about government, it is my firm conviction that the prize would be awarded those who are in government life. This is as it ought to be, for those who have the greater authority ought to have the greater knowledge. But it is my even firmer conviction that the general welfare of our country could be very much advanced through a better knowledge by both of those parties of the multifold problems with which each has to deal. While our system gives an opportunity for great benefit by encouraging detachment and breadth of vision which ought not to be sacrificed, it does not have the advantages which could be secured if each had a better conception of their mutual requirements. While I have spoken of what I believed would be the advantages of a more sympathetic understanding, I should put an even stronger emphasis on the desirability of the largest possible independence between government and business. Each ought to be sovereign in its own sphere. When government comes unduly under the influence of business, the tendency is to develop an administration which closes the door of opportunity; becomes narrow and selfish in its outlook, and results in an oligarchy. When government enters the field of business with its great resources, it has a tendency to extravagance and inefficiency, but, having the power to crush all competitors, likewise closes the door of opportunity and results in monopoly. It is always a problem in a republic to maintain on the one side that efficiency which

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comes only from trained and skillful management without running into fossilization and autocracy, and to maintain on the other that equality of opportunity which is the result of political and economic liberty without running into dissolution and anarchy. The general results in our country, our freedom and prosperity, warrant the assertion that our system of institutions has been advancing in the right direction in the attempt to solve these problems. We have order, opportunity, wealth, and progress. While there has been in the past and will be in the future a considerable effort in this country of different business interests to attempt to run the Government in such a way as to set up a system of privilege, and while there have been and will be those who are constantly seeking to commit the Government to a policy of infringing upon the domain of private business, both of these efforts have been very largely discredited, and with reasonable vigilance on the part of the people to preserve their freedom do not now appear to be dangerous. It is the important and righteous position that business holds in relation to life which gives warrant to the great interest which the National Government constantly exercises for the promotion of its success. This is not exercised as has been the autocratic practice abroad of directly supporting and financing different business projects, except in case of great emergency, but we have rather held to a democratic policy of cherishing the general structure of business while holding its avenues open to the widest competition, in order that its opportunities and its benefits might be given the broadest possible participation. While it is true that the Government ought not to be and is not committed to certain methods of acquisition which, while partaking of the nature of unfair practices try to masquerade under the guise of business, the Government is and ought to be thoroughly committed to every endeavor of production and distribution which is entitled to be designated as true business. Those who are so engaged, instead of regarding the Government as their opponent and enemy, ought to regard it as their vigilant supporter and friend. It is only in exceptional instances that this means a change on the part of the national administration so much as it means a change on the part of trade. Except for the requirements of safety, health, and taxation, the law enters very little into the work of production. It is mostly when we come to the problems of distribution that we meet the more rigid exactions of legislation. The main reason why certain practices in this direction have been denounced is because they are a species of unfair competition on the one hand or tend to monopoly and restraint of trade on the other. The whole policy of the Government in its system of opposition to monopoly, and its public regulation of transportation and trade, has been animated by a desire to have business remain business. We are a politically free people and must be an economically free people.

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It is my belief that the whole material development of our country has been enormously stimulated by reason of the general insistence on the part of the public authorities that economic effort ought not to partake of privilege, and that business should be unhampered and free. This could never have been done under a system of freight-rate discriminations or monopolistic trade associations. These might have enriched a few for a limited period, but they never would have enriched the country, while on the firmer foundation of justice we have achieved even more ample individual fortunes and a perfectly unprecedented era of general prosperity. This has resulted in no small part from the general acceptance on the part of those who own and control the wealth of the Nation, that it is to be used not to oppress but to serve. It is that policy, sometimes perhaps imperfectly expressed and clumsily administered, that has animated the National Government. In its observance there is unlimited opportunity for progress and prosperity. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the contribution which government makes to business. It is notorious that where the government is bad, business is bad. The mere fundamental precepts of the administration of justice, the providing of order and security, are priceless. The prime element in the value of all property is the knowledge that its peaceful enjoyment will be publicly depended. If disorder should break out in your city, if there should be a conviction extending over any length of time that the rights of persons add property could no longer be projected by law, the value of your tall buildings would shrink to about the price of what are low water fronts of old Carthage or what are low corner lots in ancient Babylon. It is really the extension of these fundamental rights that the Government is constantly attempting to apply to modern business. It wants its rightful possessors to rest in security, it wants any wrongs that they may suffer to have a legal remedy, and it is all the time striving through administrative machinery to prevent an advance the infliction of injustice. By these wise policies, pursued with tremendous economic effort, our country has reached its present prosperous condition. The people have been willing to work because they have something to work for. The per capita production has greatly increased. Out of our surplus savings we have been able to advance great sums for refinancing the Old World and developing the New. While Europe has attracted more public attention, Latin America, Japan, and even Australia, have been very large participators in these loans. If rightly directed, they ought to be of benefit to both lender and borrower. If used to establish industry and support commerce abroad, through adding to the wealth and productive capacity of those countries, they create their own security and increase consuming power to the probable advantage of our trade. But when used in ways that are not productive, like the maintenance of great military establishments or to meet municipal expenditures which should either be eliminated by government economy or supplied by taxation,

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they do not appear to serve a useful purpose and ought to be discouraged. Our bankers have a great deal of responsibility in relation to the soundness of these loans when they undertake to invest the savings of our country abroad. I should regret very much to see our possession of resources which are available to meet needs in other countries be the cause of any sentiment of envy or unfriendliness toward us. It ought everywhere to be welcomed with rejoicing and considered as a part of the good fortune of the entire world that such an economic reservoir exists here which can be made available in case of need. The working out of these problems of regulation, Government economy, the elimination of waste in the use of human effort and of materials, conservation and the proper investment of our savings both at home and abroad, is all a part of the mighty task which was imposed upon mankind of subduing the earth. America must either perform her full share in the accomplishment of this great world destiny or fail. For almost three centuries we were intent upon our domestic development. We sought the help of the people and the wealth of other lands by which to increase our numerical strength and augment our national fortune. We have grown exceedingly great in population and in riches. This power and this prosperity we can continue for ourselves if we will but proceed with moderation. If our people will but use those resources which have been intrusted to them, whether of command over large numbers of men or of command over large investments of capital, not selfishly but generously, not to exploit others but to serve others, there will be no doubt of an increasing production and distribution of wealth. In our domestic affairs we have adopted practical methods for the accomplishment of our ideals. We have translated our aspirations into appropriate actions. We have followed the declaration that we believe in justice, by establishing tribunals that would insure the administration of justice. What we have been able to do in this respect in relation to the different States of our Union, we ought to encourage and support in its proper application in relation to the different nations of the world. With our already enormous and constantly increasing interests abroad, there are constantly accumulating reasons why we should signify our adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Mindful of our determination to avoid all interference in the political affairs, which do not concern us, of other nations, I can think of no more reassuring action than the declaration of America that it will wholeheartedly join with others in the support of the tribunal for the administration of international justice which they have created. I can conceive of nothing that we could do, which involves assuming so few obligations on our part, that would be likely to prove of so much value to the world. Beyond its practical effect, which might be somewhat small, it would have a sentimental effect which would be tremendous. It would be public notice that the enor-

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mous influences of our country were to be cast upon the side of the enlightening process of civilization. It would be the beginning of a new world spirit. This is the land of George Washington. We can do no less than work toward the realization of his hope. It ought to be our ambition to see the institutions which he founded grow in the blessings which they bestow upon our own citizens and increase in the good which their influence casts upon all the world. He did not hesitate to meet peril or encounter danger or make sacrifices. There is no cause which can be supported by any other methods. We cannot listen to the counsels of perfection; we cannot pursue a timorous policy; we cannot avoid the obligations of a common humanity. We must meet our perils; we must encounter our dangers; we must make our sacrifices; or history will recount that the works of Washington have failed. I do not believe the future is to be dismayed by that record. The truth and faith and justice of the ancient days have not departed from us. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Calvin Coolidge grounds his speech in the belief that the strength of the nation is tied to commerce. When commerce falters, so too does the nation. In establishing his argument, Coolidge uses a series of interrelated space and distance metaphors to illustrate the proper place of business and government in society. Noting the “wisdom” of the nation’s founders, the president explains that Washington, D.C., and New York are separate centers for politics and commerce. Geographic centers, for Coolidge, are mutually exclusive and “sovereign in [their] own sphere.” Physical separation between government and business is used to argue for the necessity of a policy separation between private and public interests. To articulate the established order of domestic and international affairs, President Coolidge constructs a series of expectation frames to illustrate the future of American life if the status quo separation is maintained between business and government. Expectation frames are future-oriented statements that include derivations of will/would, shall/should, can/could verbs, or an equivalent future-based verb. 20 Expectations are built on causal attributions that are forward-projecting, with a known or unknown agent causally constructed as responsible for a future action. Relative certainty is communicated with a will/would expectation, a future ideal with shall/should, and the future ability to achieve an action with can/could. Governing expectations are akin to campaign promises, but may be tempered with the circumstances and experiences associated with executive administration. 21 By framing expectations, President Coolidge articulates how the continuity of current principles will lead to continued prosperity.

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Several critical moments in the president’s speech illustrate the use of expectations. Coolidge argues that a compelling government interest exists to ensure competition and the free exercise of commerce. The president’s statement of “business should be unhampered and free” rests on an idealized notion that future government policies ensure this principle. The role for government to protect property is implicated with this principle, as Coolidge notes. A government that abdicates property protection creates a future where “the value of your tall building would shrink to about the price of what are low waterfronts of old Carthage or what are low corner lots in ancient Babylon.” Invoking once powerful ancient cities supports Coolidge’s argument about the proper role of government. A government that fails to protect property dooms future commerce to a fate similar to ancient powers. President Coolidge then links both American government and commerce to international endeavors following World War I. He equates American financial strength with the “spiritual restoration of the world.” Since the foundation of American success is business enterprise, domestic commerce also has contributed to reviving international affairs. Foreseeing a more stable future, Coolidge constructs the expectation that “they [international nations] will see their way to a more peaceful existence.” Past efforts and present policies contribute to a sound future, an important moment of articulation for Coolidge’s and the Republican Party’s governance. The president’s turn to discuss international debt repayment provides specifics for how the United States will contribute to future peaceful affairs. For Coolidge, international debts are a threat to economic stability if not dealt with in a proper manner. He advocates for settlements approved previously by the U.S. Congress by explaining that proper debt repayment maintains the “integrity of international obligations” and contributes “to the economic recovery of their people.” Calvin Coolidge forecasts benefits to American and international relationships as a result. “They will assist both in the continuance of friendly relations, which are always jeopardized by unsettled differences, and the mutual improvement of trade opportunities by increasing the prosperity of the countries involved.” This portion of the Chamber of Commerce speech is dominated by will expectations, Coolidge’s strategy of pitching the certainty with which present policies will pay future dividends. President Coolidge projects assuredness when discussing the future outcomes of American domestic and foreign policy. The continual construction of will/would expectations is a potential characteristic of how presidents articulate an established governing order, as Coolidge sought to do with “stand pat” Republicanism in the 1920s. 22 Moreover, the president frames the agents responsible for this certain future as policy or nation-based, not president-based. This tactic removes presidential responsibility for future events, rhetorically diminishing the scope of the presidential office. Coolidge’s approach to expectations in this manner is not unexpected. According

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to Skowronek, the president was comfortable governing with the belief that “precious little needed to be done in the circumstances at hand to vindicate his moral and material commitments and sustain his leadership position.” 23 Calvin Coolidge’s framing of expectations grants Republican policies a measure of permanency without a direct presidential role, an apt rhetorical approach for a president needing only to affiliate with status quo national policies. Definition of the Problem The Chamber of Commerce speech is unique in that it does not respond to an immediate public policy problem. Instead, Calvin Coolidge uses the speech to preempt domestic and international problems yet to materialize. Coolidge acts as a soothsayer in this regard, using his position as chief executive to forecast potential trouble and how the nation can prevent it. Within his broader message of how commercial and governmental interests should occupy separate spheres, the president creates the expectation of future problems if the spheres collide. Coolidge points to how the commercial sphere, at times, will “attempt to run the Government in such a way as to set up a system of privilege” and the governmental sphere will seek “a policy of infringing upon the domain of private business.” This once and future problem, according to President Coolidge, can be prevented with “reasonable vigilance on the part of the people to preserve their freedom.” The president frames the fix for a future societal problem based on an individual solution, which removes direct presidential responsibility. Calvin Coolidge details toward the conclusion of his speech how individuals can prevent the inevitable collision of commercial and governmental interests. The president calls on individuals who exercise public and private power to “proceed with moderation.” “If our people will but use those resources which have been entrusted to them, whether of command over large numbers of men or of command over large investments of capital, not selfishly but generously . . . there will be no doubt of an increasing production and distribution of wealth.” His use of a will/would expectation frame adds solidity to the course of action. This solution to a potentially impending problem, while not concrete, relays a value-laden appeal to structure the president’s general approach to commercial-government relations. Furthermore, should the desired outcome not be achieved, the president could point to the unmoderated faults of other individuals—as opposed to his governance—as the reason for failure. The speech also addresses the issue of international justice, a point of contention between internationally focused and isolationist politicians in the 1920s. President Coolidge clearly sides with the voices in the Republican Party demanding a broader international role for the United States. He con-

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structs an ideal expectation when arguing that “we should signify our adherence to the Permanent Court of International Justice.” For the president, this action will create opportunities for continued peace and prosperity, an important argument grounded in regime articulation. Explaining that the action would assume “so few obligations on our part,” Calvin Coolidge predicts the certain effects should America join including “a sentimental effect which would be tremendous. It would be public notice that the enormous influences of our country were to be cast upon the side of the enlightening process of civilization. It would be the beginning of a new world spirit.” Coolidge’s repeated use of would expectations, just as in other areas of his speech, paints an optimistic portrait of America’s influence on future events. Much as New York and Washington, D.C. are centers in their respective spheres, Coolidge rhetorically positions American influence as central to present and future international affairs. The Impact In the classic understanding of the rhetorical presidency, presidents use public communications to buttress their leadership by speaking directly to citizens. By targeting the New York Chamber of Commerce, President Coolidge seeks out citizens favorably disposed toward his administration’s policies. Coolidge’s purpose is not to persuade so much as bolstering a set of alreadyaccepted ideas, what Martin Medhurst explains as the public acceptance of “certain definitions, meanings, and values.” 24 Thus, the speech focuses on articulating the established order of Republican policies by setting continuity expectations. When viewed in this manner, the speech has both short-term and long-term influences. Over the short-term course of the Coolidge administration, the Chamber of Commerce speech serves as a blueprint for the president’s agenda. Calvin Coolidge fulfilled his expectation that business and government interests should occupy separate spheres. Congress lowered tax rates on wealthier individuals and raised taxes on businesses. 25 Yet, agricultural interests in Congress sent the president farm price support measures in clear violation of Coolidge’s governing principles. Supported by The American Farm Bureau Federation, Congress introduced the McNary-Haughen legislation to set prices on farm products and ensure “Equity for Agriculture.” 26 Coolidge vetoed the legislation twice. Although he faced some opposition to his governing agenda from a Republican-controlled Congress, Calvin Coolidge left office with the domestic policy regime he inherited relatively intact and a still-prosperous economy. The president faced a lukewarm reception in Congress to the international principles he outlined in New York. Calvin Coolidge oversaw the reworking of debts owed by European nations after World War I. 27 Internationalists and

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isolationists squared off in the U.S. Senate over President Coolidge’s proposal for America to join the Permanent Court of International Justice, also known as the World Court. The measure was amended to include reservations expressed by senators. The president, upset by the Senate’s actions, nonetheless thought that a long-awaited approval might occur before he left office. 28 The proposal was never ratified. Expectations for the world created by American membership in the World Court did not materialize. The long-term influences of the speech also are meaningful. President Coolidge talked frequently of future economic prosperity, yet did not foresee impending economic difficulties. The Republican policy regime articulated by Calvin Coolidge in the Chamber of Commerce speech disintegrated less than a year after the president left office. Herbert Hoover, Coolidge’s successor, dealt with the ramifications created by income inequality, an overheated stock market, struggling farmers, and burdensome foreign debt. With the onset of the Great Depression, President Hoover disavowed the economic principles advanced by Coolidge. Hoover proposed policies, like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and other government interventions in the economy that were incompatible with the governing philosophy of his Republican predecessors. 29 Global economic turmoil made foreign debt burdens unsustainable for European nations and created a hostile political environment that would later be made manifest in World War II. The increased wealth and global peace predicted by Calvin Coolidge in the Chamber of Commerce speech never occurred. Although Coolidge’s articulation of a limited role for government in the affairs of business and American life was shelved as a viable policy approach for 50 years after he left office, the ideas were modified and reemerged in the Republican Party’s resurgence under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Upon assuming office, President Reagan hung a picture of Calvin Coolidge in the White House Cabinet room. 30 NOTES 1. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 188. See also: Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995), 15. 2. James David Barber, “Classifying and Predicting Presidential Styles: Two ‘Weak’ Presidents,” Journal of Social Issues 24, no. 3 (1968): 51–54. 3. Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003), 222–23. 4. Quoted in Barber, “Classifying and Predicting Presidential Styles,” 54. 5. Vanessa B. Beasley, “Engendering Democratic Change: How Three U.S. Presidents Discussed Female Suffrage,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5, no. 1 (2002): 93. 6. Ibid, 92. 7. Colleen J. Shogan, “Coolidge and Reagan: The Rhetorical Influence of Silent Cal on the Great Communicator,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9, no. 2 (2006): 218.

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8. Ryan Lee Teten, The Evolutionary Rhetorical Presidency: Tracing the Changes in Presidential Address and Power (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 16, 18. 9. Arthur F. Fleser, “Coolidge’s Delivery: Everybody Liked It,” The Southern Speech Journal 32, no. 2 (1966): 101. 10. Barber, “Classifying and Predicting Presidential Styles,” 54. 11. Robert Schlesinger, White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters from FDR to George W. Bush (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 3. 12. Drew Desilver, “U.S. Income Inequality, On Rise for Decades, Is Now Highest Since 1928,” Pew Research Center, last modified December 5, 2013, http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2013/12/05/u-s-income-inequality-on-rise-for-decades-is-now-highest-since-1928/. 13. B. Dan Wood, The Politics of Economic Leadership: The Causes and Consequences of Presidential Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 6. 14. Stephen Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 41, 46–47. 15. Ibid, 41. 16. Ibid, 47. 17. Gould, Grand Old Party, 221. 18. Ibid, 219. 19. Calvin Coolidge: “Address Before the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, New York City,” November 19, 1925. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=479. The speech was edited from the original to include the dominant frame that permeated the entire text. In the original text, President Coolidge includes additional information on the elimination of domestic debt, increased wages, and the settlement of foreign debts. 20. Joshua M. Scacco, “Presidential Prediction: The Strategic Construction and Influence of Expectation Frames” (PhD dissertation, The University of Texas at Austin, 2014), 19–22. 21. Ibid, 8–9. 22. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 47. 23. Ibid, 47. 24. Martin J. Medhurst, “Afterword: Questioning the Rhetorical Presidency Construct,” in Before the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), 331. 25. Gould, Grand Old Party, 243. 26. Dumenil, The Modern Temper, 46. 27. Gould, Grand Old Party, 244–45. 28. “The United States and the World Court,”Bulletin of International News 5, no. 11 (1928): 9–10. 29. Skowronek, The Politics Presidents Make, 281. 30. Gould, Grand Old Party, 237.

Chapter Six

Herbert Clark Hoover Farm Relief Stephen F. Robar

THE BACKGROUND When Herbert C. Hoover took office in 1929, the state of American agriculture and the American farmer “was not in a satisfactory condition.” 1 During the First World War, American agriculture, at the request of the government and in patriotic fashion, had significantly increased production to service the Allies and the war effort, and as a result had produced by war’s end a substantial surplus and had increased production capacity. There was a significant expansion in land acreage put into production, and advances in technology and mechanization contributed to increased production capacity as well. This domestic surplus, coupled with the increase in production in overseas markets with the close of the war, led to oversupplied domestic and global markets and to significant reductions in commodity and other farm product prices. While agricultural prices and land values were high, many thousands of farmers had taken out additional mortgages to purchase this new technology and buy more land, and with the collapse of prices and a glutted market, farmers were unable to sell their products and service their debt. When the rest of the economy was “roaring,” American agriculture was sputtering. For over a decade then, despite political and policy efforts, American agriculture had been in turmoil and under great economic stress. In a political era dominated by two competing Progressive models of economic governance, one generally exemplified by Wilson’s New Freedom and including cooperative economic structures and voluntary associations, the other identified with Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and strong federal direction based 67

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upon state authority and bureaucracy, the agricultural sector remained “one of the most disorganized and chaotic of all the natural resource industries.” 2 As an economic sector, agriculture remained a problematic political and policy challenge throughout the 1920s, and even through the New Deal and beyond. Herbert Hoover was well-acquainted with and very much informed on the subject of agricultural policy and administration when he took office, and in fact by the early 1920s was considered “one of the foremost analysts of the farm problem.” 3 Hoover had served as the head of the United States Food Administration from 1917–1919 for President Woodrow Wilson, and as Director General of the American Relief Administration from 1919–1920. 4 He had in these roles, according to most historians and analysts, and with some controversy, 5 acted effectively in not only serving the humanitarian needs of the war, but also in addressing the issue of the post-war surplus. His experience, however, during this period led him to question the effectiveness and appropriateness of “governmental price management” and brought him to, or reinforced, his belief that “private associations should and could bring order” to agricultural production. 6 Hoover had also served as Secretary of Commerce from 1921–1928 in both the Harding and Coolidge administrations, and very much influenced agricultural policy in both administrations. The nature and subsequent substance of that influence, ideologically, politically, and in terms of policy, can be directly traced back to his book American Individualism (1922), wherein Hoover develops his belief in, and commitment to, the ideas of individualism, “cooperatism,” voluntarism, and governmental decentralization. Hoover describes in his book what he sees as a “new harmonious economic system, the dominating idea of which would be a steady increase, through the cooperation of capital and labor, of the efficiency of production and distribution.” 7 American Individualism represented, however, not only Hoover’s overall philosophy of politics and public affairs, but having been so closely embedded in agricultural affairs, he would, during his tenure as Secretary of Commerce, continuously advocate for a cooperative, private, farmer-based “longterm” solution to the agricultural problem rather than a “statist,” governmental approach. Hoover’s agricultural theory and policy would serve as a conspicuous manifestation of his thinking in American Individualism. As Secretary of Commerce, Hoover was certain that “cooperative marketing” or “orderly marketing” was the appropriate policy foundation upon which to not only address current agricultural problems, but also establish a fundamentally restructured and “ordered” system for the future. During the early years of Hoover’s tenure at Commerce, the cooperative model was gaining support in some corners of the Republican Party, and Hoover advocated widely for a national system of farmer-directed, cooperative marketing associations. Hoover’s cooperative marketing ideas would serve as the foun-

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dation of a Presidential Commission Report in 1924, and then the Cooperative Marketing Act of 1926 (CMA), which established “cooperative marketing as the Coolidge administration’s basic solution to the farmers’ problems.” 8 The CMA expanded the provisions of the 1922 Capper-Volstead Act, which established certain protections from anti-trust laws for the cooperatives. The basic superstructure of these cooperative marketing policies would also become the philosophical and policy centerpiece of Hoover’s agricultural campaign platform and his own administration’s official policy, the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929. During Hoover’s tenure as Secretary of Commerce, the primary political and policy opposition to his cooperative model came from fellow cabinet member Henry Cantwell Wallace, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the McNary-Haugenites in Congress. Wallace and the Haugenites favored direct federal and governmental engagement, primarily in the form of an export corporation which would purchase domestic surplus and market that surplus abroad. The federal government would estimate the amount of agricultural production needed for domestic consumption, and the surplus would be marketed abroad. The necessarily higher price for the domestic market would reflect world market dynamics and the tariff, and the surplus would be sold at the lower global price. The difference, and cost to the government, would be paid for by a tax or equalization fee paid by the farmers of each of the commodities, and of course passed on to the American consumer. McNaryHaugenism, as it became known, took form in the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, which proponents tried to push through Congress in 1924, 1926, 1927, and 1928. The legislation did not make it out of Congress in 1924 and 1926, yet with mounting concern in the agricultural sector and with significant support from agricultural interests the legislation made it through both houses of Congress in 1927 and 1928. President Coolidge vetoed the legislation both times. When it came to the philosophical and policy nature of the McNaryHaugen legislation, Hoover and others, including now Secretary of Agriculture William M. Jardine, believed that such legislation would lead to substantial inflation in food prices (and concomitant demands for increased wages); do nothing to address the issue of overproduction, if not encourage it; disproportionately benefit large agricultural producers rather than the small independent farmer; and, encourage other industrial sectors to seek federal government assistance to offset natural market dynamics. Such legislative and policy endeavors would mean that government and the public sector would be intricately involved in the private sector and the marketplace, and would immediately lead to a situation where Congress would become “the focal point of extensive lobbying by major interest groups.” 9 For Hoover, the philosophy and politics exemplified by McNary-Haugenism was an existen-

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tial threat to the idea of the American system, and to the future for corporatism that he envisioned in American Individualism. The election of 1928 was driven by many issues, including prohibition and Al Smith’s Catholicism, and “was not a referendum on American agriculture.” 10 However, “agriculture was one of the liveliest issues” in the campaign and the election “threw farm problems into sharper focus than in any campaign since 1896.” 11 For the previous four years a great many agricultural organizations and interests, and a great many senators and congressmen representing agricultural states across the country, had been advocating quite forcefully for McNary-Haugenism, and the wide support for legislative relief for the farmer, the result of a tangible and real postwar agricultural depression, had defined the previous decade. When President Coolidge, who had decided not to run for another term, vetoed the last McNary-Haugen bill in 1928, he delivered a particularly “vitriolic” message, all but assuring that agricultural issues would play a central role in the upcoming election. 12 Despite efforts on the part of the McNary-Haugenites to deny Hoover the party’s nomination, by the end of the Republican convention, held in Kansas City, Hoover had easily secured the nomination. Moreover, the party platform, which was overwhelmingly supported by the party, clearly articulated and supported Hoover’s prescriptions. The platform called for “a Federal Farm Board clothed with the necessary powers to promote the establishment of a farm marketing system of farmer-owned-and-controlled stabilization corporations or associations to prevent and control surpluses through orderly distribution.” It went on to state: “We favor, without putting the Government in business, the establishment of a federal system of organization for cooperative marketing of farm products.” 13 In his acceptance speech, Hoover called the agricultural situation “the most urgent problem in our nation today.” 14 During the campaign, Hoover made it known that if elected, he would call a special session of Congress to address the agricultural problem. On November 6, 1928, Herbert C. Hoover defeated Alfred E. Smith in a landslide. “THE SPEECH” 15 Message to the Special Session of the Congress on Farm Relief . . . 16 April 16, 1929 To the Congress of the United States: I have called this special session of Congress to redeem two pledges given in the last election—farm relief and limited changes in the tariff. The difficulties of the agricultural industry arise out of a multitude of causes. A heavy indebtedness was inherited by the industry from the deflation processes of 1920. Disorderly and wasteful methods of marketing have

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developed. The growing specialization in the industry has for years been increasing the proportion of products that now leave the farm and, in consequence, prices have been unduly depressed by congested marketing at the harvest or by the occasional climatic surpluses. Railway rates have necessarily increased. There has been a growth of competition in the world markets from countries that enjoy cheaper labor or more nearly virgin soils. There was a great expansion of production from our marginal lands during the war, and upon these profitable enterprise under normal conditions cannot be maintained. Meanwhile their continued output tends to aggravate the situation. Local taxes have doubled and in some cases trebled. Work animals have been steadily replaced by mechanical appliances, thereby decreasing the consumption of farm products. There are many other contributing causes. The general result has been that our agricultural industry has not kept pace in prosperity or standards of living with other lines of industry. There being no disagreement as to the need of farm relief, the problem before us becomes one of method by which relief may be most successfully brought about. Because of the multitude of causes and because agriculture is not one industry but a score of industries, we are confronted not with a single problem alone but a great number of problems. . . . The Government has a special mandate from the recent election, not only to further develop our waterways and revise the agricultural tariff, but also to extend systematic relief in other directions. I have long held that the multiplicity of causes of agricultural depression could only be met by the creation of a great instrumentality clothed with sufficient authority and resources to assist our farmers to meet these problems, each upon its own merits. The creation of such an agency would at once transfer the agricultural question from the field of politics into the realm of economics and would result in constructive action. The administration is pledged to create an instrumentality that will investigate the causes, find sound remedies, and have the authority and resources to apply those remedies. The pledged purpose of such a Federal farm board is the reorganization of the marketing system on sounder and more stable and more economic lines. To do this the board will require funds to assist in creating and sustaining farmer-owned and farmer-controlled agencies for a variety of purposes, such as the acquisition of adequate warehousing and other facilities for marketing; adequate working capital to be advanced against commodities lodged for storage; necessary and prudent advances to corporations created and owned by farmers’ marketing organizations for the purchase and orderly marketing of surpluses occasioned by climatic variations or by harvest congestion; to authorize the creation and support of clearing houses, especially for perishable products, through which, under producers’ approval, cooperation can be established with distributors and processors to more orderly marketing of

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commodities and for the elimination of many wastes in distribution; and to provide for licensing of handlers of some perishable products so as to eliminate unfair practices. Every penny of waste between farmer and consumer that we can eliminate, whether it arises from methods of distribution or from hazard or speculation, will be a gain to both farmer and consumer. In addition to these special provisions in the direction of improved returns, the board should be organized to investigate every field of economic betterment for the farmer so as to furnish guidance as to need in production, to devise methods for elimination of unprofitable marginal lands and their adaptation to other uses; to develop industrial byproducts and to survey a score of other fields of helpfulness. Certain safeguards must naturally surround these activities and the instrumentalities that are created. Certain vital principles must be adhered to in order that we may not undermine the freedom of our farmers and of our people as a whole by bureaucratic and governmental domination and interference. We must not undermine initiative. There should be no fee or tax imposed upon the farmer. No governmental agency should engage in the buying and selling and price fixing of products, for such courses can lead only to bureaucracy and domination. Government funds should not be loaned or facilities duplicated where other services of credit and facilities are available at reasonable rates. No activities should be set in motion that will result in increasing the surplus production, as such will defeat any plans of relief. The most progressive movement in all agriculture has been the upbuilding of the farmer’s own marketing organizations, which now embrace nearly two million farmers in membership and annually distribute nearly $2,500,000,000 worth of farm products. These organizations have acquired experience in virtually every branch of their industry, and furnish a substantial basis upon which to build further organization. Not all these marketing organizations are of the same type, but the test of them is whether or not they are farmer owned or farmer controlled. In order to strengthen and not to undermine them, all proposals for governmental assistance should originate with such organizations and be the result of their application. Moreover by such bases of organization the Government will be removed from engaging in the business of agriculture. The difficulties of agriculture cannot be cured in a day; they cannot all be cured by legislation; they cannot be cured by the Federal Government alone. But farmers and their organizations can be assisted to overcome these inequalities. Every effort of this character is an experiment, and we shall find from our experience the way to further advance. We must make a start. With the creation of a great instrumentality of this character, of a strength and importance equal to that of those which we have created for transportation and banking, we give immediate assurance of the determined purpose of the Government to meet the difficulties of which we are now aware, and to

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create an agency through which constructive action for the future will be assured. In this treatment of this problem we recognize the responsibility of the people as a whole, and we shall lay the foundations for a new day in agriculture, from which we shall preserve to the Nation the great values of its individuality and strengthen our whole national fabric. . . . It is my understanding that it is the purpose of the leaders of Congress to confine the deliberations of the session mainly to the questions of farm relief and tariff. In this policy I concur. Herbert Hoover THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame The goal of rhetoric is persuasion, and the “rhetorical situation” 17 is generally composed of the message itself, including its rhetorical themes, appeals and framing, the medium utilized to deliver the message (written, spoken, visual etc.), the agent who delivers the message, as well as the setting and audience, both in terms of the proximate audience, as well as the broader social and political contexts, and exigency. Herbert Hoover’s message to the special session of Congress involves elements of the entire rhetorical situation. In the case of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, setting and audience are particularly significant. Hoover was a strong advocate of the constitutional separation of the executive and legislative branches, and Hoover’s management of the agricultural issue in the period after the election and leading up to the special session of Congress was clearly indicative of this commitment, as well as his commitment to the corporatist approach. Both of these would manifest themselves in what would be Hoover’s nonpartisan and apolitical approach to this legislation. Since his time as Secretary of Commerce, Hoover maintained his support for marketing mechanisms as the preferred solution to the agricultural problem. No rhetorical haranguing of Congress would be effective, nor did he believe in it from a constitutional standpoint. Furthermore, having spoken at length to his policy preferences during the recent presidential campaign, the appropriate rhetorical audience was clearly Congress, not the American public. Hoover had won a decisive electoral victory (all of his major campaign speeches included the agricultural question), which he believed carried a “mandate” for his policies, and he was “reluctant to intrude on the congressional role of constructing his own administration’s farm legislation.” 18 These dynamics also influenced the choice of “agent” and “medium” of his rhetorical message. Hoover did not engage in any lobbying of individual

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members of Congress, though he did respond to communications sent his way from Congress, nor did he engage in what today we call “going public,” 19 choosing not to issue a public address directed at Congress because he did not want to be perceived as politically pressuring Congress. Rather, Hoover crafted the message that would be read by the clerks of each chamber to the members present. The political themes and rhetorical appeals employed by Hoover in his message to Congress were consistent with those used by Hoover throughout the previous campaign, as well as his entire professional public life. His basic political ideals included individualism, “corporatism,” volunteerism, and government decentralization. Prominently positioned and easily identified amongst his administrative or methodological sensibilities are pragmatism, administrative efficiency, systemic rationality, and scientific management, all of which can be seen throughout his message. With respect to rhetorical appeal, the use of pathos is present, though not prominent. 20 Hoover relies primarily on the classic appeals of ethos and logos. The establishment of ethos in this particular rhetorical situation comes in several forms. In fact, the most powerful rhetorical appeals to ethos are not even to be found in the message. They are to be found in the elements and remnants of the November election, as well as the professional life of Herbert Hoover, though they are no less significant elements of the rhetorical situation. Herbert Hoover was understood by the American public as a most competent, trustworthy, and accomplished individual, both in his public as well as private life. A good part of his ethos is established in the spring of 1927, when the Mississippi River flooded covering over 20,000 square miles in water and leaving over 600,000 people homeless and without the basics. A massive natural and human disaster, President Coolidge established a Special Mississippi Flood Committee, and Hoover was at its head. The “Hoover Committee,” as it would come to be known, was responsible for managing the process of flood-relief, coordinating an array of federal, state, and local agencies, as well as private organizations, and would become perhaps one of the more emblematic chapters in Hoover’s public career. Hoover’s flood relief effort, characterized as being informed by the “doctrine of humane efficiency,” 21 was founded on the notions of community and local spirit, the moral fabric and capacity of the individual, as well as the efficiency of bureaucratic organization. Hoover, therefore, designed an “instrumentality” which would bring to the table the resources of the federal and state governments, and put them under the management of local leaders and organizers. An overwhelming success, his efforts introduced, or reintroduced, Hoover’s competence and humanity (he spent six months “in the trenches” with the people of the devastated areas) to the American people, and were a significant factor in the 1928 election. In fact, Hoover himself was worried that the overwhelming trust and faith placed in him by the

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American public could not be lived up to. Nonetheless, the public understanding and image of Hoover “screamed” ethos, and he knew it. So, too, did Congress. By choosing the approach he did, Hoover maximized the effect of his “ethotic capital.” In the message itself, Hoover calls upon this “capital” in his opening line: “I have called this special session of Congress to redeem two pledges given in the last election—farm relief and limited changes in the tariff.” The use of “pledges” is a direct appeal to his trustworthiness, and “last election” is a reminder to the members of Congress of the political and policy elements of the recent election. When in the message Hoover gets around to laying out the specifics, he opens the paragraph as follows: “I have long held that the multiplicity of causes of agricultural depression.” In utilizing the wording “I have long held,” Hoover is referencing his many years as an expert—as an accomplished expert—in the field of agricultural policy and relief management. Given the most recent electoral results, and given Hoover’s wellknown career, Hoover didn’t need to spend a great deal of effort on establishing ethos. It is difficult to determine the level of purpose Hoover brings to the inclusion of pathos: was it conscious or coincidental? Nonetheless, there are discernable moments of pathetic appeal, founded upon the notion of “relief.” Hoover uses the word “relief” throughout the message, and is indeed in the title of the message. He also speaks of the need to “assist our farmers” and to examine “other fields of helpfulness.” He also indicates the need to “make a start” and calls upon the “responsibility of the people as a whole.” Given the prominence of the impact of the flood, and Hoover’s performance during it, these rhetorical choices serve as clear pathetic appeals to an audience that is well-aware of the history. Logos, however, is by far the most prominent appeal in the message, as in fact it was in nearly all of Hoover’s rhetoric. As one author has put it, his speeches “were better in content than in style,” they “were fact-filled and tightly organized,” and the “logic was convincing.” 22 As an engineer, and as a long-standing public servant, Hoover would rely on his skills of design, analysis, and logic in approaching many of his challenges in terms of trying to diagnose and define a problem. Definition of the Problem According to Carl Burgchardt, “many of Hoover’s speeches followed variations of the problem-solution format, where he identified a problem, analyzed its causes, proposed a solution, answered possible objections, and finally urged action.” 23 His message to Congress used a very similar model, and one that also utilized a rhetoric of logic and rationality, as well as his core political themes.

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Hoover identifies and discusses the causes of the problem—which is a heavy farmer indebtedness—in the very first section. Hoover identifies “Disorderly and wasteful methods of marketing;” “growing specialization;” “growth in competition in world markets;” “a great expansion of production;” “taxes have doubled;” and the use of farm animals has been “replaced by mechanical appliances.” Claiming that there is “no disagreement as to the need of farm relief,” which is a rhetorical call for non-partisanship, the challenge to generate a solution becomes “one of method.” Even here, in the simple identification of causes, Hoover manages to rhetorically call upon several of his core political themes. In fact, it is in this section of his message that his political values become most evident. He speaks of the need for the creation of a “great instrumentality,” one that will “transfer the agricultural question from the field of politics into the realm of economics.” This instrumentality would “investigate” and find “sound remedies,” remedies that would place the agricultural question on “sounder and more stable and more economic lines.” It would promote “orderly marketing” and “cooperation” and lead to the “elimination of many wastes.” Clearly evident here are the methodological themes of administrative efficiency, systemic rationality, and scientific management. In laying out his solution, however, Hoover identified not only those political themes he most closely adhered to, he identified boundaries and principles that any new policy must adhere to, and was speaking to those in Congress who were putting forward alternative proposals, namely the McNary-Haugenites. In the construction of a policy instrument, Hoover maintained “certain safeguards,” and “certain vital principles,” must be “adhered to in order that we may not undermine the freedom of our farmers and of our people as a whole by bureaucratic and governmental domination and interference.” According to Hoover, no “governmental agency should engage in the buying and selling and price fixing of products, for such courses can lead only to bureaucracy and domination.” By adhering to these principles, “we shall preserve to the Nation the great values of its individuality and strengthen our whole national fabric.” Hoover, making an argument for a corporatist (cooperatism) approach that relied on these new farmer-driven “instrumentalities,” as opposed to a state-centered one, also brought forth his progressive political outlook. As for these new instrumentalities, “the test of them is whether or not they are farmer owned or farmer controlled.” The “most progressive movement in all agriculture,” he says, has been the “upbuilding of the farmer’s own marketing organizations,” which “have acquired experience in virtually every branch of their industry,” and which will “furnish a substantial basis” upon which further organization can take place. These new corporatist organizations, with the assistance of and not the control by, government, “shall lay the foundations for a new day in agriculture.”

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Whether Hoover was addressing a crowd during the campaign, a conference of businessmen, or a room full of politicians, Hoover steadfastly held to a set of basic political themes: the exhortation of Americanism and the American System; the belief in civil self-government as opposed to statecentered government; a faith in national progress; an adherence to the American values of individualism and personal liberty; an intellectual support for a belief in administrative and economic rationalism; and a belief in “ordered liberty.” Using as a conceptual and historical foundation the themes of American individualism and the American system (another element of pathos in the message), Hoover’s message is an ordered, structured, and logical defense of his proposed solution to the agricultural question. The Impact Presidential power, it has been argued by Richard Neustadt in Presidential Power, is the power to persuade. 24 In our constitutional system of divided and shared powers, presidents cannot command Congress. As such, the examination of just when, under what circumstances, and how, presidents can persuade Congress has been the subject of much scholarship. The introduction of this volume referenced The Rhetorical Presidency, by Tulis, 25 and this chapter has referenced Going Public, by Kernell, both of which approach the question of presidential persuasion from the standpoint of the president utilizing rhetoric to persuade the public, which would in turn pressure Congress. For the purposes of speaking to the impact and effect of Hoover’s message to the special session of Congress, the use of a recent piece of scholarship is appropriate, as its frame addresses foremost the direct rhetorical relationship between the president and Congress, the scenario of this case study. In “Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress,” 26 Villalobos, Vaughn, and Azari examine how four different types of presidential messaging impact the congressional outcome. In particular, they utilize mandate rhetoric, bipartisan rhetorical appeals, signaling, and agency input. Mandate rhetoric of course draws upon the power a president may have derived from a recent election, and in some way is an indirect “going public” strategy—a certain form of logos. Bipartisan appeals draw on the notion of “setting aside” partisan differences and coming together for the greater good, and may generally include testimonial to the work already done by partisans, or, already agreed to positions—a certain form of pathos. Signaling involves the dissemination of information to Congress regarding a president’s position on a policy direction. Rather than having policy initiatives “drop out of the sky,” the idea here is that the more a president informs Congress and “tills the ground,” the greater the policy success. And finally, agency input is not unlike signaling in that it involves information, yet here

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agency input also suggests the reliance on expertise and analysis, often involving not only executive agencies, but also congressional committees— both signaling and agency input connote ethos. The Agricultural Marketing Act was signed into law by President Hoover on June 15, 1929, after conference agreement came from the Senate on June 14 (82–11), and the House on June 13 (272–134). 27 From the standpoint of passage, Hoover’s rhetorical and political approach was a success. Even staunch leadership opponents of his policy ended up supporting the bill, and the legislation included nearly all of Hoover’s preferences. Utilizing the framing of “Politics or Policy?” the impact of Hoover’s rhetorical approach was successful as well, and it contained all four of these rhetorical elements. The mandate and bipartisan rhetorical appeals have already been spoken to. Though he didn’t heavily rely on either, they are both to be found in his message. The use of signaling has been addressed as well, in that Hoover left absolutely no doubt about both what and when he would be bringing the issue of agricultural relief to Congress. He had spoken to it at length during the campaign, and in the period between the election and his inauguration, and he had also spent over a decade in public service advocating for the very same policy approach. And as for agency input, after Hoover released a brief statement on April 19, 1929, in response to questions regarding the progress of the bill, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce, all submitted to Senator McNary detailed evaluations of the legislation, all of which in one form or another supported the president’s position. Herbert Hoover’s rhetorical and political stewardship of the Agricultural Marketing Act provides a good window through which to examine Hoover’s political and administrative ideals, as well as his overall and general rhetorical disposition. As president he was inherently disposed to trying to avoid both partisanship and executive intrusion into the legislative process. He was much more comfortable with the language of administrative rationalism and logic, yet he was not shy in utilizing the mandate rhetoric he felt he had license to as a result of his overwhelming electoral victory. At his core, however, he was an administrative and policy rationalist, and believed that sound policy and logic was the key to progress and success. It should be noted that the research in “Politics or Policy?” drew the conclusion that of the four rhetorical appeals, it is “the substantive dimension of presidential requests that matters the most.” 28 I suspect that President Hoover would not be displeased with this finding. NOTES 1. Ray L. Wilbur and Arthur Hyde, The Hoover Policies (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 148.

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2. Joan H. Wilson, “Hoover’s Agricultural Policies 1921–1928,” Agricultural History 51 (1977): 337. 3. James H. Shideler, “Herbert Hoover and the Federal Farm Board Project, 1921–1925,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42 (1956): 711. 4. The American Food Administration became the American Relief Administration in February of 1919. 5. For a general discussion see Gary D. Best, “Food Relief as Price Support: Hoover and American Pork, January-March 1919.” Agricultural History 45 (1971): 79–84. 6. Shideler, “Herbert Hoover and the Federal Farm Board Project, 1921–1925,” 712. 7. Martin L. Fausold, “President Hoover’s Farm Policies 1929–1933,” Agricultural History 51 (1977): 365. 8. Fausold, “President Hoover’s Farm Policies 1929–1933,” 364. 9. Wilson, “Hoover’s Agricultural Policies 1921–1928,” 345–46. 10. Fausold, “President Hoover’s Farm Policies 1929–1933,” 365. 11. Gilbert C. Fite, “The Agricultural Issues in the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 37 (1951): 653. 12. Fite, “The Agricultural Issues in the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” 653. 13. Fite, “The Agricultural Issues in the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” 658. 14. Fite, “The Agricultural Issues in the Presidential Campaign of 1928,” 661. 15. I utilize quotations because the message was not delivered by Hoover himself, but was read to each chamber of Congress by the clerks of each house. This will be addressed later in the chapter. Additionally, the entire message is not provided. In addition to the farm relief issue, Hoover also included remarks on the more general issue of tariffs, and thus excerpted here are those passages central to the question of farm relief. 16. United States, President (1929–1933: Hoover), Herbert Hoover, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches and Statements of the President (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974) 1: 75. 17. Lloyd F. Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1–14; Richard E. Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 6 (1973): 154–61. I do not reference the particular debate between Bitzer and Vatz, rather, I utilize the general scope of the rhetorical situation that emerges. 18. Fausold, “President Hoover’s Farm Policies 1929–1933,” 365. 19. Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies in Presidential Leadership (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1986). 20. Despite the fact that Hoover was by temperament less prone to the use of pathos in his speeches and remarks, and was by most accounts not disposed to oratory, in his six major campaign speeches can be found a reasonable resort to pathos and these speeches make for an interesting juxtaposition. 21. Bruce A. Lohof, “Herbert Hoover, Spokesman of Human Efficiency: The Mississippi Flood of 1927,” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 693. 22. Glen Jeansonne, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker 1928–1933, (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 79. 23. Carl R. Burgchardt, “Herbert Clark Hoover,” in U.S. Presidents as Orators: A BioCritical Sourcebook, ed. Halford Ryan (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995), 134. 24. Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960). 25. Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). 26. Jose D. Villalobos, Justin S. Vaughn, and Julia R. Azari, “Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 42 (2012). This is an excellent contemporary piece with solid foundational and contemporary references. I rely on it in general for this section. 27. Govtrack.com. Accessed December 12, 2014. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/ 71–1/s29; https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/71–1/h13. 28. Villalobos, Vaughn, and Azari, “Politics or Policy?,” 566.

Chapter Seven

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Inauguration of the New Deal Richard G. Frederick

THE BACKGROUND By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s accession to the presidency, the country had been spiraling downward into deepening depression for more than three years. Since the stock market crash in October 1929, more than 5,000 banks had failed across the country, along with more than 85,000 businesses, large and small. Estimates of unemployment ranged from 25 to 30 percent. President Herbert Hoover initially regarded the crash as an anomaly in an otherwise healthy economy, caused by greedy overspeculation in a series of bull markets in the late 1920s. When businessmen and investors showed hesitancy in fueling an immediate recovery, Hoover responded by organizing White House meetings with industrial leaders and launching the National Business Survey Conference. This was not exactly the laissez faire approach of the nineteenth century, but it was a very limited response to what would turn into America’s greatest economic disaster. President Hoover later adopted a more hands-on approach to economic stimulation, with an agency to assist in stabilizing banking institutions, life insurance companies, and railroads, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He called for increased government spending for public construction projects as part of an effort to promote work relief. In addition, he created a Home Loan Bank Board to provide banks with capital to help reduce foreclosures and stimulate new home construction. 1 None of these efforts would succeed on a large enough scale. Unemployment continued to rise, industrial production ebbed, and bank failures contin81

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ued at an alarming rate. After November 1932, the lame-duck Congress and President were stymied by a lack of consensus on government-controlled economic programs. 2 Appeals to Roosevelt for joint proclamations or actions were vetoed by the President-elect, who reasoned that the failure of such actions would weaken his own presidency. The four months between election and inauguration dragged endlessly. 3 Roosevelt clearly saw the need for a substantive inaugural address, which would address real problems and offer real solutions. Although he had eschewed specificity in most of his campaign addresses, he had developed ideas about necessary legislative action in discussions with a group of insiders, mostly the group of university professors that the press dubbed “the Brain Trust.” One of their number, Raymond Moley, a professor of legal studies at Barnard College in Columbia University, would be the main architect of the inaugural address. In mid-February at Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park, Moley and Roosevelt went over the draft, with Roosevelt making several changes and additions. Later, the revised draft was passed along to Louis Howe, Roosevelt’s friend and legal advisor, who also changed a few phrases. Most of the Howe changes were insubstantial, with one major exception—it was he who first introduced “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” into the speech. 4 Ironically, the phrase which came to embody the spirit of the speech, and of FDR’s first months in office, was at first something of an orphan. Early commentators credited it to Roosevelt, with his wife Eleanor telling one of his advisors that it probably originated in a book of Thoreau’s that she had given her husband. 5 Later when Howe claimed authorship, he was not sure of his source of inspiration, but thought it was a quote from a newspaper advertisement. Additional irony stems from the fact that the message was precisely the one Herbert Hoover had been articulating since the early days of the depression. The large difference, of course, was that Hoover apparently believed that awakening people to the underlying strength of the economy was sufficient to see them through troubled times. Roosevelt would take one giant step further and pledge to use the resources of the federal government in an active manner to hasten recovery. So it was that Roosevelt moved to the podium on the steps of the Capitol on a chilly day in early March 1933. A real sense of crisis hung in the air but he was armed with a speech that promised action and held out hope. Like any good political speech, it was also crammed with metaphors and, as historian Jordan Schwarz later noted, “Metaphors were significant in depression psychology.” 6

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THE SPEECH 7 Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 This is a day of national consecration and I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days. In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment. Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

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The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources. Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the over-balance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly. Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order: there must be a strict

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supervision of all banking and credits and investments, so that there will be an end to speculation with other people’s money; and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. These are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress, in special session, detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States. Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment. The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure. In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors. If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we cannot merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife. With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems. Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress

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of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations. It is to be hoped that the normal balance of Executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption. But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. For the trust reposed in men I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less. We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life. We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it. In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Roosevelt breaks with the tradition of most of the earlier inaugural addresses, which tended to use lofty language to describe both the present greatness of the United States and the soaring goals of the incoming administration to ensure a bountiful future for all. Instead, F.D.R. discusses the nature of America’s dilemma at the time and outlines some of the steps he hopes to take in the near future to alleviate the economic difficulty and uncertainty.

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The key to the framing is reassurance. Roosevelt assigns blame for the parlous situation of the nation to the “money changers” and those who have been guilty of “callous and selfish wrongdoing” in business and finance. But, he notes, these people are gone—presumably swept out with the Hoover administration. He makes it clear that problems are not the fault of the people of America. They are sound. So too is the Constitution, the system under which the United States is governed. Thus, it is only logical that the assertion with which he begins the speech will be carried out: “This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” The severity of the problem, however, calls for resolve on the part of the people and the government. Roosevelt makes especially good use of military metaphors and the analogue of war to stress the resolve of the government to take action. He claims to treat the unemployment program with the “emergency of a war.” He mentions his “lines of attack” in pressing his program on Congress. He notes the necessity of moving ahead as an army “with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife,” and later looks forward to leading “this great army of our people.” In case he encounters a recalcitrant or slow-moving Congress, he promises to seek stronger executive power “that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” This use of military metaphors was hardly unprecedented; Hoover, for example, had attempted to use similar language on various occasions. As in many other instances, Roosevelt succeeded where Hoover failed in rallying people to action, using reminders of their response to the great call to duty during the World War, only a little over a decade in the past. 8 In addition to the patriotism implied by the martial tone of the address, Roosevelt also includes numerous religious references. These would serve not only as an assertion of the righteousness of the Democratic cause but as a reminder of America’s past successes achieved through divine intervention in favor of God-fearing Americans. 9 From the opening “day of national consecration” to the closing evocation of God’s blessing, Roosevelt reminds his listeners that the coming quest has a spiritual dimension. His use of “moneychangers . . . in the temple of our civilization” is a clear indictment of Wall Street and the banking establishment, but couched in Biblical terms that appeal to Christians and Jews alike. Most of all the address builds a framework for hope during a time of crisis and deprivation. In a 1981 article, Leo Finkelstein, Jr. noted: “In 1933 Americans needed ritual to cope with everyday life. They needed some myth in which to believe and some power in which to place their trust. Roosevelt became the embodiment of this myth, a rhetorical wizard who used the medium of radio to bestow confidence and hope on a frightened people.” 10

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Definition of the Problem Roosevelt establishes the need for unity and immediate action in the face of overwhelming crisis. Implicit in this call to arms is the notion that the outgoing administration has not done enough in the way of assistance, making a sluggish government a part of the problem. Along with this call for decisiveness, he outlines several specific problems which are endemic to depression times. People are out of work, and this needs to be remedied swiftly and massively. Farm products are depressed in value. Industrial production has slowed, largely owing to the inability of farmers and wage-earners to pay for manufactured products. Foreclosures on home mortgages have risen. More than any other difficulty to be overcome is the banking impasse. By definition, a depression is a financial crisis, and Roosevelt acknowledges that fact by blaming the moneychangers and others for present conditions. He returns to this theme in a broader way by calling for the application of “social values more noble than mere monetary profit.” He also contrasts past American ideals of hard work and ethical behavior with materialism, implying that the giddy financial conditions of the 1920s have contributed to the depression of the 1930s. In a brief statement, Roosevelt acknowledges the problematic nature of international trade relations, but avers that this is a secondary matter to be dealt with after problems at home. This is very much an address dealing with domestic matters, reflecting an increasingly isolationist national outlook. The Impact Inaugural addresses are meant to inspire or to move people toward a greater understanding of or faith in the incoming administration. They explain ideals and goals. By any measure the address of 1933 accomplished all of these ends. A flood of letters and telegrams poured into the White House carrying positive commentary on the speech. A singular common characteristic of these missives from all types of people in all sections of the country was their assurance to the President that confidence had been restored by the speech. As historians Davis W. Houck and Mihaela Nocasian have pointed out, “It was confidence that the new administration looked to catalyze, and the inaugural address was the Ur-text in its formation.” 11 This was only the beginning, of course. Without decisive action, any confidence that was restored would have quickly dissipated. Roosevelt and the Brain Tust fully realized that the speech was only the opening shot in an aggressive campaign of Executive activity. Roosevelt immediately called for a special session of Congress, and the Hundred Days (March 9–June 15) that

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followed were historically unique in the level of legislative achievements, all initiated in the White House. 12 The special session of Congress initially convened to deal with the banking crisis. The invocation to abjure fear might have applied specifically to this area, since economic recovery absolutely depended upon capital and a workable credit system. Banks had to be stabilized, which meant that depositors had to trust them with their money. On the opening day of the session, March 9, the Emergency Banking Relief Act, drawn up by the Roosevelt inner circle, was read in Congress, passed, and approved by the President. Its main objective was to restore faith in the banking system; this was done by declaring a “national bank holiday,” closing all the banks until federal auditors could inspect the books and certify which banks were safe for investors. When banks began to reopen after a few days, people stood in line to deposit their savings in the now-safe banks. The Act also gave the President strong discretionary powers over gold and currency transactions, and forbade the hoarding of gold. The Glass-Steagall Act, passed on the last day of the special Congressional session, further reassured individual investors with the creation of the Federal Bank Deposit Insurance Corporation, which guaranteed bank deposits up to $5,000. With the banking system restored to some semblance of health, Congress remained in session to address the other issues Roosevelt singled out for action in the inaugural. Unemployment relief was the subject of three separate agencies. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration would distribute funds to the states on a matching basis (one federal dollar for every three local and state dollars) to hand out in the form of grants or work relief projects. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was aimed at young men between 18 and 25 who would work on reforestation and other conservation projects and send a substantial portion of their earnings home to support their families. The Public Works Administration, the largest of such relief activities, was established as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), and intended for large-scale building projects. A multi-billion dollar budget was included. The Agricultural Adjustment Act addressed the problem of farm surpluses and lower farm prices by mandatory restrictions on production in return for parity payments on some staples and rental payments for land left uncultivated. Industrial recovery under the NIRA was predicated on a similar principle: limit production and set prices. This was to be accomplished by a set of “codes of fair competition” within each industry, to which business leaders would subscribe. The list of Hundred Day accomplishments extends to nearly every facet addressed in the inaugural speech. Manipulation of the stock market? The Federal Securities Act of May 27 required full disclosure to investors for issues of new stock and registration of new stock issues with the Federal

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Trade Commission. (The Securities and Exchange Commission would come the following year.) Foreclosures on home mortgages? The Home Owners Loan Corporation was established on June 13 to refinance home mortgages by exchanging government bonds for mortgages and refinancing at lower rates, thus helping both home owners and the banks which held the commercial paper. One outcome based on an inaugural promise came in an area not usually associated with Roosevelt’s New Deal, which generally operated on the Keynesian principle of deficit spending: economy in government. During the presidential campaign, Roosevelt had often criticized Hoover for overspending and failing to balance the budget. He mirrored these expressions in the inaugural address when he called for the cost of government to be “drastically reduced” through government reorganization and national planning. His requested Economy Act was passed on March 20, and called for a balanced budget by reorganizing some government agencies and cutting federal salaries and veterans’ pensions. The act was no real surprise, given Roosevelt’s prior rhetoric, but it appears as an anomaly in the midst of all the spending bills passed during the Hundred Days, with budgets in the hundreds of millions and even (for the first time) billions (PWA). As historian Halford Ross Ryan has correctly pointed out, Roosevelt could not have imagined the great degree of success he would achieve during the Hundred Days while he was fashioning his inaugural address. 13 With that in mind, one must attribute some large amount of that success to the speech itself. While there may be no quantitative measure of rhetorical greatness, a speech that inspired the greatest burst of legislative activity in the nation’s history must certainly be reckoned as one of the greatest speeches in the nation’s history. At the very least, it moved beyond its intended reassurance and became inspiration. NOTES 1. The best treatment of the Hoover Presidency is found in Glen Jeansonne, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker, 1928–1933 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Historical writing about the differences between Hoover and FDR is delineated in Justus D. Doenecke, “Was Roosevelt an Entirely New Turn?” In: Katherine A.S. Sibley, ed. A Companion to Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 545–65. Cf. Davis W. Houck, Rhetoric As Currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2001). 2. Jordan A. Schwarz, The Interregnum of Despair: Hoover, Congress, and the Depression (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970) is the standard treatment of the subject. 3. The Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, changing the inaugural date from March to January, had been passed in Congress and approved but was not yet in effect. 4. Davis W. Houck devotes several chapters to the development of the speech in his FDR and Fear Itself: The First Inaugural Address (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2002).

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5. Samuel I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), p. 91; an interesting discussion of the concept of fear in a political context is John Hollander, “Fear Itself” Social Research 71 (Winter 2004): 865–86. 6. Schwarz, Interregnum of Despair, p. 233. 7. Samuel Rosenman, ed. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Vol. 2: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), pp. 11–16. In this “official” source, Rosenman inadvertently left out the first eight words of the address, which Roosevelt added to his typescript shortly before beginning the speech. 8. Many writers have discussed this aspect of the speech. The seminal article is William E. Leuchtenburg, “The New Deal and the Analogue of War” In: John Braeman, et al., eds. Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 81–143. 9. Suzanne M. Daughton nicely intertwines the two themes of war and religious rhetoric in her “Metaphorical Transcendence: Images of the Holy War in Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural” Quarterly Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 427–46. 10. Leo Finkelstein, Jr., “The Calendrical Rite of Ascension to Power” Western Journal of Speech Communication 45 (Winter 1981): 54. 11. Davis W. Houck and Mihaela Nocasian, “FDR’s First Inaugural Address: Text, Context, and Reception” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5 (Winter 2002): 655–57 (quote on p. 657). 12. The standard treatment of the Hundred Days is Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973). This should be supplemented by two recent studies: Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006) and Adam Cohen, Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (New York: Penguin Press, 2009). 13. Halford Ross Ryan, “Roosevelt’s First Inaugural: A Study of Technique” Quarterly Journal of Speech 65 (1979): 137.

Chapter Eight

Harry S. Truman Veto of Taft-Hartley Act Michael Shirley

THE BACKGROUND

1

The Taft-Hartley Act was the legislative result of labor-management struggles during the conversion from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy. The National Labor Relations Act (1935), more commonly known as the Wagner Act, which had governed labor-management relations and union activities before World War II, had been passed in an effort to assist workers in organizing and bargaining collectively. It was seen by unions and employers alike as tilting the balance of federal law toward workers and their unions. The unions and the Roosevelt administration viewed it as a necessary corrective to an existing pro-management situation; businesses and such organizations as the Chamber of Commerce, while acknowledging the need for more coherent federal legislation, thought the corrective had tipped too far in labor’s favor. The Republican Party generally was viewed as pro-management, while the Wagner Act, written and passed as part of the wave of New Deal legislation, cemented the close relationship between labor and the Democratic Party. Taft-Hartley amended the Wagner Act, pushing the balance back toward management. That the Wagner Act aided labor is clear. Between 1935 and 1945, union membership doubled, and what some viewed as union aggression increased. In response, the Republican Party, southern Democrats, and their business and agrarian constituencies pressed for the curtailing of union power. World War II eased the fight over labor rights, as the Federal Government essentially took control of labor-management relations; with full employment, a 93

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booming economy, and a war to fight, the pressure to act in the best interests of the nation eased industrial strife. The end of the war in 1945 put that strife immediately on the front burner. With millions of soldiers returning to the job market and the end of ceaseless demands on industry for war materiel, unions feared a rise in unemployment and a continued decline in wages, and sought to forestall job losses and increase wages by a series of strikes, both local and nationwide. 2 From November 1945 to March 1946, 325,000 autoworkers struck against General Motors; in January 1946, 200,000 packinghouse workers, 200,000 electrical workers, and 750,000 steelworkers walked off the job. Coal miners went out on strike for two months beginning in early May. The wave of strikes crested in late May, when 250,000 railway workers began picketing, bringing the nation’s transportation network to a halt. 3 Truman and his administration had been involved in attempting to prevent these labor actions, and had met with no success: either workers’ unions, management, or both refused to make a deal. Calls for labor legislation came from the public—especially from rural areas—and from all sections of government. 4 Both Republicans and Democrats recognized the necessity of having a way to deal with the postwar economic changes that were coming, and to ensure that the economy was not crippled by strikes. As Truman wrote later, “anti-labor sentiment, inflamed by John L. Lewis’s defiance of the government in the fall of 1946, was gaining new strength, and labor legislation became a prime issue in 1947.” 5 The 1946 election gave control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, who had run in part on a platform of bringing the unions under control, and who set about crafting legislation that would fulfill that promise. A number of bills were proposed in the House, with the final bill crafted under the leadership of Rep. Fred A. Hartley, Jr., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. The Senate Labor Committee was chaired by Sen. Robert Taft, who pushed for an omnibus bill modeled along the lines of the House bill. Hartley’s bill was much harsher than what would finally be sent to the president’s desk, and was presented as such to the press. It is likely that he pushed something unacceptable, so that the final bill would be seen as a compromise. As R. Alton Lee put it, “the Taft proposal was mild only when compared to Hartley’s bill.” The conference that reconciled the two bills stripped some of the harsher components of Hartley’s proposal, while keeping most of what businesses had pushed for. Among the major changes that the Taft-Hartley Bill proposed were to take a number of prohibited unfair labor practices that had previously only applied to employers and expand them to apply to employees. Jurisdictional strikes, secondary boycotts, and other actions were outlawed and closed shops were forbidden. The bill authorized the president to intervene in strikes

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and potential strikes, a provision that Truman would use once the bill became law, despite his opposition to it. 6 The Taft-Hartley Bill was passed in a bipartisan vote that looked strong enough in both houses to override a veto, and was sent to the president on June 9, 1947. No one was sure what Truman would do. The members of his cabinet were largely in favor of his signing the bill, his closest advisors opposed it, and the public sent over 750,000 letters, telegrams, and postcards that were overwhelmingly in favor of a veto. 7 His problem was not just about policy: it was about politics. If he signed the bill, he could write off labor support in the 1948 election. The deadline for presidential action was June 20, and Truman used all of it, sending the bill back with his detailed veto message that evening. His speech to the American people explaining the reasons for his veto came at ten o’clock the same night. THE SPEECH 8 [Broadcast from the White House at 10 p.m.] My fellow countrymen: At noon today I sent to Congress a message vetoing the Taft-Hartley labor bill. I vetoed this bill because I am convinced it is a bad bill. It is bad for labor, bad for management, and bad for the country. I had hoped that the Congress would send me a labor bill I could sign. I have said before, and I say it now, that we need legislation to correct abuses in the field of labor relations. Last January I made specific recommendations to the Congress as to the kind of labor legislation we should have immediately. I urged that the Congress provide for a commission, to be made up of representatives of the Congress, the public, labor and management, to study the entire field of labor management relations and to suggest what additional laws we should have. I believe that my proposals were accepted by the great majority of our people as fair and just. If the Congress had accepted those recommendations, we would have today the basis for improved labor-management relations. I would gladly have signed a labor bill if it had taken us in the right direction of stable, peaceful labor relations—even though it might not have been drawn up exactly as I wished. I would have signed a bill with some doubtful features if, taken as a whole, it had been a good bill. But the Taft-Hartley bill is a shocking piece of legislation.

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It is unfair to the working people of this country. It clearly abuses the right, which millions of our citizens now enjoy, to join together and bargain with their employers for fair wages and fair working conditions. Under no circumstances could I have signed this bill. The restrictions that this bill places on our workers go far beyond what our people have been led to believe. This is no innocent bill. It is interesting to note that on June 4, Congressman Hartley on the floor of the House of Representatives, made the following statement, and I quote: “You are going to find there is more in this bill than may meet the eye.” That is a revealing description of this bill by one of its authors. There is so much more in it than the people have been led to believe, that I am sure that very few understand what the Taft-Hartley bill would do if it should become law. That is why I am speaking to you tonight. I want you to know the real meaning of this bill. We have all been told, by its proponents, that this is a “moderate” bill. We have been told that the bill was “harsh” and “drastic” when it was first passed by the House of Representatives, but that the Senate had persuaded the House to drop out the harsh provisions and that the final bill—the bill sent to me—was “mild” and “moderate.” But I found no truth in the claims that the bill sent to me was mild or moderate. I found that the basic purpose and much of the language of the original House of Representatives bill were still in the final bill. . . . We have all been told that the Taft-Hartley bill is favorable to the wage earners of this country. It has been claimed that workers need to be saved from their own folly and that this bill would provide the means of salvation. Some people have called this bill the “workers’ bill of rights.” Let us see what this bill really would do to our workingmen. The bill is deliberately designed to weaken labor unions. When the sponsors of the bill claim that by weakening unions, they are giving rights back to individual workingmen, they ignore the basic reason why unions are important in our democracy. Unions exist so that laboring men can bargain with their employers on a basis of equality. Because of unions, the living standards of our working people have increased steadily until they are today the highest in the world. A bill which would weaken unions would undermine our national policy of collective bargaining. The Taft-Hartley bill would do just that. It would take us back in the direction of the old evils of individual bargaining. It would take the bargaining power away from the workers and give more power to management. . . . If we weaken our system of collective bargaining, we weaken the position of every workingman in the country. This bill would again expose workers to the abuses of labor injunctions.

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It would make unions liable for damage suits for actions which have long been considered lawful. This bill would treat all unions alike. Unions which have fine records, with long years of peaceful relations with management, would be hurt by this bill just as much as the few troublemakers. The country needs legislation which will get rid of abuses. We do not need—and we do not want—legislation which will take fundamental rights away from our working people. We have been told that the Taft-Hartley bill is a means by which the country can be protected from nationwide strikes in vital industries. The terms of the bill do not support this claim. . . . Under this bill a work stoppage in the coal mines might be prevented for 80 days and then, if agreement had not been reached, the miners would be free to strike, and it would be mandatory for the President to refer the whole matter to Congress, even if Congress were not in session. Postponing a strike in the coal industry until the approach of winter, when our need for coal is acute, is certainly not the way to protect the Nation against the dangers of a shortage of coal. The bill would not aid fair and early settlements of disputes in vital industries. We have been told, by the supporters of the Taft-Hartley bill, that it would reduce industrial strife. On the contrary, I am convinced that it would increase industrial strife . . . because a number of its provisions deprive workers of legal protection of fundamental rights. They would then have no means of protecting these rights except by striking. The bill would open up opportunities for endless lawsuits by employers against unions and by unions against employers. For example, it would make employers vulnerable to an immense number of law suits, since grievances, however minor, could be taken into court by dissatisfied workers. Insofar as employers are concerned, I predict that if this bill should become law they would regret the day that it was conceived. It is loaded with provisions that would plague and hamper management. It is filled with hidden legal traps that would take labor relations out of the plant, where they belong, and place them in the courts. Another defect is that in trying to correct labor abuses the Taft-Hartley bill goes so far that it would threaten fundamental democratic freedoms. One provision undertakes to prevent political contributions and expenditures by labor organizations and corporations. This provision would forbid a union newspaper from commenting on candidates in national elections. . . . I regard this provision of the Taft-Hartley bill as a dangerous challenge to free speech and our free press.

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One of the basic errors of this bill is that it ignores the fact that over the years we have been making real progress in labor-management relations. We have been achieving slow but steady improvement in cooperation between employers and workers. We must always remember that under our free economic system management and labor are associates. They work together for their own benefit and for the benefit of the public. The Taft-Hartley bill fails to recognize these fundamental facts. Many provisions of the bill would have the result of changing employers and workers from members of the same team to opponents on contending teams. I feel deep concern about what this would do to the steady progress we have made through the years. I fear that this type of legislation would cause the people of our country to divide into opposing groups. If conflict is created, as this bill would create it—if the seeds of discord are sown, as this bill would sow them—our unity will suffer and our strength will be impaired. This bill does not resemble the labor legislation which I have recommended to the Congress. The whole purpose of this bill is contrary to the sound growth of our national labor policy. There is still time to enact progressive, constructive legislation during the present session. We need such legislation to correct abuses and to further our advance in labor management relations. We seek in this country today a formula which will treat all men fairly and justly, and which will give our people security in the necessities of life. As our generous American spirit prompts us to aid the world to rebuild, we must, at the same time, construct a better America in which all can share equitably in the blessings of democracy. The Taft-Hartley bill threatens the attainment of this goal. For the sake of the future of this Nation, I hope that this bill will not become law. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Truman’s speaking style was generally simple and plain, particularly when reading from a prepared text, and he preferred to see his audience. He could rouse a crowd when speaking extemporaneously, as he would demonstrate on his Whistle-Stop Campaign in 1948, but that was due to passion, not mellifluous eloquence. A radio address, given to a microphone and a few technicians, with his real audience invisible, put him at a disadvantage, particularly in comparison to his predecessor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose fireside chats and other radio addresses were still fresh in memory. His

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eyesight was poor enough that he sometimes had trouble reading punctuation, and would sometimes run sentences and clauses together. 9 His daughter Margaret later asserted that, “during the first three years in the White House, he was so acutely conscious of the historical importance of what a President said, he hesitated to use anything but prepared texts. . . . He read a speech badly, always seeming, as one man said, to be ‘rushing for the period.’” 10 The speech explaining his veto of the Taft-Hartley Bill—with a prepared text and an invisible audience—was given in a venue that would show him at his least effective. Still, Truman always believed that truth would win out over trickery. Reflecting on his 1948 campaign in 1952, he said, “I had the best time I ever had in my life going up and down this country, telling the people the truth, and when they found out what the truth was, you know what they did.” 11 His 1948 campaign, however, presented him with the opportunity to interact with his audience, to draw energy from them, and to sell the truth. Truman would have said that, in his speeches, although the subtext of his preferred frame— Melodrama—was inherently emotional, Pathos took a back seat to Logos. In a campaign speech to a crowd, he allowed Pathos to animate Logos within a Melodramatic frame. His speech here was certainly set within a Melodramatic frame, pitting the Taft-Hartley Bill as absolute wrong, and his own position as absolute right. Although he received no energy from his audience, and was at a disadvantage in presenting his ideas with Pathos, as Diana B. Carlin has observed, the one place his personal style emerged in his speeches was in the spiritual and moral language, which works well with Melodrama. Within the Melodramatic frame, Pathos could emerge. 12 The speech is structured in three parts: an introduction, in which Truman, using anaphora, repeatedly claims the bill is “bad”; an apparently detailed explanation of the bill’s defects, with predictions of its effects if it were to become law; and a conclusion that appeals to patriotism. His first paragraph contains only three sentences, all of notable clarity. He states that he has vetoed the bill, then says he did so because it is a “bad bill.” His third sentence repeats “bad” as the notable descriptor in a tricolon structure: “bad for labor, bad for management, and bad for the country.” By setting it up as “bad,” Truman can cast his veto as “good,” and can thus position himself as the reasonable man in the middle, who will accept a reasonable bill if only Congress will be equally reasonable, saying “I would have signed a bill with some doubtful features if, taken as a whole, it had been a good bill. But the Taft-Hartley bill is a shocking piece of legislation.” His melodramatic frame easily enables him to cast the bill as bad, and the alternative—reasonable legislation that he approves—as good. What that legislation would look like is left vague (Truman was fond of begging the question), but this speech was not designed to propose specifics. Instead, he wanted to create a situation that would allow new legislation to be brought forward.

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Definition of the Problem The problem as Truman defines it is simple: Congress will attempt to override his veto, and such an act will be bad for the country. His conclusion states his fear that the bill will divide the country into opposing groups, and that it will thus weaken the nation. The solution he offers is simple: enact “progressive, constructive legislation during the present session.” His peroration appeals to “our generous American Spirit” that will aid the world and construct a better, more equitable, America, a vision that the Taft-Hartley bill threatens. The speech lays out a solution to the problem, without ever quite getting to the logical step of asking the public to pressure Congress to uphold the veto. Truman’s appeal to Logos is less detailed than might be expected, but his appeal to Pathos is strong, and it was the latter, within the Melodramatic frame, on which he leaned most heavily, because he wanted labor, both organized and unorganized, to remember that he had fought for them. He wanted that appeal to Pathos graven in their memory, for this speech had two goals, one short term and one long term. The short-term goal was clearly stated: to work against the bill’s becoming law. The long-term goal was the subtext that suffused everything: to win labor for the Democrats. The Impact The results of Truman’s speech, if measured by its ostensible and immediate goal of engendering public support for his veto, and motivating voters to pressure their representatives to vote to sustain the veto, were clear: it failed. The House immediately voted to override the veto 331 to 83. The Senate voted three days later, and despite lobbying by the White House, it too overrode the veto by a vote of 68 to 25. In both cases, nearly a third of the votes to override came from Democrats, nearly all from the South or Southwest, where unions were relatively weak. As Truman put it, “I had done all within my power to prevent an injustice against the laboring men and women of the United States.” 13 Yet the political goals of the veto and the speech were achieved. Labor unions had seen Truman as being weak on workers’ right, and very much on management’s side. In order to win the presidential election in 1948, he needed the unions to support him. His veto of Taft-Hartley, and his melodramatic frame that pitted himself against Congress, put the unions on his side for the duration, caused them to increase their political activity and campaign donations, and gave him an issue that he hit again and again in nearly every speech on the campaign trail. It blunted the effectiveness of Henry Wallace’s eventual progressive candidacy, and enabled him to win over many Roosevelt loyalists who might otherwise have voted for Wallace or not voted at all. 14

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That Truman believed Taft-Hartley was bad law is clear, although his melodramatic frame was a rhetorical device more than an absolute belief. 15 He was not so firmly wedded to the unions as to let them get away with behavior that he thought was in opposition to the national interest, and if the bill presented to him had been more in line with his own ideas, he likely would have signed it. His veto was not cynical, for he truly did believe that Taft-Hartley would be bad for the country. However, he also recognized that he could not win in 1948 without labor, and the Taft-Hartley Bill gave him an opportunity he seized: if his veto were sustained, he would be able to negotiate with the House and Senate for a better bill, and would have demonstrated that he was a friend to labor; if it were overridden, he could use its authority to check union action that he deemed to be against the national interest, and would be even more able to count on the union vote. He did believe it was a bad bill, but by his melodramatic framing, he set labor on his side. The only way he could ensure losing was by signing the bill, and Harry Truman was far too astute a politician to do that. NOTES 1. See, generally, R. Alton Lee, Truman and Taft-Hartley: a Question of Mandate (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1966), 6–21. 2. Average wages for an American worker in 1941 were $28.12 per week; in 1944, wages were at $36.72. The following year wages declined to $31 per week, and by July 1946, the real wage of the average American worker had fallen to $30.72 per week, and consumer prices increases had dropped the real weekly wage of average workers to below pre-war levels. Gary A. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999), 67, 230 n. 23. 3. Ibid., 70–72. 4. Public support for legislation controlling the unions was nearly overwhelming. In response to the polling question, “Should the Congress elected in November pass new laws to control labor unions?” the Gallup organization found that sixty-six percent said yes, while only twenty-two percent said no. Public opinion thus gave political cover to Democrats who wanted to vote against labor. Lee, Truman and Taft-Hartley, 52. 5. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Volume Two: Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956), 29. 6. For an excellent synopsis of the Taft-Hartley Act’s substantive provisions, see the National Labor Relations Board’s website: http://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/our-history/ 1947–taft-hartley-substantive-provisions (accessed 25 January 2015). 7. Robert J. Donovan, Conflict and Crisis: the Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1945–1948 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1977), 301. 8. Harry S. Truman, Radio Address to the American People on the Veto of the Taft-Hartley Bill, June 20, 1947 (121), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1952–53, (Washington, DC, 1963), 3: 298–301. 9. Diana B. Carlin, “Harry S. Truman: From Whistle-Stops to the Halls of Congress,” in Presidential Speechwriting: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond, Kurt Ritter and Martin J. Medhurst, eds. (College Station: Texas A&M University, 2003), 56–7. 10. Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1973), 24. He only began to speak extemporaneously as a matter of course after noting the difference between the reaction to his prepared remarks and his off-the-cuff coda at a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 17, 1948. This new approach, Margaret Truman said,

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was the result of a deliberate analysis after the speech by President Truman and his Press Secretary, Charles Ross. Ibid., 24–25. 11. Harry S. Truman, Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action, May 17, 1952 (129), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1952–53, (Washington, DC, 1966), 8: 341. 12. Carlin, “Harry S. Truman: From Whistle-Stops to the Halls of Congress,” 54. 13. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope, 30. 14. Roy Jenkins, Truman (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 110. 15. That attitude toward the Act did not stop him from using it when expedient. He said in his 1948 State of the Union Address that his attitude toward the Act had not changed from his veto message to Congress, but that he would enforce its provisions as he was constitutionally required to do. Between the passage of the Act and the beginning of the presidential campaign the following year, he invoked its emergency provisions six times to blunt the effects of strikes. Lee, Truman and Taft-Hartley, 107.

Chapter Nine

Dwight Eisenhower Farewell Address Paul Franz Testa

THE BACKGROUND On January 17th, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to the nation. Broadcast on television and radio from the Oval Office, the 16-minute speech is most remembered for Eisenhower’s discussion of the potential for unwarranted influence in politics from the growing military-industrial complex. Yet, the lasting fame and controversy attached to this one phrase obscure the broader rhetorical goals of the speech. Eisenhower’s address came at a unique point in American history, one that Eisenhower was perhaps singularly qualified to comment on. He had guided the Allies to victory in Europe and extricated the U.S. from the war in Korea. The U.S. emerged from these conflicts, Eisenhower proclaims, with “unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength.” Such affluence and prosperity, however, were tempered by the uncertainty and anxiety created by the Cold War and its potentially catastrophic consequences. Eisenhower recognized that fighting this new kind of war required a strong military supported by the necessary industrial and scientific infrastructure. Defense spending more than tripled during the Korean War and remained close to 10 percent of GDP throughout Eisenhower’s administration. 1 When Eisenhower took office in 1952, the U.S. had an estimated 1,000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. By the time he left, that number had risen to approximately 23,000. 2 However, when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 into orbit around the earth in 1957, the blinking addition to the heavens seemed to provide confirmation to critiques from Democrats and others that the U.S. was falling dangerously behind the Soviet Union. 103

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While Eisenhower’s critics called for immediate solutions, the president feared a misplaced desire to win a battle over bombers or ballistics would cost the U.S. the Cold War. The task before the U.S., as Eisenhower saw it, was not to outspend the Soviet Union at whatever cost, but rather to solve the “Great Equation” that would allow us to “keep spending for national security on a scale that could be sustained indefinitely without impairing the vitality of the economy.” 3 Within the framework of balancing competing interests and priorities, the military-industrial complex, and the related prospect of a scientific-technological elite, were both necessary components and inherent threats to the United States’ ability to fight the Cold War. THE SPEECH 4 Good evening, my fellow Americans. First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening. Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening, I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen. Like every other—Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all. Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation. My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years. In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation good, rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling—on my part—of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together. We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of

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this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment. Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad. Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insiduous [insidious] in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment. Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research—these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel. But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration. The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of threat and stress. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. Of these, I mention two only. A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor

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may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or, indeed, by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations—corporations. Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence— economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

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It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society. Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we—you and I, and our government—must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many fast frustrations—past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of disarmament—of the battlefield. Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight. Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road. So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and in peace. I trust in that—in that—in that service you find some things worthy. As for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future. You and I, my fellow citizens, need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations’ great goals. To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now

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denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its few spiritual blessings. Those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibility; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; and that the sources—scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance will be made [to] disappear from the earth; and that in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love. Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it. Thank you, and good night. Dwight D. Eisenhower The White House THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Few remember Eisenhower for his skills as an orator, but as Martin Medhurst argues, he could be a particularly effective strategic communicator. 5 The ancient Greeks, in their studies of rhetoric, recognized the importance of context by distinguishing chronos, the linear progression of time, from kairos, opportune moments that both compel and shaped rhetorical appeals. 6 The rhetorical frames and structure of Eisenhower’s speech reflect a strategic understanding of the occasion’s kairos. 7 In three days, Eisenhower will return to private life. The eve of his departure is not a time to issue political challenges, offer new policies, or demand specific actions. Reflecting the particular kairos of a presidential farewell, appeals to emotion are minimal, and the speech deploys only a few facts and figures to make its case. Instead, at a moment when Eisenhower is expected to define his legacy, the speech relies on the power and appeal of his personal ethos. The speech’s frame, a need for balance in our policies and politics, and its most memorable warning, the threat to balance posed by the militaryindustrial complex, both derive their meaning and effectiveness from the strength of Eisenhower’s character and credibility. The strength of this ethos is evidenced by the subtlety with which he evokes it. The public saw Eisenhower as a national hero, the citizen soldier capable of preserving peace because he had seen “the horror and lingering sadness of war.” Eisenhower need offer only a few reminders of his “half a century” of service. His accomplishments on the battlefield and in office are assumed to speak for themselves. Instead, Eisenhower chooses to connect with the public on a personal level, asking them to join him in a prayer that infuses religious faith with the national ideals of liberty and freedom. He describes himself as someone both proud and eager to return to his life as a

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private citizen. His language throughout is relatively free from embellishment and inclusive first person plurals, we and our, are nearly twice as common as the singular I and my. Eisenhower was a particularly popular president, with an average approval rating close to 65 percent during his two terms in office. 8 He maintained his popularity in office, in part by cultivating a view of himself, like George Washington, as a man above politics governing by what he called the “philosophy of the middle way.” 9 In fact the speech bears many similarities in tone and topic to the first presidential farewell. 10 Both present the speaker as a humble citizen fulfilling his duty of service. Both appeal to the need for balance and guard against the dangers of militarism. By appealing to the celebrated ideals of a leader like Washington, Eisenhower reinforces the power of his personal ethos. The need for balance provides a unifying theme in the speech, allowing Eisenhower to embed his governing philosophy into the rhetorical style and structure of the speech. In thanking Congress for its cooperation and ability to rise above “mere partisanship,” he highlights the need for balance in the relationship between branches of government. In describing the challenge of the Cold War, he presents a world in balance between two competing ideologies. On one side is democracy with the U.S. as a champion of freedom and liberty. On the other is communism, “a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and [insidious] in method.” In such a “prolonged and complex struggle,” Eisenhower cautions against letting our pathos and fear guide our response to the crises that naturally arise during this conflict. Instead of searching for “miraculous solutions” from large increases in spending on defense, agriculture, and basic research (actions his successor, John F. Kennedy, actively advocated), Eisenhower counsels caution with an anaphora highlighting the need for “balance between” competing interests and goals: But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress.

To make his case, Eisenhower offers examples that threaten to upset the balance of the country’s interests, specifically, the prospects for “unwarranted influence” from a growing military-industrial complex and associated scientific-technological elite. The enduring controversy and relevance of the military-industrial complex come in part from the strategic ambiguity with

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which it is deployed in the speech. Unlike other critics who saw the militaryindustrial complex as an unqualified threat to democracy, Eisenhower recognized the necessity of the military establishment. 11 The U.S., he argues could “no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense.” Instead the nation has “been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.” While acknowledging the “imperative need for this development,” Eisenhower cautions “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Concurrent with and related to the growth of the military-industrial complex, was a “technological revolution” that led to an increased reliance of scientific research on federal funding and support. Gone were the days of “solitary inventor.” In his place, came “task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.” Here too, Eisenhower recognized the need for such developments while warning about the potential dangers of public policy held captive, by a scientific-technological elite. The two threats are related in Eisenhower’s mind, but in a speech that relies on the president’s ethos to make its case, they were destined for different historical fates. As Ralph Williams, an aide who helped draft the speech, later remarked: “I am sure that had it [the military-industrial complex] been uttered by anyone except a President who had also been the Army’s five star Chief of Staff it would have long since have been forgotten,” while the comments on the scientific-technological elite would “no doubt have fared better if Ike had been a Nobel Laureate in physics.” 12 Definition of the Problem History remembers Eisenhower’s farewell address for adding the militaryindustrial complex to our national lexicon. Yet, the speech itself is organized not so much around the dangers of militarisms but rather the need for balance in our politics and policies. 13 To understand why Eisenhower chose to emphasize the military-industrial complex within this broader frame, we need to consider how kairos and ethos interact to shape his appeal. The overarching problem concerning Eisenhower during his administration and in this speech is how to win a Cold War of apparent “indefinite duration.” The nation’s ability to meet this challenge, he argues, requires us to maintain a balance between our “moral, economic, and military strength.” In the order of this tricolon, Eisenhower makes an implicit argument about inherent connections between each source of strength: We are strong because of democratic principles, which give rise to a prosperous economy that in turn allows us to maintain a strong military. Eisenhower as a symbol of both our national ideals and military strength was uniquely qualified to raise these issues.

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Eisenhower’s concerns about the unchecked influence of military spending existed before he was president and these fears were only reinforced by his time in office. 14 In a letter to a friend in 1956, Eisenhower wrote: 15 But some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country.

Based on Kennedy’s rhetoric during the campaign and their brief meetings during the transition, it seemed clear to Eisenhower that Kennedy was the kind of man he feared. Where Eisenhower counseled caution and careful consideration in the face of crisis, his successor three days later in his inaugural address promised to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” 16 The threat of the military-industrial complex was not just a general warning, but also an implicit critique of the incoming administration promises of immediate action in place of more deliberative response. 17 Yet Eisenhower cannot make this criticism directly. To do so would undercut his personal ethos as a man above politics. It would also be inconsistent with the kairos of a presidential farewell, where citizens expect the wisdom and reflections of a statesman, not the rebukes and rebuttals of a partisan. Instead, Eisenhower’s arguments are enthymematic. 18 The Cold War can only be won by preserving balance in our sources of strength. The military-industrial complex threatens to upset that balance both in principle and in practice, because the incoming administration seemed incapable of restraining its influence. The final premise goes unsaid, however, as Eisenhower leaves it to an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to guard against this looming threat. The Impact The impact of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address is inextricably linked to the enduring relevance, debate, and controversy attached to the issue of the military-industrial complex. Yet, the ambiguity in Eisenhower’s original formulation of the problem turned the concept of the military-industrial complex into “a rhetorical Rorschach blot” whose “meaning is in the eye of the beholder.” 19 Defenders argue it is a “vital element in keeping the peace,” while critics emphasize “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Eisenhower offers few criteria for determining whether influence of the military-industrial complex is warranted or not. How then should we judge the success of Eisenhower’s speech? Looking for objective measures provides mixed results. Defense spending rose each year of the Kennedy administration and later soared during the

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Vietnam War. So too, however, did critiques and concerns about the military-industrial complex. 20 The U.S. emerged victorious from the Cold War. In absolute terms, total U.S. military increased over time, but the economy grew faster such that the share of defense spending relative to both GDP (3.5 percent) and the federal budget (16.2 percent) is lower today than when Eisenhower left office (9.1 percent of GDP and 50.8 percent of total outlays). 21 And yet concerns about the potential for waste and undue influence remain. Consider the tumultuous history of the F-35, the Joint Strike Fighter. The fifth generation combat fighter was designed to serve the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines, providing a three-in-one service that was supposed to save the taxpayer dollars. The current price tag of close to $400 billion, however, is more than double the initial estimates for the program, and projections of the lifetime cost of the jet soar up to $1.5 trillion. 22 Numerous technical delays, security concerns, and cost overruns have led to frequent calls for cuts or even an end to the program. 23 Yet, with an economic impact of over $100 million in 18 states and its own Congressional Caucus, the F-35 lives on. 24 The criteria for judging the military-industrial complex, then, are perhaps secondary to the lasting concern raised by Eisenhower’s speech. No man can see the future. Instead, each crisis must be judged within its particular context. Eisenhower’s speech ensured that every conflict from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan would be discussed with a paradigm that weighed the price of peace against the cost of liberty and prosperity. Yet, the military-industrial conflict was part of Eisenhower’s broader argument about the need for balance in our politics. He hoped that Congress and the Executive could rise above “mere partisanship,” and yet today the parties appear more polarized than ever. 25 He counseled the country to be wary of asking government to solve every problem, but by virtually any measure, the size and reach of government has grown rapidly since Eisenhower left office. Finally, he warned against “the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow” while in recent years the size of the country’s gross national debt has exceeded its GDP. 26 On these accounts, then, the legacy of Eisenhower’s farewell seems unfulfilled and while we remain vigilant to the potential threats of the militaryindustrial complex, perhaps what we need most is to recall the broader wisdom of Eisenhower’s appeal for balance in our politics and policies. NOTES 1. “Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2015: Historical Tables,” Government Printing Office, pp. 136–37 online at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/ files/omb/budget/fy2015/assets/hist.pdf.

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2. James Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011) p. 4. 3. Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), p. 187. 4. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” January 17, 1961. Eisenhower Presidential Library online at http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell _address.html. 5. Martin J. Medhurst, Dwight D. Eisenhower: Strategic Communicator, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1993). 6. John Poulakos, “Toward a sophistic definition of rhetoric.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 16 no. 6 (1983): 35–48. James L. Kinneavy and Catherine R. Eskin, “Kairos in Aristotle’s rhetoric.” Written Communication 11, no. 1 (1994): 131–42. 7. For more on how kairos shapes the character of farewell addresses see: Karlyn K. Campbell and Kathleen H. Jamieson, “Farewell Addresses” in Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 8. “Presidential Approval Ratings—Gallup Historical Statistics and Trends”, Gallup, online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/presidential-approval-ratings-gallup-historical-statistics-trends.aspx. 9. Medhurst, Dwight D. Eisenhower; Mena Bose and Fred I. Greenstein. “The Hidden Hand vs. the Bully Pulpit: The Layered Political Rhetoric of President Eisenhower,” in The Presidency and Rhetorical Leadership, ed. Leroy G. Dorsey (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002). 10. Martin J. Medhurst, “Reconceptualizing Rhetorical History: Eisenhower’s Farewell Address.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 80:2 (1994), 195–218. Indeed, the initial idea for the address seems to have come after an aide had given Eisenhower a book on Washington’s farewell. Charles J. Griffin, C. J. (1992). “New Light on Eisenhower’s Farewell Address.” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 469–79. 11. For a harsher contemporary critique of the military-industrial complex, see for example C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford University Press, 1956). 12. Ralph Williams to Martin Teasely, December 28, 1985, Eisenhower Presidential Library, Ralph E. Williams Papers, Box 1. 13. Martin J. Medhurst, “Reconceptualizing Rhetorical History.” 14. Speaking in St. Louis on February 24, 1947, Eisenhower argued: “Every army activity should be held under a critical eye to determine that satisfaction of national needs does not provide excuse for indulgence in careless spending. There is no risk or danger in such economy. Quite the contrary.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address at Civic Reception,” St. Louis, Missouri, 24 February 1947, in Eisenhower Speaks: Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Messages and Speeches, ed. Rudolph L. Treuenfels (New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1948) p. 180. 15. Dwight D. Eisenhower to Swede Hazlett, 20 August 1956, in Ike’s Letters to a Friend 1941–1958, ed. Robert W. Griffith (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1984) 29. 16. John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” January 20, 1961, online at: http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=8032. 17. Medhurst, “Reconceptualizing Rhetorical History”, makes this point most forcefully. See Scott, Robert L. “Eisenhower’s Farewell Address: Response to Medhurst.” Quarterly Journal of Speech? 81, no. 4, (1995): 496–501 and Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence, pp. 126–28 for dissenting views. 18. Martin J. Medhurst, “Robert L. Scott plays Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 no. 2 (1995): 502–6. 19. Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence, p. 5. 20. See Ledbetter, Unwarranted Influence, pp. 132–87 for a thorough discussion of the growth and evolution of debates surrounding the military-industrial complex in the U.S. 21. “Budget of the United States Government” pp. 136–43. 22. Jeremy Bender, Armin Rosen, and Skye Gould, “This Map Explains Why The F-35 Has Turned Into A Trillion-Dollar Fiasco,” Business Insider, January 20, 2015, online at http:// www.businessinsider.com/this-map-show-the-f-35–fiasco-2015–1#ixzz3RU6lFsJr.

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23. See for example, Winslow Wheeler, “The Jet That Ate the Pentagon” Foreign Policy, April 26, 2012 online at http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/04/26/the-jet-that-ate-the-pentagon/. 24. Ibid. 25. Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006). 26. “Budget of the United States Government” p. 145.

Chapter Ten

John F. Kennedy Civil Rights Marita Gronnvoll

THE BACKGROUND On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy broke his relative silence on the issue of Civil Rights in America. There were a number of precipitating factors that led to this momentous occasion. One of these would be Kennedy’s failure to promote legislative action on Civil Rights up to this point, preferring instead much weaker executive action. But events taking place in the South played a large role in spurring the President to action. The long road to Kennedy’s policy shift could arguably be dated to the Freedom Rides of 1961, and the subsequent violence with which this activism was confronted. Despite Kennedy’s decision to dispatch federal marshals to protect the freedom riders, his public comments stressed the resolution of the matter as legal, rather than moral. U.S. citizens had a legal right to travel, and Kennedy was protecting that right. The Kennedy administration faced a delicate balancing act between enforcing the law and not further alienating the South through a perceived violation of States rights. Kennedy was also very concerned about international opinion. In the thick of the Cold War, the mass media depiction of racial turmoil in the South had been propaganda fodder for the Soviets. In 1962, James Meredith registered to attend Ole Miss and it took 23,000 federalized troops to enforce his right to attend this public institution. Although Kennedy acted to protect James Meredith, his public statements downplayed the violence that had taken place in Oxford, Mississippi, and he still made no substantive change to his legislative platform. Further “although he commended the President for protecting Meredith’s life, [Martin 115

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Luther] King was reportedly ‘deeply disappointed’ in President Kennedy.” 1 Particularly following the Civil Rights movement’s defeat in Albany in 1962, it seemed to the movement leaders that the Kennedy administration “was more concerned with quieting the movement down than with removing the practices it opposed.” 2 The year 1963 saw the rise of more militant black leadership, characterized by Malcolm X, and a general fear among whites that the overall nonviolent Civil Rights Movement could take a violent turn. In February 1963, the President introduced his Civil Rights bill to Congress, and his public statements gave it a moral exigency. In addition to all of the practical, economic, and international face-saving reasons to rid the nation of structural racial discrimination, Kennedy’s chief reason was “above all, it is wrong.” His administration, he argued, was committed to racial justice and equal opportunity “because it is right.” In May 1963 came the protests in Birmingham accompanied by Sheriff “Bull” Connor’s massive overreaction and retaliation. Photographs of school children being blasted by high powered water hoses, and having dogs loosed on them, were broadcast all over the world. The President was reportedly sickened by them, but did not believe he had the right to use federal troops in this case as he had in Oxford in the Meredith case. Things came to a head on June 11, 1963, when Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama and physically blocked the registration of two African American students. The President took swift action, federalizing the National Guard, and forcing the governor to back down. That evening, he delivered a nationally televised speech proclaiming the need for Civil Rights legislation. Although the speech was, to some extent, overshadowed by Martin Luther King Jr.’s masterful “I Have a Dream” speech given two months later during the march on Washington, Kennedy’s speech is considered to be one of his more important and, crucially, it ended his political vacillating on the issue of Civil Rights. THE SPEECH 3 Good evening, my fellow citizens: This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro. That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.

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I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened. Today, we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops. It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal. It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case. The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the State in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, onethird as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much. This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the

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color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay? One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them. The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives. We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. It is not enough to pin the blame on others, to say this is a problem of one section of the country or another, or deplore the facts that we face. A great change is at hand, and our task, our obligation, is to make that revolution, that change, peaceful and constructive for all. Those who do nothing are inviting shame, as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right, as well as reality. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. The Federal judiciary has upheld that proposition in a series of forthright cases. The Executive Branch has adopted that proposition in the conduct of its affairs, including the employment of Federal personnel, the use of Federal facilities, and the sale of federally financed housing. But there are other necessary measures which only the Congress can provide, and they must be provided at this session. The old code of equity law under which we live commands for every wrong a remedy, but in too many communities, in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is the street.

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I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public— hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do. I have recently met with scores of business leaders urging them to take voluntary action to end this discrimination, and I have been encouraged by their response, and in the last two weeks over 75 cities have seen progress made in desegregating these kinds of facilities. But many are unwilling to act alone, and for this reason, nationwide legislation is needed if we are to move this problem from the streets to the courts. I’m also asking the Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence. Today, a Negro is attending a State-supported institution in every one of our 50 States, but the pace is very slow. Too many Negro children entering segregated grade schools at the time of the Supreme Court’s decision nine years ago will enter segregated high schools this fall, having suffered a loss which can never be restored. The lack of an adequate education denies the Negro a chance to get a decent job. The orderly implementation of the Supreme Court decision, therefore, cannot be left solely to those who may not have the economic resources to carry the legal action or who may be subject to harassment. Other features will be also requested, including greater protection for the right to vote. But legislation, I repeat, cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country. In this respect I want to pay tribute to those citizens North and South who’ve been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world they are meeting freedom’s challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage. My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all – in every city of the North as well as the South. Today, there are Negroes unemployed, two or three times as many compared to whites, inadequate education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, young people particularly out of work without hope, denied equal rights, denied the opportunity to eat at a restaurant or a lunch counter or go to a movie theater, denied the right to a decent education, denied almost today the right to attend a State university even though qualified. It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely Presidents or Congressmen or Governors, but every citizen of the United States.

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This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to ten percent of the population that you can’t have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way that they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that. Therefore, I’m asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves; to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents. As I’ve said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves. We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century. This is what we’re talking about and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens. Thank you very much. THE FRAME, DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM, AND IMPACT The Frame In his article on the American jeremiad, John Murphy argues that this rhetorical form may be used in political speech “as a means to restore social harmony in a time of crisis.” 4 The genre of the jeremiad, named after the Old Testament prophet, has a long history in American public address and is typically used to admonish the people for failing to live up to a particular moral standard. As Campbell and Jamieson point out, Kennedy took on the persona of “national priest” in his address to the nation on Civil Rights. 5 This secularized jeremiad performed three main functions. First, it was a reminder that the U.S. was the “chosen” nation, codified in its founding documents as a country of promise. Second, it warned that the country had strayed from its promise and was currently on the wrong track. Finally, it gave specific guidance for how to restore the moral high ground through structural and individual changes.

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In fulfilling the first function, Kennedy makes clear that the U.S. is special among nations. Here he draws upon the tenets of American civil religion that would portray the country as God’s chosen nation. 6 This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

Here, by alluding to the Declaration of Independence, Kennedy connects a rearticulated American identity of the past—suggesting the Founders included all Americans in their notion of equality—with the present. This hearkening back to the sacred founding document helps Kennedy to make his next move, which is to argue that the country was failing to meet its promise. After alluding to the Golden Rule, that “every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated,” Kennedy goes on to lay out the shameful facts: The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the State in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing a high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about oneseventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.

Kennedy emphasizes that this is not a sectional, partisan, or even solely a legal or legislative issue. This is “a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” Using moralistic language, Kennedy paints a portrait of a nation that has grossly failed to live up to its promise and currently wears a cloak of shame for not practicing what it preaches. “[T]his nation,” he laments, “for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. . . . We preach freedom around the world . . . but are we to say to the world . . . to each other, that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes?” There is a definite note of reprobation in Kennedy’s tone with the use of the terms “boasts” and “preach.” The U.S. has become a nation of hypocrites, and is facing “a moral crisis.” Kennedy is clear that to do nothing at this juncture is “inviting shame.” But as is the case with the jeremiad, and is discussed below, the speaker provides the answer for how the nation may reclaim the moral high ground and be restored as the chosen people. He closes his speech with a reminder of what is at stake. Drawing on the American mythos, he reminds his audience that “[t]his is one country . . . because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.” The questions was, now, what kind of country would be left for the children. Would it be a country where

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they had equality? Or would it be a country where they could only get their rights by going to the streets to demonstrate? Definition of the Problem By framing the speech in the language of the jeremiad, Kennedy by default defines the problem as an American problem, not a “Negro” problem. Given that mass media images of Civil Rights protests—many of them shockingly violent—were images of African American protestors, fighting for African American equal rights, defining the problem as an American problem may have taken white America by surprise. No longer could the problem of Civil Rights be shrugged off by white America as a peripheral issue. Kennedy is clear: “I’m asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves” (emphasis added). Here, Kennedy is not addressing African American Civil Rights activists; he is directly addressing white Americans who have basked for too long in the numbing light of their own privilege. For many years African American Civil Rights activists had been making the same argument, but now it was coming from the white President of the United States, and it could no longer be ignored. For Kennedy, the resolution to this American problem is legislative and individual. He lays out the rationale for legislation addressing the many indignities African Americans were facing at the time. The legislature had to act because “in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless Congress acts, their only remedy is the street.” Kennedy’s comprehensive Civil Rights bill would address the right of all Americans to be served in public facilities, and give the federal government more powers in forcing desegregation in State schools, in addition to providing more protections for the right to vote. While addressing these structural issues, Kennedy makes clear that this collective moral problem required also a collective moral solution. Individuals needed to “examine [their] conscience.” Legislation, Kennedy stressed, “cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country,” and they should act, as some already had, “not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency” (emphasis added). Speaking of the lack of opportunity that had been endured by African Americans for too long, and speaking again to white Americans, Kennedy is unequivocal: “I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.” Mainly white Americans held the seats of power, and it was time for them to do their part not to solve a problem of African Americans in the south, but to solve an American problem.

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The Impact This speech, although often overlooked in the corpus of the president’s speeches, has been called his “finest moment.” 7 It was almost immediately pushed to the background with Medgar Evers’ murder, and further marginalized with the August march on Washington culminating in Martin Luther King Jr.’s rhetorical masterpiece “I Have a Dream.” Nonetheless, eight days after the speech, the President sent to congress the Civil Rights Act of 1963—a far more comprehensive legislative intervention than had been his February bill. While there can be no one-to-one causal claims with regard to the speech, it cannot be denied that it had a real impact. Martin Luther King referred to the speech as “the most eloquent, passionate, and unequivocal plea for civil rights, for justice toward the Negro ever made by any President.” 8 Kennedy continued the momentum of the speech by throwing the weight of the White House behind his aggressive lobbying of Congress in the following months. Sadly, an assassin’s bullet deprived the president of the opportunity of ever seeing his bill pass. According to Peniel E. Joseph, Kennedy’s death made him a martyr for many causes, and in a cruel twist, it provided a huge boost to the civil rights bill, which his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed on July 2, 1964. But without the moral forcefulness of the June 11 speech, the bill might never have gone anywhere. 9

Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address, resurrected from the shadows of history, demonstrates the power of the office of the president, and the personae that the president may take on when making policy speeches. In the spirit of the American jeremiad, the nation is admonished to return to the right path—the moral path—and diverted from further shame. NOTES 1. Stephen R. Goldswig and George N. Dionisopoulos, “John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Discourse: The Evolution from ‘Principled Bystander’ to Public Advocate,” Communication Monographs 56 (1989): 187. 2. Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (New York: HarperCollins,1982), 196. 3. “Civil Rights Address,” American Rhetoric, accessed November 25, 2014, http:// www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm. 4. John M. Murphy, “‘A Time of Shame and Sorrow’: Robert F. Kennedy and the American Jeremiad,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 76 (1990): 402. 5. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 148. 6. Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 96 (1967): 1–21. 7. Peniel E. Joseph, “Kennedy’s Finest Moment,” New York Times, June 10, 2013, accessed November 25, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion.

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8. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Unpublished Oral History Interview.” John F. Kennedy Library, (1964): p. 21, accessed January 25, 2015, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/ Archives/JFKOH-MLK-01.aspx. 9. Joseph.

Chapter Eleven

Lyndon Baines Johnson Vietnam and “Peace Without Conquest” Edmund Wehrle

THE BACKGROUND By spring 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson—in office a mere 17 months—could no longer delay decisions about war in Vietnam, where a mounting offensive by National Liberation Front (NLF) guerillas threatened to deal Americans a stinging loss in the Cold War. As he rose to speak at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on April 7, 1965, Johnson faced an immense challenge. He sought to vindicate his plans for a large scale military intervention in Vietnam—a move aimed at saving the struggling U.S.-supported government in South Vietnam. The president, having already launched an ambitious and popular “War on Poverty,” hoped to frame his decision for war in Vietnam (a choice not yet fully announced to the American people) in idealistic terms as consistent with his domestic crusade against injustice and destitution. French colonialism ended in Vietnam in the mid-1950s, but its legacy endured. An international conference in 1954 divided the country along the seventeenth parallel. In the north, Chinese and Soviet-supported revolutionaries coalesced, while south of the border, an anti-communist government heavily subsidized by the Americans struggled to gain a footing. In the early 1960s, the NLF, a guerilla movement in the south directed by North Vietnam, launched a vicious war against the southern government. A coup led by South Vietnamese generals toppled the controversial leader of South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, in November 1963. Stability, however, remained elusive. The NLF picked up attacks to the point where Johnson feared for the fate of South Vietnam. In early 1965, he authorized “Rolling 125

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Thunder,” a bombing campaign to deter the North Vietnamese and southern insurgents. Increasingly, however, LBJ concluded only U.S. ground troops could turn the tide. Like many of his generation, Johnson—informed by the failure to stop Hitler in the 1930s—believed any sign of appeasement would only embolden an adversary. 1 The Cold War struggle between East and West dictated that communist nations, supposedly a monolith, must be tightly contained. The loss of South Vietnam, therefore, would represent a significant setback in the cold war struggle. Johnson, however, feared an elongated and costly war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. When his confidant Senator Richard Russell (D-GA) warned that Vietnam amounted to “the damn worse mess that I ever saw,” Johnson readily concurred. 2 Still the president believed deeply in America’s obligation to better mankind at home and abroad. “Modernization theory,” popular among liberals and policymakers at the time, prescribed large-scale development projects and contact with the superior technology of first world nations as ingredients sure to produce economic, social, and political advancement. 3 Rescued from the trials of poverty and ignorance, Johnson and his advisors believed, the South Vietnamese no longer would be susceptible to communism. Faith in the concept of “universalism”—broadly speaking a belief all peoples everywhere were alike in essential aspirations and worldviews—further buttressed LBJ’s commitment to modernization and the American mission abroad. 4 His optimism Americans could win the battle for “heart and minds” tempered somewhat the dread with which Johnson approached his decisions regarding Vietnam. It also provided a potent rhetorical justification for a large and dangerous military undertaking. As he spoke at Johns Hopkins University, one senses the president sought to convince himself of the wisdom of intervention as much as he aimed to persuade his audience. THE SPEECH 5 Mr. Garland, Senator Brewster, Senator Tydings, members of the congressional delegation, members of the faculty of Johns Hopkins, student body, my fellow Americans: Last week 17 nations sent their views to some two dozen countries having an interest in southeast Asia. We are joining those 17 countries and stating our American policy tonight which we believe will contribute toward peace in this area of the world. I have come here to review once again with my own people the views of the American Government. Tonight Americans and Asians are dying for a world where each people may choose its own path to change.

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This is the principle for which our ancestors fought in the valleys of Pennsylvania. It is the principle for which our sons fight tonight in the jungles of Viet-Nam. Viet-Nam is far away from this quiet campus. We have no territory there, nor do we seek any. The war is dirty and brutal and difficult. And some 400 young men, born into an America that is bursting with opportunity and promise, have ended their lives on Viet-Nam’s steaming soil. Why must we take this painful road? Why must this Nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away? We fight because we must fight if we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny. And only in such a world will our own freedom be finally secure. This kind of world will never be built by bombs or bullets. Yet the infirmities of man are such that force must often precede reason, and the waste of war, the works of peace. We wish that this were not so. But we must deal with the world as it is, if it is ever to be as we wish. The world as it is in Asia is not a serene or peaceful place. The first reality is that North Viet-Nam has attacked the independent nation of South Viet-Nam. Its object is total conquest. Of course, some of the people of South Viet-Nam are participating in attack on their own government. But trained men and supplies, orders and arms, flow in a constant stream from north to south. This support is the heartbeat of the war. And it is a war of unparalleled brutality. Simple farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping. Women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. And helpless villages are ravaged by sneak attacks. Large-scale raids are conducted on towns, and terror strikes in the heart of cities. The confused nature of this conflict cannot mask the fact that it is the new face of an old enemy. Over this war—and all Asia—is another reality: the deepening shadow of Communist China. The rulers in Hanoi are urged on by Peking. This is a regime which has destroyed freedom in Tibet, which has attacked India, and has been condemned by the United Nations for aggression in Korea. It is a nation which is helping the forces of violence in almost every continent. The contest in Viet-Nam is part of a wider pattern of aggressive purposes. Why are these realities our concern? Why are we in South Viet-Nam? We are there because we have a promise to keep. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Viet-Nam. We have helped to build, and we have helped to defend. Thus, over many

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years, we have made a national pledge to help South Viet-Nam defend its independence. And I intend to keep that promise. To dishonor that pledge, to abandon this small and brave nation to its enemies, and to the terror that must follow, would be an unforgivable wrong. We are also there to strengthen world order. Around the globe, from Berlin to Thailand, are people whose well-being rests, in part, on the belief that they can count on us if they are attacked. To leave Viet-Nam to its fate would shake the confidence of all these people in the value of an American commitment and in the value of America’s word. The result would be increased unrest and instability, and even wider war. We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat from Viet-Nam would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. We must say in southeast Asia—as we did in Europe—in the words of the Bible: “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.” There are those who say that all our effort there will be futile—that China’s power is such that it is bound to dominate all southeast Asia. But there is no end to that argument until all of the nations of Asia are swallowed up. There are those who wonder why we have a responsibility there. Well, we have it there for the same reason that we have a responsibility for the defense of Europe. World War II was fought in both Europe and Asia, and when it ended we found ourselves with continued responsibility for the defense of freedom. Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam, and its freedom from attack. We want nothing for ourselves—only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way. We will do everything necessary to reach that objective. And we will do only what is absolutely necessary. In recent months attacks on South Viet-Nam were stepped up. Thus, it became necessary for us to increase our response and to make attacks by air. This is not a change of purpose. It is a change in what we believe that purpose requires. We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South VietNam who have bravely borne this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Viet-Nam—and all who seek to share their conquest—of a very simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired.

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We will not withdraw, either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement. We know that air attacks alone will not accomplish all of these purposes. But it is our best and prayerful judgment that they are a necessary part of the surest road to peace. We hope that peace will come swiftly. But that is in the hands of others besides ourselves. And we must be prepared for a long continued conflict. It will require patience as well as bravery, the will to endure as well as the will to resist. I wish it were possible to convince others with words of what we now find it necessary to say with guns and planes: Armed hostility is futile. Our resources are equal to any challenge. Because we fight for values and we fight for principles, rather than territory or colonies, our patience and our determination are unending. Once this is clear, then it should also be clear that the only path for reasonable men is the path of peaceful settlement. Such peace demands an independent South Viet-Nam—securely guaranteed and able to shape its own relationships to all others—free from outside interference—tied to no alliance—a military base for no other country. These are the essentials of any final settlement. We will never be second in the search for such a peaceful settlement in Viet-Nam. There may be many ways to this kind of peace: in discussion or negotiation with the governments concerned; in large groups or in small ones; in the reaffirmation of old agreements or their strengthening with new ones. We have stated this position over and over again, fifty times and more, to friend and foe alike. And we remain ready, with this purpose, for unconditional discussions. And until that bright and necessary day of peace we will try to keep conflict from spreading. We have no desire to see thousands die in battle— Asians or Americans. We have no desire to devastate that which the people of North Viet-Nam have built with toil and sacrifice. We will use our power with restraint and with all the wisdom that we can command. But we will use it. This war, like most wars, is filled with terrible irony. For what do the people of North Viet-Nam want? They want what their neighbors also desire: food for their hunger; health for their bodies; a chance to learn; progress for their country; and an end to the bondage of material misery. And they would find all these things far more readily in peaceful association with others than in the endless course of battle. These countries of southeast Asia are homes for millions of impoverished people. Each day these people rise at dawn and struggle through until the

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night to wrestle existence from the soil. They are often wracked by disease, plagued by hunger, and death comes at the early age of 40. Stability and peace do not come easily in such a land. Neither independence nor human dignity will ever be won, though, by arms alone. It also requires the work of peace. The American people have helped generously in times past in these works. Now there must be a much more massive effort to improve the life of man in that conflict-torn corner of our world. The first step is for the countries of southeast Asia to associate themselves in a greatly expanded cooperative effort for development. We would hope that North Viet-Nam would take its place in the common effort just as soon as peaceful cooperation is possible. The United Nations is already actively engaged in development in this area. As far back as 1961 I conferred with our authorities in Viet-Nam in connection with their work there. And I would hope tonight that the Secretary General of the United Nations could use the prestige of his great office, and his deep knowledge of Asia, to initiate, as soon as possible, with the countries of that area, a plan for cooperation in increased development. For our part I will ask the Congress to join in a billion dollar American investment in this effort as soon as it is underway. And I would hope that all other industrialized countries, including the Soviet Union, will join in this effort to replace despair with hope, and terror with progress. The task is nothing less than to enrich the hopes and the existence of more than a hundred million people. And there is much to be done. The vast Mekong River can provide food and water and power on a scale to dwarf even our own TVA. The wonders of modern medicine can be spread through villages where thousands die every year from lack of care. Schools can be established to train people in the skills that are needed to manage the process of development. And these objectives, and more, are within the reach of a cooperative and determined effort. I also intend to expand and speed up a program to make available our farm surpluses to assist in feeding and clothing the needy in Asia. We should not allow people to go hungry and wear rags while our own warehouses overflow with an abundance of wheat and corn, rice and cotton. So I will very shortly name a special team of outstanding, patriotic, distinguished Americans to inaugurate our participation in these programs. This team will be headed by Mr. Eugene Black, the very able former President of the World Bank. In areas that are still ripped by conflict, of course development will not be easy. Peace will be necessary for final success. But we cannot and must not wait for peace to begin this job.

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This will be a disorderly planet for a long time. In Asia, as elsewhere, the forces of the modern world are shaking old ways and uprooting ancient civilizations. There will be turbulence and struggle and even violence. Great social change—as we see in our own country now—does not always come without conflict. We must also expect that nations will on occasion be in dispute with us. It may be because we are rich, or powerful; or because we have made some mistakes; or because they honestly fear our intentions. However, no nation need ever fear that we desire their land, or to impose our will, or to dictate their institutions. But we will always oppose the effort of one nation to conquer another nation. We will do this because our own security is at stake. But there is more to it than that. For our generation has a dream. It is a very old dream. But we have the power and now we have the opportunity to make that dream come true. For centuries nations have struggled among each other. But we dream of a world where disputes are settled by law and reason. And we will try to make it so. For most of history men have hated and killed one another in battle. But we dream of an end to war. And we will try to make it so. For all existence most men have lived in poverty, threatened by hunger. But we dream of a world where all are fed and charged with hope. And we will help to make it so. The ordinary men and women of North Viet-Nam and South Viet-Nam— of China and India—of Russia and America—are brave people. They are filled with the same proportions of hate and fear, of love and hope. Most of them want the same things for themselves and their families. Most of them do not want their sons to ever die in battle, or to see their homes, or the homes of others, destroyed. Well, this can be their world yet. Man now has the knowledge—always before denied—to make this planet serve the real needs of the people who live on it. I know this will not be easy. I know how difficult it is for reason to guide passion, and love to master hate. The complexities of this world do not bow easily to pure and consistent answers. But the simple truths are there just the same. We must all try to follow them as best we can. We often say how impressive power is. But I do not find it impressive at all. The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure. They are necessary symbols. They protect what we cherish. But they are witness to human folly. A dam built across a great river is impressive.

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In the countryside where I was born, and where I live, I have seen the night illuminated, and the kitchens warmed, and the homes heated, where once the cheerless night and the ceaseless cold held sway. And all this happened because electricity came to our area along the humming wires of the REA. Electrification of the countryside—yes, that, too, is impressive. A rich harvest in a hungry land is impressive. The sight of healthy children in a classroom is impressive. These—not mighty arms—are the achievements which the American Nation believes to be impressive. And, if we are steadfast, the time may come when all other nations will also find it so. Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can do to unite this country? Have I done everything I can to help unite the world, to try to bring peace and hope to all the peoples of the world? Have I done enough? Ask yourselves that question in your homes—and in this hall tonight. Have we, each of us, all done all we could? Have we done enough? We may well be living in the time foretold many years ago when it was said: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” This generation of the world must choose: destroy or build, kill or aid, hate or understand. We can do all these things on a scale never dreamed of before. Well, we will choose life. In so doing we will prevail over the enemies within man, and over the natural enemies of all mankind. To Dr. Eisenhower and Mr. Garland, and this great institution, Johns Hopkins, I thank you for this opportunity to convey my thoughts to you and to the American people. Good night. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame If we think in terms of Aristotle’s three appeals (outlined in chapter 1), the strengths of Johnson’s speech—and some of its weaknesses—become evident. In terms of ethos, or establishing credibility with his audience, the president labored to present himself as a sympathetic “reluctant warrior,” more interested in humanitarianism than harnessing force. Appeals to logos or logic also appear throughout, especially in Johnson’s references to the power of science—technology and medicine in particular—to address the ills haunting Southeast Asia. Pathos (the stirring of emotion), however, a John-

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son trademark, provides the backbone of the speech. Over and over, LBJ calls on American idealism and altruism to aid to those less fortunate, threatened by disease and violence. In creating credibility with his audience, clearly Johnson was at pains to present himself and American actions in Vietnam in the context of a mission to better mankind—to produce a world in which all might choose their “own path to change.” “We want nothing for ourselves—only that the people of South Viet-Nam be allowed to guide their brutal war of conquest,” he insisted. Instead, the president repeatedly decried violence—at the same time he regretfully conceded force would be necessary in Southeast Asia. Rather than dwell on the U.S. military mission, an undertaking already underway and soon to be massively expanded, Johnson focused on what he claimed to be his true goals: “the works of peace.” Simply put: Americans aimed to bring modernization and western values to Southeast Asia—developments that promised to uplift the impoverished and bring victory in the Cold War. 6 The president’s emphasis on the non-military side of his agenda undoubtedly made much sense given the reluctance of many Americans to commit troops to a very distant part of the world and a cause that, for many, remained vague (a fact Johnson wisely recognized when he asked early in the speech: “Why must this Nation hazard its ease, and its interest, and its power for the sake of a people so far away?”). Understanding completely the controversies already swirling around America’s increasing commitment to war in Vietnam, Johnson sought to ground his words in the logic (logos) of the Cold War—especially its emphasis on joint international action to halt communism and the need to maintain “credibility” among allies. Some “17 nations,” Johnson insisted, backed his agenda (note the president did not specifically name those countries—some of which would be unhappy to be publicly linked to a war in Vietnam). “Americans and Asians,” the president stressed, were fighting and dying together. So this would not be a “race” war fought by white Americans alone; the president had broad international consensus behind him.Undoubtedly Johnson aimed to counter signals of reluctance from U.S. allies. Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, for instance, recently had urged Johnson to halt the U.S. bombing campaign in favor of negotiations. French President Charles de Gaulle meanwhile had emerged an even more outspoken critic of American policy in Southeast Asia. 7 In his speech, Johnson simply chose to ignore this dissent and emphasized instead consensus among U.S. allies. Along these lines, the president stressed U.S.“credibility”—an important concept during the Cold War. America had pledged to aid South Vietnam, and this was not a commitment Johnson intended to take lightly. 8 From “Berlin to Thailand,” people needed to know they “can count on us if they are attacked,” he proclaimed. Abandoning Vietnam would shake the confidence of those people and endanger “world order.” For the president, Viet-

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nam’s importance thus extended far beyond its natural borders: it was to be a symbol of American resolve. This argument about global credibility— grounded in logos—resonated with Americans during the Cold War era when the fate of the free world seemed in the balance. A display of weakness in Vietnam, for instance, might encourage the Soviets to test U.S. resolve in West Germany—an area of much more vital interest to the Americans. To critics, however, this ascribing of symbolic importance to certain areas— whether Berlin, Cuba, or Southeast Asia—boxed America into a corner. The somewhat vague notion of credibility became the tail that wagged the dog, making the world a more combustible place. Lyndon Johnson wielded another series of ideas rooted deeply in pathos that had taken on great importance for Americans, especially after World War II. Influenced by the United Nations Charter of Human Rights and other developments, Americans increasingly spoke in terms of “universalism”— the notion that all peoples share the same essential values and inspirations. As poet Carl Sandberg put it, “The first cry of a baby in Chicago, or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, ‘I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the Family.’” 9 Leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. also emphasized this sense of commonality and shared destiny. The people of Vietnam, Johnson insisted, seeking to create an emotional bond between his audience and the population of Southeast Asia, belong to this human family as well. The Vietnamese, asserted the president, were no different from those everywhere, wanting the same “food for their hunger; health for their bodies; a chance to learn; progress for their country; and an end to the bondage of material misery.” Material improvement and access to health and educational resources, in short, was the common dominator among humankind, and it was something Americans could readily supply—for those in both South and North Vietnam. Along these lines, starting in the mid-1950s, liberal anticommunists began stressing the virtues of technology transfer and large scale developmental projects as powerful cold war tools especially in the third world. An infusion of western knowhow in the form of trained experts and programs similar to the New Deal’s Tennessee Valley Authority, theorists were convinced, could bring rapid modernization to the less developed world—just as Johnson explained it had to the U.S. South during the 1930s. 10 By the mid-1960s, “modernization theory,” was all the rage among social scientists and development experts. It was considered science. By referencing the power of technology and modernization, Johnson infused his speech with a strong appeal of logos. This inspired the most memorable part of Johnson’s speech: his vow to develop the Mekong River along the lines of the TVA and to offer North Vietnam a stake in that development. American tax dollars and support from the World Bank would make the project possible. Johnson backed this

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appeal to science with an appeal to pathos when he cited his own experience growing up in a poor region of Texas and watching the introduction of electricity “illuminate” a world where once only the “cheerless night and the ceaseless cold held sway.” This personal touch provided perhaps the emotional highpoint of the speech. Again playing on emotions and situating himself firmly (perhaps more firmly than necessary) on the side of altruism, charity, and development, Johnson obviously aimed to cast in a positive light military actions his critics might characterize as mere aggression. Force would be used, albeit reluctantly and with restraint. America’s real aims were to build dams, hospitals, and schools. “[W]e have a responsibility there,” the president extolled his audience. Emotionally-laden talk of American obligation and mission, of course, linked Johnson’s words to a rich American rhetoric dating to the Puritans, but articulated most firmly by President Woodrow Wilson during the World War I era. Like Johnson, Wilson portrayed Americans as charged with a crucial mission to better the world. Note that at one crucial point in his speech Johnson quoted from Deuteronomy (without citing his source): “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death. . . .” In spiritual terms, like Wilson before, LBJ called Americans to a mission to better mankind. Unlike Wilson, Johnson was not a particularly religious man, yet he evoked an optimism alongside a call to arms that seemed divinely inspired. Americans, he assured his audience, “will choose life” over death and war. “In so doing we will prevail over the enemies within man, and over the natural enemies of all mankind.” Only three months earlier in a Christmas address, Johnson proclaimed these “the most hopeful times in all the years since Christ was born in Bethlehem.” 11 This hyperbole no doubt inspired countless listeners. When such lofty objectives proved infinitely more elusive than Johnson promised, however, many felt deceived. Definition of the Problem Mixing powerful appeals to American altruism and the potential of American technology, Johnson set out a problem in sharp relief: how to promote positive growth and end aggression in Southeast Asia. Americans, the president made quite clear, had a responsibility to help. If need be, U.S. forces would crush guerilla operations, but more importantly Americans stood ready with technical support and funding for development that would terminate the disease of poverty in the region—and thus also end aggression. That was the dilemma LBJ set out for his listeners. The president, himself, faced a more delicate conundrum related to ethos—or establishing credibility with his audience: how to counter communist propaganda and mounting attacks from critics at home and even among America’s allies. To these

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critics Johnson was an aggressor, a warmonger. At Johns Hopkins University, the president aimed to turn the tables and launch a “peace offensive.” His proposed $1 billion in aid to North Vietnam and “unconditional discussions” aimed at a negotiated settlement, allowed Johnson to seize the mantle of peacemaker—even as he bombed his enemies and mobilized for greater intervention. In retrospect, Johnson and his speechwriters might have wondered if they were not overpromising the benefits of their peace initiatives and underplaying the challenges and brutality of war. In fact the president seemed well aware of America’s aversion to war. He also well understood—as his private phone conversations suggest—that the war would be costly, brutal, and unpopular. Johnson might have done more to emphasize the difficulties awaiting Americans. Instead by emphasizing peaceful initiatives, he perhaps added later to a perceived “credibility gap.” Impact In many ways, Johnson achieved his objectives—at least temporarily. He successfully framed his agenda in Southeast Asia in terms of American altruism and a desperate search for peace and order in a region veering toward chaos. The president’s domestic audience responded favorably. Across the nation, newspaper editorials heaped praise on a president who claimed to prefer economic development to the horrors of war. The Johns Hopkins address briefly silenced Johnson’s congressional critics, who had vocally protested all signs of escalation in Vietnam. Most grudgingly acknowledged a strong speech. Abroad, America’s allies, many of whom had likewise expressed reservations about the growing U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, pivoted and praised the president’s words. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, for instance, who repeatedly had clashed with Johnson over Vietnam, called the April 7 speech “statesmanlike.” Mail at the White House that had been running five to one opposed to Johnson’s Vietnam policy, shifted to four to one in favor. 12 Even Johnson, despite harboring deep apprehensions about his charted course in Vietnam, felt he made headway. So pleased was the president that he bragged the North Vietnamese would now be trapped into accepting his $1 billion offer. “Ho will never be able to say no,” he crowed to an aide. 13 North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, however, had no trouble saying no. Not surprisingly, the communist world rejected Johnson’s offer. North Vietnam dismissed the proposal as mere “bait”—in essence a “bribe.” Its allies in Beijing blasted the speech as “full of lies and deceptions,” while the Soviets dismissed it as “noisy propaganda.” 14 Still Johnson believed, as he grimly set out to inject more U.S. troops into Vietnam, that his address had revealed the communists as the true belligerents. Their brazen rejection of a

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course promising peace and development manifested, LBJ felt sure, their base aggression for the world to see. The president could now move towards war having exhausted all peaceful options. With polls showing most Americans behind him, Johnson set about a course that would increase U.S. forces in South Vietnam from roughly 23,000 in early 1965 to near 200,000 by the end of the year (at its peak in 1968, U.S. troop levels would stand at well over a half million). If LBJ thought he had permanently stifled criticism of his initiatives, he badly misjudged the national and international scene. On April 17, 1965, 20,000 antiwar protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the largest peace demonstration yet. Within a few years, protests spread across the nation and across the seas. The White House increasingly would come under siege, as protestors chanting slogans like “Hey, Hey, LBJ How Many Kids Did You Kill Today,” became ever present facts of life for Johnson. By 1968, the year Johnson hoped to win reelection, things had gone terribly wrong in Vietnam. U.S. casualities grew ever more burdensome, and the financial cost of maintaining over 500,000 troops in Southeast Asia threatened the U.S. economy. Within his own Democratic Party, Johnson faced stiff opposition to his policies. On March 16, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president, challenged Johnson for the Democratic Party’s nomination as an antiwar candidate. In Vietnam, the Tet Offensive, an NLF attack on South Vietnam’s cities, bred chaos and convinced many Americans (incorrectly) the war in Southeast Asia was being lost. Facing the collapse of his major policies, Johnson went on national television on March 31, 1968, to announce a bombing halt and negotiations. He also revealed he was withdrawing from the presidential election. As he made his stunning announcement, the emotionally drained president referred back to his Johns Hopkins address—which must have seemed a lifetime ago. The imperative “to help build a better land—a better land for men on both sides of the present conflict” remained he insisted. Thus Johnson defiantly reissued his proposal “that North Vietnam could take its place in this common effort just as soon as peace comes.” 15 By 1968, however, reveries of TVAs for Southeast Asia, school and hospital construction, and all the high hopes set out in 1965 lay victim of a costly war with an enormously high human toll. Johnson left the presidency in 1969 as an increasingly unpopular and discredited figure. He died a mere four years later at the age of 64. American public opinion also shifted against modernization projects— such as the Mekong initiative about which Johnson raved in 1965. Huge development projects such as the Mekong project proposed by Johnson were underway around the world by the 1960s—including projects on the Nile and Amazon rivers. Present-day readers, however, will note that Johnson made no reference to the environmental impact of such projects. In 1965, the

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environmental movement was still barely in its infancy. Rachel Carson’s seminar Silent Spring—credited by many as inspiring environmentalism— was published only three years before Johnson spoke at Johns Hopkins. By decade’s end, however, more and more Americans worried about the effect of large-scale development projects on native species and the larger environment. Meanwhile conservatives argued that private investment rather than state-sponsored projects offered a better path to development. As Johnson left the presidency in 1969, modernization theory was well on its way to being discredited. The tumult of the Vietnam War along with Watergate and an economic turndown, argue many historians and scholars, ushered in a more cynical age. No longer could presidents appeal so brazenly to American idealism as did LBJ in 1965. Perhaps the failure of the mission that Johnson painted in such passionate terms at Johns Hopkins University contributed to a lasting cynicism and credibility gap. His remarkable emotional appeal to American philanthropy that April day when he essentially promised a better world, left Americans feeling deeply betrayed when an agonizing war manifested itself rather than the miracles of modernization. NOTES 1. H. W. Brands, Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 24. 2. Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 144. 3. On modernization see, Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Sciences and Nation Building of the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 4. Bruce Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 84–85. 5. Lyndon Baines Johnson, “Address at Johns Hopkins University: ‘Peace Without Conquest,’” 7 April 1965. Public Papers of the Presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1965 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1966), 394–98. 6. Michael Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development and US Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 142. 7. Dror Yuravlivker, “‘Peace without Conquest’: Lyndon Johnson’s Speech of April 7, 1965,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 36:3 (September 2006): 465. 8. On the general issue of credibility see Robert McMahon, “Credibility and World Power: Exploring the Psychological Dimension in Postwar American Diplomacy,” Diplomatic History, 15:4 (October 1991):525–48. 9. Carl Sandberg and Edward Steichen, The Family of Man (New York: Modern Museum of Art, 2955), 2. On “universalism” also see Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman, All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2000), 24–25. 10. David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 190–225. 11. James T. Patterson, Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America (New York: Basic Books, 2012), xvi.

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12. Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 371–72; Patterson, 106. 13. Dallek, 261. 14. Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), 134. 15. Lyndon Johnson, “Address to the Nation, March 31, 1968,” in Vietnam Documents: American and Vietnamese Views of the War, ed. George Katsiaficas (New York: M.E. Sharp, 1992), 109.

Chapter Twelve

Richard Nixon and American Indian Policy Jeffrey S. Ashley

THE BACKGROUND From the beginning of this nation, the question of how to deal with the “Indian Problem” has taken on many different approaches and led to a number of vacillating policies—all aimed, in one way or another, at assimilating Native Americans into white culture. Despite the fact that numerous reports, such as the Merriam Report of 1928, stated that forced assimilation was not working, 1 the U.S. Congress continued in its futile effort to assimilate the Indian. In the mid-1950s, with a Republican Congress and president, yet another attempt at assimilation took shape. House Concurrent Resolution 108 was passed by Congress and signed by President Eisenhower in 1953 ushering in what is known as the termination period. 2 While framed as one of freeing tribes from federal control, it was really focused around forcing assimilation and shedding federal responsibility. In short, termination meant the unilateral decision by Congress to no longer recognize a particular tribe as existing in the eyes of the federal government. This allowed the U.S. government to renege on legal responsibilities to support the tribes under the trust obligation set forth under the Supreme Court ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, which essentially placed tribal nations under the protection and care of the U.S. government. This status was subsequently reaffirmed through numerous other court cases and acts of Congress. During the termination period, over 100 tribes were stripped of recognition and over 1 million acres were taken away. 3 This could hardly be considered protection and care.

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Richard Nixon entered into office during the termination period and at the height of the Civil Rights movement when activism on the part of African American, Chicano, and American Indian groups forced their issues into the public eye. In the case of American Indians, the occupancy of Alcatraz Island in 1969 and the issuance of the Alcatraz Proclamation further brought attention to the plight of American Indians in this country and the overall failure of the termination policy. 4 This was followed by a Washington sit-in and take-over of BIA offices in 1970 by activists seeking to regain the sovereign status that had been eroded during the termination period. 5 Since Nixon was a Republican, it seemed rather strange that he would push so hard in this area. After all, the termination period began under Eisenhower and a Republican Congress while Nixon served as vice president. Nevertheless, Nixon’s speech challenges the status quo in a very strong way and provides Congress with a number of potential avenues for change. There are any number of explanations for Nixon’s desire to change policy in this area ranging from his upbringing as a Quaker to a more pragmatic explanation that it fit into his New Federalism and that it was a natural call during the Civil Rights era. It might also be because of an influential individual—Wallace “Chief” Newman, Richard Nixon’s football coach at Whittier College and a member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians. Citing his memoirs and their personal interaction, former staffers Bobbi Kilberg and Geoffrey Shepard have indicated that Nixon felt like Newman was a father figure and was second only to his own father in terms of influence. Nixon felt that Newman was slighted because of his background and that had he been white, he would have been coaching at a major college rather than at Whittier. According to Kilberg, Nixon stated, on more than one occasion, that he would rectify the status of American Indians on behalf of Coach Newman. Regardless of the reason, Nixon’s speech aims at radically changing the direction of existing policy and moving toward a new approach which he terms self-determination. 6 THE SPEECH 7 To the Congress of the United States: The first Americans—the Indians—are the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation. On virtually every scale of measurement— employment, income, education, health—the condition of the Indian people ranks at the bottom. This condition is the heritage of centuries of injustice. From the time of their first contact with European settlers, the American Indians have been oppressed and brutalized, deprived of their ancestral lands and denied the opportunity to control their own destiny. Even the Federal programs which

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are intended to meet their needs have frequently proven to be ineffective and demeaning. But the story of the Indian in America is something more than the record of the white man’s frequent aggression, broken agreements, intermittent remorse and prolonged failure. It is a record also of endurance, of survival, of adaptation and creativity in the face of overwhelming obstacles. It is a record of enormous contributions to this country—to its art and culture, to its strength and spirit, to its sense of history and its sense of purpose. It is long past time that the Indian policies of the Federal government began to recognize and build upon the capacities and insights of the Indian people. Both as a matter of justice and as a matter of enlightened social policy, we must begin to act on the basis of what the Indians themselves have long been telling us. The time has come to break decisively with the past and to create the conditions for a new era in which the Indian future is determined by Indian acts and Indian decisions. Self-Determination without Termination The first and most basic question that must be answered with respect to Indian policy concerns the historic and legal relationship between the Federal government and Indian communities. In the past, this relationship has oscillated between two equally harsh and unacceptable extremes. On the one hand, it has—at various times during previous Administrations—been the stated policy objective of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal government eventually to terminate the trusteeship relationship between the Federal government and the Indian people. As recently as August of 1953, in House Concurrent Resolution 108, the Congress declared that termination was the long-range goal of its Indian policies. This would mean that Indian tribes would eventually lose any special standing they had under Federal law: the tax exempt status of their lands would be discontinued; Federal responsibility for their economic and social well-being would be repudiated; and the tribes themselves would be effectively dismantled. Tribal property would be divided among individual members who would then be assimilated into the society at large. This policy of forced termination is wrong, in my judgment, for a number of reasons. First, the premises on which it rests are wrong. Termination implies that the Federal government has taken on a trusteeship responsibility for Indian communities as an act of generosity toward a disadvantaged people and that it can therefore discontinue this responsibility on a unilateral basis whenever it sees fit. But the unique status of Indian tribes does not rest on any premise such as this. The special relationship between Indians and the Federal government is the result instead of solemn obligations which have been entered into by the United States Government. Down through the years, through written treaties and through formal and informal agreements, our government has made specific commitments to the Indian people. For their

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part, the Indians have often surrendered claims to vast tracts of land and have accepted life on government reservations. In exchange, the government has agreed to provide community services such as health, education and public safety, services which would presumably allow Indian communities to enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of other Americans. This goal, of course, has never been achieved. But the special relationship between the Indian tribes and the Federal government which arises from these agreements continues to carry immense moral and legal force. To terminate this relationship would be no more appropriate than to terminate the citizenship rights of any other American. The second reason for rejecting forced termination is that the practical results have been clearly harmful in the few instances in which termination actually has been tried. The removal of Federal trusteeship responsibility has produced considerable disorientation among the affected Indians and has left them unable to relate to a myriad of Federal, State and local assistance efforts. Their economic and social condition has often been worse after termination than it was before. The third argument I would make against forced termination concerns the effect it has had upon the overwhelming majority of tribes which still enjoy a special relationship with the Federal government. The very threat that this relationship may someday be ended has created a great deal of apprehension among Indian groups and this apprehension, in turn, has had a blighting effect on tribal progress. Any step that might result in greater social, economic or political autonomy is regarded with suspicion by many Indians who fear that it will only bring them closer to the day when the Federal government will disavow its responsibility and cut them adrift. In short, the fear of one extreme policy, forced termination, has often worked to produce the opposite extreme: excessive dependence on the Federal government. In many cases this dependence is so great that the Indian community is almost entirely run by outsiders who are responsible and responsive to Federal officials in Washington, D.C., rather than to the communities they are supposed to be serving. This is the second of the two harsh approaches which have long plagued our Indian policies. Of the Department of the Interior’s programs directly serving Indians, for example, only 1.5 percent are presently under Indian control. Only 2.4 percent of HEW’s Indian health programs are run by Indians. The result is a burgeoning Federal bureaucracy, programs which are far less effective than they ought to be, and an erosion of Indian initiative and morale. I believe that both of these policy extremes are wrong. Federal termination errs in one direction Federal paternalism errs in the other. Only by clearly rejecting both of these extremes can we achieve a policy which truly serves the best interests of the Indian people. Self-determination among the Indian people can and must be encouraged without the threat of eventual

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termination. In my view, in fact, that is the only way that self-determination can effectively be fostered. This, then, must be the goal of any new national policy toward the Indian people: to strengthen the Indian’s sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community. We must assure the Indian that he can assume control of his own life without being separated involuntarily from the tribal group. And we must make it clear that Indians can become independent of Federal control without being cut off from Federal concern and Federal support. My specific recommendations to the Congress are designed to carry out this policy. 1. Rejecting Termination Because termination is morally and legally unacceptable, because it produces bad practical results, and because the mere threat of termination tends to discourage greater self-sufficiency among Indian groups, I am asking the Congress to pass a new Concurrent Resolution which would expressly renounce, repudiate and repeal the termination policy as expressed in House Concurrent Resolution 108 of the 83rd Congress. This resolution would explicitly affirm the integrity and right to continued existence of all Indian tribes and Alaska native governments, recognizing that cultural pluralism is a source of national strength. . . . 2. The Right to Control and Operate Federal Programs Even as we reject the goal of forced termination, so must we reject the suffocating pattern of paternalism. But how can we best do this? In the past, we have often assumed that because the government is obliged to provide certain services for Indians, it therefore must administer those same services. . . . There is no reason why Indian communities should be deprived of the privilege of self-determination merely because they receive monetary support from the Federal government. Nor should they lose Federal money because they reject Federal control. . . . 3. Restoring the Sacred Lands Near Blue Lake No government policy toward Indians can be fully effective unless there is a relationship of trust and confidence between the Federal government and the Indian people. Such a relationship cannot be completed overnight; it is inevitably the product of a long series of words and actions. But we can contribute significantly to such a relationship by responding to just grievances which are especially important to the Indian people. . . . For 64 years, the Taos Pueblo has been trying to regain possession of this sacred lake and watershed area in order to preserve it in its natural condition and limit its non-Indian use. The Taos Indians consider such action essential to the protection and expression of their religious faith. . . . 4. Indian Education One of the saddest aspects of Indian life in the United States is the low quality of Indian education. Drop-out rates for Indians are twice the national

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average and the average educational level for all Indians under Federal supervision is less than six school years. Again, at least a part of the problem stems from the fact that the Federal government is trying to do for Indians what many Indians could do better for themselves. . . . Consistent with our policy that the Indian community should have the right to take over the control and operation of federally funded programs, we believe every Indian community wishing to do so should be able to control its own Indian schools. This control would be exercised by school boards selected by Indians and functioning much like other school boards throughout the nation. . . . 5. Economic Development Legislation Economic deprivation is among the most serious of Indian problems. Unemployment among Indians is ten times the national average; the unemployment rate runs as high as 80 percent on some of the poorest reservations. Eighty percent of reservation Indians have an income which falls below the poverty line; the average annual income for such families is only $1,500. As I said in September of 1968, it is critically important that the Federal government support and encourage efforts which help Indians develop their own economic infrastructure. To that end, I am proposing the “Indian Financing Act of 1970. . . .” 6. More Money for Indian Health Despite significant improvements in the past decade and a half, the health of Indian people still lags 20 to 25 years behind that of the general population. The average age at death among Indians is 44 years, about one-third less than the national average. Infant mortality is nearly 50% higher for Indians and Alaska natives than for the population at large; the tuberculosis rate is eight times as high and the suicide rate is twice that of the general population. Many infectious diseases such as trachoma and dysentery that have all but disappeared among other Americans continue to afflict the Indian people. This Administration is determined that the health status of the first Americans will be improved. . . . This strengthened Federal effort will enable us to address ourselves more effectively to those health problems which are particularly important to the Indian community. . . . 7. Helping Urban Indians Our new census will probably show that a larger proportion of America’s Indians are living off the reservation than ever before in our history. Some authorities even estimate that more Indians are living in cities and towns than are remaining on the reservation. Of those American Indians who are now dwelling in urban areas, approximately three-fourths are living in poverty. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is organized to serve the 462,000 reservation Indians. The BIA’s responsibility does not extend to Indians who have left the reservation, but this point is not always clearly understood. As a result of this misconception, Indians living in urban areas have often lost out

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on the opportunity to participate in other programs designed for disadvantaged groups. As a first step toward helping the urban Indians, I am instructing appropriate officials to do all they can to ensure that this misunderstanding is corrected. . . . 8. Indian Trust Counsel Authority The United States Government acts as a legal trustee for the land and water rights of American Indians. These rights are often of critical economic importance to the Indian people; frequently they are also the subject of extensive legal dispute. In many of these legal confrontations, the Federal government is faced with an inherent conflict of interest. The Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General must at the same time advance both the national interest in the use of land and water rights and the private interests of Indians in land which the government holds as trustee. Every trustee has a legal obligation to advance the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust without reservation and with the highest degree of diligence and skill. Under present conditions, it is often difficult for the Department of the Interior and the Department of Justice to fulfill this obligation. No self-respecting law firm would ever allow itself to represent two opposing clients in one dispute; yet the Federal government has frequently found itself in precisely that position. There is considerable evidence that the Indians are the losers when such situations arise. More than that, the credibility of the Federal government is damaged whenever it appears that such a conflict of interest exists. In order to correct this situation, I am calling on the Congress to establish an Indian Trust Counsel Authority to assure independent legal representation for the Indians’ natural resource rights. 9. Assistant Secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs To help guide the implementation of a new national policy concerning American Indians, I am recommending to the Congress the establishment of a new position in the Department of the Interior—assistant secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs. At present, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reports to the Secretary of the Interior through the assistant secretary for Public Land Management—an officer who has many responsibilities in the natural resources area which compete with his concern for Indians. A new assistant secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs would have only one concern—the Indian and territorial peoples, their land, and their progress and well-being. . . . . . . We are proposing to break sharply with past approaches to Indian problems. In place of a long series of piecemeal reforms, we suggest a new and coherent strategy. In place of policies which simply call for more spending, we suggest policies which call for wiser spending. In place of policies which oscillate between the deadly extremes of forced termination and con-

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stant paternalism, we suggest a policy in which the Federal government and the Indian community play complementary roles. But most importantly, we have turned from the question of whether the Federal government has a responsibility to Indians to the question of how that responsibility can best be fulfilled. We have concluded that the Indians will get better programs and that public monies will be more effectively expended if the people who are most affected by these programs are responsible for operating them. The Indians of America need Federal assistance—this much has long been clear. What has not always been clear, however, is that the Federal government needs Indian energies and Indian leadership if its assistance is to be effective in improving the conditions of Indian life. It is a new and balanced relationship between the United States government and the first Americans that is at the heart of our approach to Indian problems. And that is why we now approach these problems with new confidence that they will successfully be overcome. RICHARD NIXON The White House July 8, 1970 THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Nixon places a heavy emphasis on morality, equality, freedom, and justice. He highlights the fact that the first Americans are among the most deprived and destitute among us—largely as a result of our actions, which he feels is both immoral and unjust. While initially treated as sovereign nations, they have systematically been stripped of their sovereignty which runs counter to the American ideal of freedom and independence. This is largely because American Indians have often been misunderstood and misrepresented—often being portrayed as heathens or even people incapable of taking care of themselves. In contrast, Nixon mentions their resiliency and points to the cultural contributions that they have brought to our nation. He feels they have even more to contribute—if given the opportunity and freedom to act on their own. From a moral standpoint, we must act to restore them to a position of equity in society and allow them to make decisions for themselves. From a position of simple justice, we must live up to the legal obligation that we have as part of the trust relationship not only because it is the law, but because it is the right thing to do as Americans. By emphasizing morality, equality, independence, and justice, the Rhetorical frame employed by Nixon is a juxtaposition of American exceptionalism and the American Jeremiad. The jeremiad is an established and long standing

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rhetorical approach that resembles a sermon that lambasts the audience, or society, for its failures and calls for renewal and a move forward. In short, the jeremiad refers to some sort of teaching or ideal, discusses how we have failed to live up to these teachings, and suggests where we might be if we were to repent and begin to change. Initially, the jeremiad was religious in nature and the person giving the speech called on those listening to repent their sins or face condemnation from God. 8 At its core, the jeremiad speaks to morality and change. The puritanical jeremiad of early America has been supplanted by what many call the American Jeremiad. While still drawing on morality as a basis, the damnation and fire-and brimstone tone of the puritans has been softened and God has been replaced by a general sense of morality, justice, and righteousness—often drawing on themes revealed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution such as liberty, freedom, and justice. American exceptionalism is the idea that we, as Americans, are somehow better. Our economy, our morality, and our way of life are seen to be better or exceptional when viewed in comparison to the rest of the world. This has been used repeatedly over time to justify our actions, especially when it comes to international intervention. While American exceptionalism has generally conveniently overlooked the American treatment of minorities, morality is very much a part of this theme. Nixon uses both the American Jeremiad and American exceptionalism very effectively in this speech by highlighting the past condition of American Indians and how their treatment was in line with the ideals of equality but that somehow we lost our way and they are now the subject of mistreatment and abject poverty. If we are to indeed continue to be exceptional, how can we project this externally if we do not live up to it internally? If we are to remain exceptional and moral, we must deal with this problem and become the great country we expect our selves to be and that we project ourselves to be to the rest of the world. Thus, both the American Jeremiad and the idea of American exceptionalism appeal to Aristotle’s Pathos, or emotion. Casting the tribes as a neglected minority living in dire conditions, Nixon appeals to emotion which is particularly effective given the audience (the Democratically led 91st Congress) and the social climate of the era. This is during a time when great attention was being paid to the status of a number of disadvantaged groups such as African Americans and women, who had employed the American Jeremiad for years. 9 Both African Americans and women saw a number of laws passed during this period that were an attempt to rectify past wrongs and to restore them to a place of equity and equality in our society. The most notable examples are the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Playing into this sentiment, Nixon clearly found a receptive audience in the Democratically led 91st Congress. Infusing the idea of exceptionalism along with the jeremiad made for a particularly

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strong frame as members of Congress generally hold strongly to their identity as Americans and the idea that we are a great nation. Definition of the Problem Once Nixon had appealed to emotion, and made the case that something needed to be done, his task was to define the problem in such a way that he could direct the course of action toward his desired outcome—that of a new Indian policy based on federal support coupled with Indian independence and self-rule. He does this by defining the problem as one of extremes—we either have done everything or we have done nothing. In this area, he appeals to Aristotle’s logos, or reason. Logically, he demonstrates that the past and current policies have not worked and that it is illogical to continue down the same path. Moreover, Nixon explains why the policies have not worked in order to allow for his policy alternative to become appealing. By pointing out that past policies were either too paternalistic or too non-existent, he carves out a careful niche for the middle ground—“self-determination without termination.” This new policy would be one in which Native Americans are consulted on local matters and are allowed to have some say in their own governance—which also appeals to the American exceptionalist and American jeremiad ideals of independence. At the same time, it recognizes that past actions have placed many tribes in no position to fend for themselves right away. They have the knowledge and know-how, but lack the means or resources to carry these out. It makes sense that in order for tribal nations to truly become self-supporting, they will require some initial help from the federal government. The Impact The frame and definition of the problem employed by Nixon led to almost immediate and sweeping action with virtually all of his specific recommendations being enacted within six years. After delivering his speech in July of 1970, Congress passed the Blue Lake Restoration Act which returned sacred lands to the Taos Pueblo. This was signed into law by Nixon on December 15 of the same year. 10 His push for the end to termination was started with the Menominee Restoration Act of 1973 which reestablished federal recognition of a previously terminated tribe. 11 Several other tribes have subsequently been restored to recognized status and, while not all of the terminated tribes have been restored, no tribe has been subject to the termination process since Nixon proposed an end to the policy. Nixon also made specific calls for more Indian education assistance, healthcare, and aid for economic development. These calls were met through even more laws in line with what Nixon requested. In terms of education,

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Congress passed the Indian Education Act of 1972 12 and The Indian SelfDetermination and Educational Assistance Act of 1975. 13 His call for greater healthcare assistance was met through the Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976. 14 Finally, Nixon’s plea for more financing aimed at aiding tribal economic development was answered by the Indian Financing Act of 1974. 15 The movement was so strong, that Congress would continue to pass laws on behalf of tribal nations through the end of the 1970s with acts such as The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, 16 The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, 17 and The Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979. 18 The trend has continued well into the new century—far surpassing the specific proposals that Nixon put forth, but all in support of his intended new direction for policy. The idea of self-determination and self-governance that Nixon proposed became the new approach to federal Indian policy and is the policy that remains to this day, with tribes largely taking control of their own programs and destiny with continued financial support of the United States government. While it is clear that some tribal nations continue to struggle in some areas, the policy of self-determination outlined by Richard Nixon in his July 8, 1970, speech is much better than the policy of termination that he inherited, and many point to this speech as the turning point. NOTES 1. Lewis Meriam, et al, “A General Policy for Indian Affairs,” in The Problem of Indian Administration, (Johns Hopkins Press, 1928). 2. August 1, 1953 [H. Con. Res. 108] 67 Stat. B122. 3. Wilkins, David E. and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, “A History of Foreign Indian Policy,” in American Indian Politics and the American Political System, 3rd ed. (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011). 4. Fortunate Eagle, Adam, “The Message,” in Alcatraz! Alcatraz!: The Indian Occupation of 1969–1971 (Heyday Books, 1992). 5. Cornell, Stephen and Joseph Kalt, “ American Indian Self-Determination: The Political Economy of a Policy that Works” (Harvard Kennedy School Working paper series, Nov. 2010). 6. Presentations made at a panel discussion entitled “Restoring Rights for Native Americans—panel I,” May 23, 2012 held at the University of Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum. 7. Richard Nixon: “Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs.” July 8, 1970. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2573. The original speech also included nine specific recommendations for Congress, such as calling on the restoration of sacred lands near Blue Lake in New Mexico, that have been edited for space reasons. Such editing does not alter the tone, direction, or frame of the speech. 8. Danforth, Samuel. “A Brief Recognition of New Englands Errand into the Wilderness,” 1671, a famous sermon which set the standard for later jeremiads; and Increase Mather, “Day of Trouble is Near” (1674). 9. Examples include speeches by Sojourner Truth and essays by Mary Abigail Dodge in support of women’s rights and speeches and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. on behalf of African Americans. 10. 78 Stat. 891 (1970). 11. 87 Stat. 770 (1973).

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86 Stat. 334 (1972). 88 Stat. 2203 (1975). 90 Stat. 1400 (1976). 88 Stat. 77 (1974). 92 Stat. 469 (1978). 92 Stat. 3069 (1978). 93 Stat. 721 (1978).

Chapter Thirteen

Gerald Ford Plan to Whip Inflation Now Jason A. Edwards

THE BACKGROUND Perhaps no president since Franklin Roosevelt has inherited a worse political and economic situation than Gerald Ford. The disasters of the Vietnam War and Watergate rocked Americans’ confidence in its political institutions. Concomitantly, the United States was in the midst of its greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. This downturn was primarily fueled by the end of the Vietnam War, the OPEC oil embargo, President Nixon’s decision to take the United States off the gold standard, and the worst stock market since the Great Depression. 1 As a result, the United States experienced a considerable rise in inflation without a comparative increase in wages. In discussing the economy President Ford inherited, the New York Times stated the president was dealing with “the worst inflation in the country’s peacetime history, the highest interest rates in a century, the consequent severe slump in housing, sinking and utterly demoralized securities markets, a stagnant economy with larger scale unemployment in prospect and a worsening international trade and payments position.” 2 America’s battle over inflation had turned into an immediate and all-consuming crisis. Three weeks after assuming the presidency, Ford held his first press conference where he addressed the crumbling American economy. At this press conference, the president refused to consider reinstating price and wage controls to combat inflation, but he did opine that it was America’s number one enemy. As he put it, inflation is “public enemy number one, and that is the one we have to lick, is inflation. If we take care of inflation and get our economy back on the road to a healthy future, I think most of our other 153

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domestic programs or problems will be solved.” 3 As a result of this “public enemy number one,” Ford organized three different conferences on inflation in September 1974 to gather ideas from business leaders, academics, economists, and policymakers to fight inflation. From these conferences Ford argued we “have gained a better understanding of our economic problems,” but “we have all developed a super sense of direction. You have done your homework well. Now it is my turn.” 4 President Ford’s turn came in a nationally televised address on October 8, 1974, where he offered a “program of action which will bring balance and vitality to our economy.” 5 This address has become colloquially known as Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” speech. 6 Despite Ford’s program of action to fight inflation I argue his rhetoric was largely ineffective in mobilizing the public to combat the crisis. In what follows, the reader will find a transcript of Ford’s Whip Inflation Now address, I then offer an analysis of why Ford’s crisis discourse proved to be ineffective, and end with some concluding remarks regarding presidents, crises, and their accompanying discourse. THE SPEECH 7 Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished guests, my very dear friends: In his first inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, and I quote: The people of the United States have not failed. . . . They want direct, vigorous action, and they have asked for discipline and direction under our leadership. Today, though our economic difficulties do not approach the emergency of 1933, the message from the American people is exactly the same. I trust that you are getting the very same message that I am receiving: Our constituents want leadership, our constituents want action . . . Mr. Speaker, many—but not all—of your recommendations on behalf of your party’s caucus are reflected in some of my proposals here today. The distinguished majority leader of the Senate offered a nine-point program. I seriously studied all of them and adopted some of his suggestions. . . . I will not take your time today with the discussion of the origins of inflation and its bad effect on the United States, but I do know where we want to be in 1976—on the 200th birthday of a United States of America that has not lost its way, nor its will, nor its sense of national purpose. During the meetings on inflation, I listened carefully to many valuable suggestions. . . . My conclusions are very simply stated. There is only one point on which all advisers have agreed: We must whip inflation right now. None of the remedies proposed, great or small, compulsory or voluntary, stands a chance unless they are combined in a considered package, in a concerted effort, in a grand design. . . .Today, I have identified 10 areas for

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our joint action, the executive and the legislative branches of our Government. Number one: food. America is the world’s champion producer of food. Food prices and petroleum prices in the United States are primary inflationary factors. America today partially depends on foreign sources for petroleum, but we can grow more than enough food for ourselves. To halt higher food prices, we must produce more food, and I call upon every farmer to produce to full capacity. . . . Accordingly, I ask the Congress to remove all remaining acreage limitations on rice, peanuts, and cotton. . . . I have directed our new Council on Wage and Price Stability to find and to expose all restrictive practices, public or private, which raise food prices. The Administration will also monitor food production, margins, pricing, and exports. . . . Number two: energy. America’s future depends heavily on oil, gas, coal, electricity, and other resources called energy. Make no mistake, we do have a real energy problem. One-third of our oil—17 percent of America’s total energy—now comes from foreign sources that we cannot control, at high cartel prices costing you and me $16 billion—$16 billion more than just a year ago. The primary solution has to be at home. If you have forgotten the shortages of last winter, most Americans have not. I have ordered today the reorganization of our national energy effort and the creation of a national energy board. . . . And I think most of you will be glad to know that our former colleague, Rog Morton, our Secretary of Interior, will be the overall boss of our national energy program. Rog Morton’s marching orders are to reduce imports of foreign oil by 1 million barrels per day by the end of 1975, whether by savings here at home, or by increasing our own sources. Secretary Morton, along with his other responsibility, is also charged with increasing our domestic energy supply by promptly utilizing our coal resources and expanding recovery of domestic oil still in the grounds in old wells. . . . Number three: restrictive practices. To increase productivity and contain prices, we must end restrictive and costly practices whether instituted by Government, industry, labor, or others. And I am determined to return to the vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws. The Administration will zero in on more effective enforcement of laws against price fixing and bid rigging. For instance, non-competitive professional fee schedules and real estate settlement fees must be eliminated. Such violations will be prosecuted by the Department of Justice to the full extent of the law. . . . Number four: We need more capital. We cannot “eat up our seed corn.” Our free enterprise system depends on orderly capital markets through which the savings of our people become productively used. Today, our capital markets are in total disarray. We must restore their vitality. Prudent monetary restraint is essential. . . . To help industry to buy more machines and create

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more jobs, I am recommending a liberalized 10 percent investment tax credit. This credit should be especially helpful to capital-intensive industries such as primary metals, public utilities, where capacity shortages have developed. . . . Number five: Helping the casualties. And this is a very important part of the overall speech. The Conference on Inflation made everybody even more aware of who is suffering most from inflation. Foremost are those who are jobless through no fault of their own. . . . I now propose to the Congress a two-step program to augment this action. First, 13 weeks of special unemployment insurance benefits would be provided to those who have exhausted their regular and extended unemployment insurance benefits, and 26 weeks of special unemployment insurance benefits to those who qualify but are not now covered by regular unemployment insurance programs. . . . Second, I ask the Congress to create a brand new Community Improvement Corps to provide work for the unemployed through short-term useful work projects to improve, beautify, and enhance the environment of our cities, our towns, and our countryside. . . . Number six: stimulating housing. Without question, credit is the lifeblood of housing. The United States, unfortunately, is suffering the longest and the most severe housing recession since the end of World War II. Unemployment in the construction trades is twice the national average. . . . I urge the Congress to enact before recess additional legislation to make most home mortgages eligible for purchase by an agency of the Federal Government. . . . Number seven: thrift institutions. Savings and loan and similar institutions are hard hit by inflation and high interest rates. . . . Passage of the pending financial institution bill will help, but no single measure has yet appeared, as I see it, to solve feast or famine in mortgage credit. However, I promise to work with you individually and collectively to develop additional specific programs in this area in the future. Number eight: international interdependency. The United States has a responsibility not only to maintain a healthy economy at home, but also to seek policies which complement rather than disrupt the constructive efforts of others. Essential to U.S. initiatives is the early passage of an acceptable trade reform bill. . . . We live in an interdependent world and, therefore, must work together to resolve common economic problems. Number nine: federal taxes and spending. To support programs, to increase production and share inflation-produced hardships, we need additional tax revenues. I am aware that any proposal for new taxes just 4 weeks before a national election is, to put it mildly, considered politically unwise. And I am frank to say that I have been earnestly advised to wait and talk about taxes anytime after November 5. But I do say in sincerity that I will not play politics with America’s future. . . . I am—I am asking you to approve a l-year temporary tax surcharge of 5 percent on corporate and upper-level individual

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incomes. This would generally exclude from the surcharge those families with gross incomes below $15,000 a year. The estimated $5 billion in extra revenue to be raised by this inflation-fighting tax should pay for the new programs I have recommended in this message. I think, and I suspect each of you know, this is the acid test of our joint determination to whip inflation in America. . . . My fellow Americans, 10 days ago I asked you to get things started by making a list of 10 ways to fight inflation and save energy, to exchange your list with your neighbors, and to send me a copy. I have personally read scores of the thousands of letters received at the White House, and incidentally, I have made my economic experts read some of them, too. We all benefited, at least I did, and I thank each and every one of you for this cooperation. Some of the good ideas from your home to mine have been cranked into the recommendations I have just made to the Congress and the steps I am taking as President to whip inflation right now. There were also firm warnings on what Government must not do, and I appreciated those, too. Your best suggestions for voluntary restraint and self-discipline showed me that a great degree of patriotic determination and unanimity already exists in this great land. I have asked Congress for urgent specific actions it alone can take. I advised Congress of the initial steps that I am taking as President. Here is what only you can do: Unless every able American pitches in, Congress and I cannot do the job. Winning our fight against inflation and waste involves total mobilization of America’s greatest resources—the brains, the skills, and the willpower of the American people. Here is what we must do, what each and every one of you can do: To help increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less; to help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less. Every housewife knows almost exactly how much she spent for food last week. If you cannot spare a penny from your food budget—and I know there are many—surely you can cut the food that you waste by 5 percent. Every American motorist knows exactly how many miles he or she drives to work or to school every day and about how much mileage she or he runs up each year. If we all drive at least 5 percent fewer miles, we can save, almost unbelievably, 250,000 barrels of foreign oil per day. By the end of 1975, most of us can do better than 5 percent by carpooling, taking the bus, riding bikes, or just plain walking. We can save enough gas by self-discipline to meet our 1 million barrels per day goal. I think there is one final thing that all Americans can do, rich or poor, and that is share with others. We can share burdens as we can share blessings. Sharing is not easy, not easy to measure like mileage and family budgets, but I am sure that 5 percent more is not nearly enough to ask, so I ask you to

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share everything you can and a little bit more. And it will strengthen our spirits as well as our economy. Today I will not take more of the time of this busy Congress. . . . One week from tonight I have a long-standing invitation in Kansas City to address the Future Farmers of America. . . . I will elaborate then how volunteer inflation fighters and energy savers can further mobilize their total efforts. . . . There will be no big Federal bureaucracy set up for this crash program. Through the courtesy of such volunteers from the communication and media fields, a very simple enlistment form will appear in many of tomorrow’s newspapers along with the symbol of this new mobilization, which I am wearing on my lapel. It bears the single word WIN. I think that tells it all. I will call upon every American to join in this massive mobilization and stick with it until we do win as a nation and as a people. Mr. Speaker and Mr. President, I stand on a spot hallowed by history. Many Presidents have come here many times to solicit, to scold, to flatter, to exhort the Congress to support them in their leadership. Once in a great while, Presidents have stood here and truly inspired the most skeptical and the most sophisticated audience of their co-equal partners in Government. Perhaps once or twice in a generation is there such a joint session. I don’t expect this one to be. Only two of my predecessors have come in person to call upon Congress for a declaration of war, and I shall not do that. But I say to you with all sincerity that our inflation, our public enemy number one, will, unless whipped, destroy our country, our homes, our liberties, our property, and finally our national pride, as surely as any well-armed wartime enemy. I concede there will be no sudden Pearl Harbor to shock us into unity and to sacrifice, but I think we have had enough early warnings. The time to intercept is right now. The time to intercept is almost gone. My friends and former colleagues, will you enlist now? My friends and fellow Americans, will you enlist now? Together with discipline and determination, we will win. I thank you very much. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame President Ford certainly faced a difficult situation in 1974. The Vietnam War was basically lost, the OPEC oil embargo had created one aspect of an economic crisis, and inflation was causing havoc on American consumers. In his national address, President Ford framed the inflation crisis as the moral equivalent to war. 8 Ford used the language of war to galvanize Congress and the American public to action. He laced his speech with words and phrases

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like “necessary weapon,” “winning our fight,” “total mobilization,” “volunteer inflation fights,” “volunteer mobilization,” “massive mobilization,” “no sudden Pearl Harbor,” “will you enlist now,” “share burdens,” “public enemy number one,” as well as other examples of war references. However, Ford’s use of war language to fight inflation had several problems with it. His first problem was the way that he constructed the “inflation” enemy. To be successful in promoting a crisis presidents typically identify and personify a specific enemy, generating a focal point for the American public to unite against. 9 For example, President George H. W. Bush’s Gulf War rhetoric is a successful case study in how presidents mobilize public and congressional support. In his public discourse, Bush continually described Saddam Hussein as a tyrant, dictator, and another Hitler, whose armies had engaged in rape, torture, murder, and the killing of innocent civilians. The constant drumbeat of constructing Hussein as the next Adolf Hitler was one of the reasons he persuaded Congress and the American people they needed to support his decisions to take action against Saddam Hussein. 10 In President Ford’s discourse, there was no discussion of a specific enemy. Ford did remark inflation was “public enemy number one.” However, Ford did not describe what that specific enemy looked like and its effects upon Americans. As President Ford noted in his address, “I will not take your time today with the discussion of the origins of inflation and its bad effect on the United States.” 11 In Ford’s description of inflation, the enemy was amorphous, vague, and intangible to the American people. This lack of descriptive detail made it difficult for Americans to visualize and “chew on” something in particular. 12 They cannot literalize and put a human face on the enemy of inflation. Without the personification of inflation with a human face and the destruction it causes it became that much more difficult for Ford to rally the public to pressure Congress to pass his ten point plan and to engage in the individual sacrifices he wanted every American to make. A second problem with Ford’s construction of the “inflation” enemy was his lack of magnifying the destruction inflation was causing and would cause in the U.S. economy. A key rhetorical characteristic of international and domestic crisis rhetoric, particularly economic crisis rhetoric, is magnification. Denise Bostdorff and Daniel O’Rourke described magnification as attracting “citizen attention and to heighten the issue’s perceived significance” where “the president emphasizes that the issue is an urgent matter of great public import that poses a threat to the country as a whole.” 13 As part of this strategy, presidents will detail specific effects of the problem or enemy to amplify the importance of the issue and make it compelling enough for the public to take action. 14 For example, in successfully managing the 1962 steel crisis, President Kennedy described in detail how U.S. Steel and other companies had raised their prices and the economic consequences of said price raises. As Bostdorff and O’Rourke argued “through such explanations, Ken-

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nedy emphasized the dire effects the price increase would have and imbued the controversy with a sense of public urgency.” 15 Certainly, Ford emphasized inflation was an issue of great public importance that caused great hardship for Americans, particularly low-income Americans. However, there was no detail as to what those specific hardships were. There were no descriptions of the consequences of increasing inflation. What were the percentages of inflation? How many people suffered from lack of food, employment, and housing? What specific anecdotes could the president use to illustrate the devastation that inflation caused in the American economy? President Ford’s discourse was devoid of that rhetorical description. While his solutions, which we will discuss in a moment, and call for sacrifice amongst Americans were laudable, his rhetoric did not imbue the inflation crisis with a sense of urgency. Without that sense of urgency there was little reason for the public to immediately mobilize and support Ford’s efforts. A final problem with Ford’s enemy construction was his choice of enemy. It is difficult for any political leader, no matter their rhetorical skills, to rally the public against a concept. President George W. Bush had great success in convincing Americans to back the fight against Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. However, support began to wane when Bush justified continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as fronts in the War on Terror. Terror and/or terrorism is a concept and tactic. A tactic or concept, like terror or inflation, does not conjure up a level of fear that would unite most citizens to fight against it. 16 Although President Bush continually talked about Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the overall War on Terror, he could never get the same level of public support for fighting “terror” that he received for fighting AlQaeda and Saddam Hussein. 17 Similarly, President Ford’s fight against “inflation” did not create the same fear that a specific enemy might. Couple that fact with the lack of personifying the enemy and magnifying the destruction of inflation, President Ford’s war frame did not offer the ingredients needed for Americans to back and sustain the fight against inflation. Definition of the Problem For President Ford, the inflation crisis was the greatest enemy the United States faced. Ford defined the problem as something that would “destroy our country, our homes, our liberties, our property, and finally our national pride, as surely as any well-armed wartime enemy.” 18 According to Ford’s logic, the very fabric of the United States was at stake in this crisis. The only solution must be a plan to “Whip Inflation Now,” a plan which required “direct, vigorous action” from the President and Congress. 19 This plan must be “considered package, in a concerted effort, in a grand design.” 20 I read Ford’s “grand design” as consisting of three different parts. The first of which were nine legislative proposals that would help America “put our own

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economic house in order.” 21 First, President Ford argued the United States must begin by producing more food than it ever had before. Because food and fuel “were the primary inflationary factors” 22 production of more food would drive down prices. Thus, Ford called upon farmers to increase food production to “full capacity,” while also asking Congress to remove any restrictions upon the production of food. Second, the president asserted the United States needed to tackle America’s energy problem, primarily finding the solution at home. Ford ordered his Secretary of Interior Rog Morton to find fuel savings of more than 1 million barrels per day, implored the automobile industry to increase gas mileage, and asked Congress to unleash the ability of America’s energy section, primarily coal and natural gas, to produce more energy. Third, the president asked regulatory agencies across the board to find and reduce any kind of restrictive practices on economic activity that would increase prices. Reducing legislation and regulation would speed up the process to complete projects, increase productivity, and lead to an increase in jobs. Fourth, Ford argued Americans needed “more capital,” proposing a “liberalized 10 percent investment tax credit” that would help “industry buy more machines and create more jobs.” 23 Fifth, the president observed Congress must help “the casualties.” 24 The casualties of the inflation crisis were those who lost their jobs due to inflation, along with the poor and lower middle class who were being squeezed by high food and fuel prices. Accordingly, President Ford asked Congress to extend unemployment benefits for those who had exhausted their unemployment and those who had just started. Additionally, he proposed creating a “Community Improvement Corps” 25 that would provide “short-term” jobs to boost unemployment, while also proposing tax relief targeted to the poorest of Americans. Sixth on Ford’s legislative agenda was “stimulating housing.” The president wanted to make it easier for prospective home-buyers to purchase a home, even in a high-inflationary environment. Therefore, Ford asserted Congress should create legislation that would allow the government to buy more home mortgages. The more home mortgages the government could buy would allow banks to make more loans to prospective homebuyers, more houses would be needed, and construction unemployment would be driven down, which would help end the “most severe housing recession since the end of World War II.” 26 Seventh, the president proposed to work with thrift and savings institutions to free up credit so they could make more mortgages available to homebuyers. Eighth, President Ford advised Congress it should pass an “acceptable” trade reform bill that would increase American exports, but also lower restrictions on imports. Ford’s final legislative proposal focused on “federal taxes and spending.” 27 America’s current fiscal crisis, according to the president, “to a considerable degree comes from many years of enacting expensive programs without raising enough revenues to pay for them.” Therefore, he proposed a one year, 5 percent, temporary tax surcharge

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on “corporate and upper-level individual incomes,” coupled with a federal spending limit. The monies from the tax increases and spending limits would raise enough revenues to “pay for the new programs I have recommended in this message.” 28 President Ford’s tenth proposal and second part of his “grand design” for battling inflation came in his appeal to the American people. Prior to this October 8th address, the president had asked Americans to send him 10 different ways to fight inflation. He thanked the American people for sending him thousands of suggestions. Some of those suggestions were “cranked into the recommendations I have just made to Congress.” 29 However, Ford asserted Americans must also chip in to fight inflation. As he put it, “unless every able American pitches in Congress and I cannot do the job. Winning our fight against inflation and waste involves total mobilization of America’s greatest resources—the brains, the skills, and the willpower of the American people.” 30 For President Ford, this mobilization consisted of everyone to mobilize and sacrifice so the U.S. could “whip inflation now.” Americans must venture to “increase food and lower prices, grow more and waste less; to help save scarce fuel in the energy crisis, drive less, heat less.” 31 Furthermore, he asked households to drive 5 percent less, cut their food waste by 5 percent, and ultimately, “share with others.” 32 By engaging in this self-sacrifice the United States could combat inflation, while strengthening “our spirits as well as our economy.” 33 The final part of President Ford’s “grand design” to combat inflation was his attempt to organize “all-out nationwide volunteer mobilization” where Americans would submit a “simple enlistment form” that could be found in many of the country’s newspapers where they could receive a “symbol of this new mobilization, which I am wearing on my lapel. It bears the single word WIN.” 34 He suggested this “massive mobilization” and sticking with it “until we do win as nation and a people.” 35 Certainly, President Ford should be applauded for his attempt to do something regarding the nation’s inflation crisis. However, his “grand design” rhetoric came with several deficiencies. First, note that within President Ford’s discourse he does not indicate any indicators when the United States would “Whip Inflation Now.” In other words, there were no benchmarks to judge when the crisis would be over. When promoting a crisis, a key component of presidential crisis rhetoric is to demonstrate total command of the situation indicating there will be an end to the crisis. 36 President Ford’s crisis rhetoric was compounded because he attempted to mobilize the nation against “public enemy number one” that was a concept and not a tangible enemy. Moreover, he offered no benchmarks when the crisis would end. When would inflation be whipped? What percentage point? How would Americans know when their efforts would pay off? In Ford’s October 8th address he merely stated that as long as Americans stuck with it we would

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eventually win. The ambiguous nature that the president offered in his October 8th address did not provide the substance needed in order to judge when the crisis could end. By not providing an end point or at least some concrete measure of success the solutions and sacrifices Ford called for suggested potentially a never-ending process for Americans to endure. The president did not lay the rhetorical groundwork needed to get the public to support his calls for sacrifice. Additionally, the president’s call for sacrifice was ill-timed. One crucial aspect of success in any rhetorical endeavor is understanding the importance of kairos. Kairos, loosely translated, means rhetorical timing or when is the right time to speak. Furthermore, it is indicative of understanding the right time for action. 37 First and foremost, the president called upon the American people to mobilize, sacrifice, and save just as if it were a war situation. Certainly, it was the right time to speak to the American people about the inflation crisis because something had to be done to deal with the problem. However, Ford’s understanding of the right time for citizen sacrifice and action was problematic. The embarrassing defeat in Vietnam, the drop in the stock market, the OPEC oil crisis, and the Watergate scandal left many Americans demoralized. 38 With President Ford’s call to “Whip Inflation Now” the American public was called to sacrifice again. The U.S. public was, in some respects, sacrificed out. They were tired of asking to sacrifice once again for a crisis they did not create. Finally, President Ford’s “grand design” suffered because of the problematic nature of President Ford’s symbol for mobilization, the “WIN” button. Although the president stated throughout his address his purpose was to propose solutions so they could “Whip Inflation Now,” Ford never explained the WIN button he wore stood as an acronym for Whip Inflation Now and that by wearing it you were fully supporting his efforts to solve the inflation crisis. Thus, when Americans filled out their enlistment forms to receive their “WIN” buttons they might not have known the point of the button was to symbolically demonstrate they supported the president’s efforts to whip inflation. The Impact In the two weeks following President Ford’s address it appeared his campaign to mobilize the nation was a success. In a speech to the Future Farmers of America, a week after the address, he announced to the country “the American people, I can report tonight, have responded magnificently. A great citizen’s mobilization has begun and is beginning to roll.” 39 Ford implored his audience to further take the fight to inflation. He cited several letters from citizens about how they were helping to fight the crisis such as paying down personal debt, stretching savings, buying only what you need,

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looking for bargains, and planting “WIN gardens.” 40 Two weeks after his October 8th address over 200,000 Americans had submitted enlistment forms from their local newspapers asking for free WIN buttons. WIN symbols began to appear all over the country in products and advertising. Southern Airways used WIN bags to serve lunches to passengers. Grocery store chains, like Giant, Kroger, and A&P froze prices. Ford Motors, Bethlehem Steel, and U.S. Steel all rescinded price increases. To further capitalize on the efforts companies started producing merchandise of all kinds to support the efforts. 41 However, the feel-good nature of Ford’s mobilization effort could not be sustained. One problem Ford faced was continuing infighting amongst his advisers. On the one hand, many of Ford’s advisers found the notion of a “WIN” campaign to be a bad idea. Advisers Alan Greenspan, Roy Marsh, Paul O’Neill, and William Simon all considered “WIN” to be an ill-advised concept. Some Ford administration officials did not even know a campaign was being developed so that they could help change and/or stop it. Compounding the situation was that the economy continued to rapidly deteriorate despite Ford’s inflation efforts. By the end of October 1974 leading economic indicators demonstrated the United States economy was moving toward a serious recession. In November, unemployment rose to 6.5 percent, the highest it had been since October 1961, inflation was running at 12 percent, and the stock market declined to its lowest level in over twelve years. Because of this negative economic news Ford’s advisers debated throughout November and December as to whether or not the president should move away from his inflation fighting efforts. 42 Additionally, President Ford’s speech, as we noted, and subsequent campaign against inflation had rhetorical deficits. The president’s attempt to create an enemy out of inflation, his rhetorical ill-timing, and lack of benchmarks for success undercut his chances at success. Furthermore, the Ford’s administration’s rollout of “WIN” appeared to be amateurish in nature. Prior to his October 8th address, Ford did not actively enlist companies and labor groups to support his actions. Instead, he announced the “WIN” program in his address and just attempted to run with it afterward. Without support from the business and labor community, the program seemed to have an “ad hoc” feel to it that would have benefitted from longer planning and development by getting various constituent communities on board. 43 Finally, Ford’s anti-inflation proposals had a “gimmicky” feeling to it. One critic wrote that “WIN” was more “fitting for a high school pep club than a leader of one of the world’s great countries.” 44 Dean Fritchen, Vice President of Media Relations for the Ad Council, explained the notion of “WIN” and subsequent campaign was, despite its early success, “never really taken seriously by the American people.” None of Ford’s suggestions or the WIN campaign really provided specifics as to curb double digit inflation.

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Subsequently, Ford’s campaign was viewed as “gimmicky, and inflation is not a gimmicky subject.” 45 By not explaining to the American people how their efforts would specifically help to curb inflation it made it that much harder for the Ford administration to convince Americans. As such, President Ford took a 180 degree turn away from fighting inflation by announcing in his January 1975 State of the Union address, “the moment has come to move in a new direction. . . .The emphasis on our economic efforts must now shift from inflation to jobs.” 46 Because of lack of rhetorical success with whipping inflation now and the continued deterioration of the economy Ford’s crisis campaign came to an end. NOTES 1. For a review of these events and their impact on the American economy see David Frum, How We Got Here: The 1970s. (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Andrew D. Moran, “More Than a Caretaker: The Economic Policy of Gerald R. Ford,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41 (2010): 39–63; Herbert Stein, Presidential Economics: The Making of Economic Policy from Roosevelt to Clinton, 3 rd Edition (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute Press, 1994); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991). 2. Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), 151. 3. Gerald R. Ford, “The President’s News Conference,” The American Presidency Project, August 28, 1974, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4671, paragraph 57. 4. Gerald R. Ford, “Remarks Concluding the Summit Conference on Inflation,” The American Presidency Project, September 28, 1974, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4420, paragraph 5. 5. Ford, “Remarks Concluding the Summit Conference on Inflation,” paragraph 7. 6. Gerald R. Ford, “Address to a Joint Session of the Congress on the Economy,” The American Presidency Project, October 8, 1974, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ print.php?pid=4434. 7. Because of page constraints the entire speech could not be included in this volume. I have included only the most vital parts of the address to give the reader an idea of how President Ford attempted to rally the Congress and American Public to Whip Inflation Now. For more specific details on President Ford’s proposals and the speech itself please find the entire transcript at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4434. 8. For an excellent essay on Ford, inflation, and the use of war language see Hermann G. Stelzner, “Ford’s War on Inflation: A Metaphor That Did Not Cross,” Communication Monographs 44 (1977): 284–97. 9. See Jeffrey D. Bass, “The Appeal to Efficiency as Narrative Closure: Lyndon Johnson and the Dominican Crisis,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 50 (1985): 103–20; Denise M. Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 12; Richard A. Cherwitz and Kenneth S. Zagacki, “Consummatory Versus Justificatory Crisis Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 50 (1986): 307–24; Bonnie J. Dow, “The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in Presidential Crisis Rhetoric,” Western Journal of Communication 53 (1989): 294–317; Dan F. Hahn, “Corrupt Rhetoric: President Ford and Mayaguez Affair,” Communication Quarterly 28 (1980): 38–43. 10. Mary E. Stuckey,”Remembering the Future: Rhetorical Echoes of World War II and Vietnam in George Bush’s Speech on the Gulf War,” Communication Studies 43 (1992): 246–56. 11. Ford, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress on the Economy,” paragraph 5.

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12. For a discussion of the difficulty presidents have in galvanizing the American public when it comes to fighting an amorphous and vague enemy see Jason A. Edwards, “Defining the Enemy in the Post-Cold War World: Bill Clinton’s Foreign Policy Discourse in Somalia and Haiti,” The International Journal of Communication 2 (2008): 830–47. 13. Denise M. Bostdorff and Daniel J. O’Rourke, “The Presidency and the Promotion of Domestic Crisis: John Kennedy’s Management of the 1962 Steel Crisis,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27 (1997): 346. 14. Jason A. Edwards and Liza-Anne Cabral, “Managing an Economic Crisis: President Clinton and the Mexican Peso Crisis,” Relevant Rhetoric 3 (2012); Eran Ben-Porath, “The Rhetoric of Atrocities: The Place of Horrific Human Rights in Presidential Persuasion Efforts,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 37 (2007): 182–202. 15. Bostdorff and O’Rourke, “The Presidency and the Promotion of Domestic Crisis,” 347. 16. Ibid, 344. 17. Karl K. Schonberg, Constructing 21st Century U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2009). 18. Ford, Address to a Joint Session of Congress on the Economy, paragraph 66. 19. Ibid, paragraph 1 20. Ibid, paragraph 9. 21. Ibid, paragraph 10. 22. Ibid, paragraph 11. 23. Ibid, paragraph 35. 24. Ibid, paragraph 38. 25. Ibid, paragraph 39. 26. Ibid, paragraph 46. 27. Ibid, paragraph 51. 28. Ibid, paragraph 53. 29. Ibid, paragraph 57. 30. Ibid, paragraph 58. 31. Ibid, paragraph 59. 32. Ibid, paragraph 61. 33. Ibid, paragraph 61. 34. Ibid, paragraph 65. 35. Ibid, paragraph 65. 36. Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis. 37. James Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001), 149. 38. Yanek Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s (Lexington, KY: The University of Press of Kentucky, 2005), 132–44. 39. Gerald R. Ford, “Remarks to the Annual Convention of the Future Farmers of America, Kansas City, Missouri,” The American Presidency Project, October 15, 1974, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=4466, paragraph 5. 40. Ibid, paragraph 42. 41. Mieczkowski, 138. 42. Moran, “More Than a Caretaker,” 47–48. 43. Mieczkowski, 139. 44. Ibid, 140. 45. Rance Crain, “How Gerald Ford’s WIN Campaign Became a Loser for the Ad Council,” Advertising Age 78 (2007): 14. 46. Gerald Ford, “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress Reporting on the State of the Union,” The American Presidency Project, January 15, 1975, paragraph 11–12.

Chapter Fourteen

Jimmy Carter Human Rights as “The Soul of Our Foreign Policy” Teresa Maria Linda Scholz

THE BACKGROUND In 2002 Jimmy Carter, received the Nobel Peace Prize for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” 1 No doubt President Carter came into his own as a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; however, his political commitment to human rights can be traced back to when he was the 39th president of the United States, during which he “touted human rights as a basis for U.S. foreign policy.” 2 In the speech that is the focus of this chapter, he overtly states that, “human rights are the soul of our foreign policy.” This statement beautifully captures President Carter’s engaged global citizenship and lifelong dedication to the promotion, support, and enhancement of human rights worldwide. As president, his legacy was reflected in creating monitors for human rights and the promotion of free elections. 3 This legacy is illustrated through the persuasive pressure President Carter placed on authoritarian and socialist nation-states including the Philippines, Pakistan, and El Salvador. Although all presidential administrations grapple with the “blurring of lines between foreign and domestic,” 4 the blurring between these spheres during the Carter administration can be attributed to his consistent prioritization of human rights. Although his prioritization of human rights was seen in a favorable light nationally and internationally, 5 it was not enough for reelection. While several of President Carter’s speeches rhetorically construct human rights as guiding principles for US foreign policies this speech is particularly significant because of the day during which he delivered this address. 167

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On December 6, 1978, President Carter delivered the speech “Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remarks at a White House Meeting Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Declaration’s Signing.” The speech was given at noon, after President Carter hosted a reception and a briefing where human rights activists, members of Congress, and other administrative officials involved in human rights policies were present. 6 Although the UDHR was not created as a binding document, 7 in this speech Carter uses it to create precedent for US foreign policy. As such, his call to action in the speech is for the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This speech, therefore, neatly fits into Aristotle’s deliberative genre. Additionally, the speech reflects the mastery of how the artistic proofs of ethos, pathos, and logos are interconnected to create his argument structured around the topoi of precedent. THE SPEECH 8 What I have to say today is fundamentally very simple. It’s something I’ve said many times, including my acceptance speech when I was nominated as President and my inaugural speech when I became President. But it cannot be said too often or too firmly nor too strongly. As long as I am President, the Government of the United States will continue throughout the world to enhance human rights. No force on Earth can separate us from that commitment. This week we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We rededicate ourselves—in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission—to the Universal Declaration as, and I quote from her, “a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.” The Universal Declaration and the human rights conventions that derive from it do not describe the world as it is. But these documents are very important, nonetheless. They are a beacon, a guide to a future of personal security, political freedom, and social justice. For millions of people around the globe that beacon is still quite distant, a glimmer of light on a dark horizon of deprivation and repression. The reports of Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International League for Human Rights, and many other nongovernmental human rights organizations amply document the practices and conditions that destroy the lives and the spirit of countless human beings. Political killings, tortures, arbitrary and prolonged detention without trial or without a charge, these are the cruelest and the ugliest of human rights violations. Of all human rights, the most basic is to be free of arbitrary violence, whether that violence comes from government, from terrorists,

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from criminals, or from self-appointed messiahs operating under the cover of politics or religion. But governments—because of their power, which is so much greater than that of an individual—have a special responsibility. The first duty of a government is to protect its own citizens, and when government itself becomes the perpetrator of arbitrary violence against its citizens, it undermines its own legitimacy. There are other violations of the body and the spirit which are especially destructive of human life. Hunger, disease, poverty are enemies of human potential which are as relentless as any repressive government. The American people want the actions of their government, our government, both to reduce human suffering and to increase human freedom. That’s why—with the help and encouragement of many of you in this room—I have sought to rekindle the beacon of human rights in American foreign policy. Over the last 2 years we’ve tried to express these human concerns as our diplomats practice their craft and as our Nation fulfills its own international obligations. We will speak out when individual rights are violated in other lands. The Universal Declaration means that no nation can draw the cloak of sovereignty over torture, disappearances, officially sanctioned bigotry, or the destruction of freedom within its own borders. The message that is being delivered by all our representatives abroad—whether they are from the Department of State or Commerce or Agriculture or Defense or whatever—is that the policies regarding human rights count very much in the character of our own relations with other individual countries. In distributing the scarce resources of our foreign assistance programs, we will demonstrate that our deepest affinities are with nations which commit themselves to a democratic path to development. Toward regimes which persist in wholesale violations of human rights, we will not hesitate to convey our outrage, nor will we pretend that our relations are unaffected. In the coming year, I hope that Congress will take a step that has been long overdue for a generation, the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As you know, the genocide convention was also adopted by the United Nations General Assembly 30 years ago this week, 1 day before the adoption of the Universal Declaration. It was the world’s affirmation that the lesson of the Holocaust would never be forgotten, but unhappily, genocide is not peculiar to any one historical era. Eighty-three other nations have ratified the genocide convention. The United States, despite the support of every President since 1948, has not. In international meetings at the United Nations and elsewhere, when I meet with foreign leaders, we are often asked why. We do not have an acceptable answer.

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I urge the United States Senate to observe this anniversary in the only appropriate way, by ratifying the genocide convention at the earliest possible date. This action must be the first step toward the ratification of other human rights instruments, including those I signed a year ago. Many of the religious and human rights groups represented here have undertaken a campaign of public education on behalf of these covenants. I commend and appreciate your efforts. Refugees are the living, homeless casualties of one very important failure on the part of the world to live by the principles of peace and human rights. To help these refugees is a simple human duty. As Americans, as a people made up largely of the descendants of refugees, we feel that duty with special keenness. Our country will do its utmost to ease the plight of stranded refugees from Indochina and from Lebanon and of released political prisoners from Cuba and from elsewhere. I hope that we will always stand ready to welcome more than our fair share of those who flee their homelands because of racial, religious, or political oppression. The effectiveness of our human rights policy is now an established fact. It has contributed to an atmosphere of change—sometimes disturbing—but which has encouraged progress in many ways and in many places. In some countries, political prisoners have been released by the hundreds, even thousands. In others, the brutality of repression has been lessened. In still others there’s a movement toward democratic institutions or the rule of law when these movements were not previously detectable. To those who doubt the wisdom of our dedication, I say this: Ask the victims. Ask the exiles. Ask the governments which continue to practice repression. Whether in Cambodia or Chile, in Uganda or South Africa, in Nicaragua or Ethiopia or the Soviet Union, governments know that we in the United States care. And not a single one of those who is actually taking risks or suffering for human rights has ever asked me to desist in our support of basic human rights. From the prisons. from the camps, from the enforced exiles, we receive one message: Speak up, persevere, let the voice of freedom be heard. I’m very proud that our Nation stands for more than military might or political might. It stands for ideals that have their reflection in the aspirations of peasants in Latin America, workers in Eastern Europe, students in Africa, and farmers in Asia. We do live in a difficult and complicated world, a world in which peace is literally a matter of survival. Our foreign policy must take this into account. Often, a choice that moves us toward one goal tends to move us further away from another goal. Seldom do circumstances permit me or you to take actions that are wholly satisfactory to everyone.

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But I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our human rights policy is not a decoration. It is not something we’ve adopted to polish up our image abroad or to put a fresh coat of moral paint on the discredited policies of the past. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met. Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy. And I say this with assurance, because human rights is the soul of our sense of nationhood. For the most part, other nations are held together by common racial or ethnic ancestry, or by a common creed or religion, or by ancient attachments to the land that go back for centuries of time. Some nations are held together by the forces, implied forces of a tyrannical government. We are different from all of those, and I believe that we in our country are more fortunate. As a people we come from every country and every corner of the Earth. We are of many religions and many creeds. We are of every race, every color, every ethnic and cultural background. We are right to be proud of these things and of the richness that lend to the texture of our national life. But they are not the things which unite us as a single people. What unites us—what makes us Americans—is a common belief in peace, in a free society, and a common devotion to the liberties enshrined in our Constitution. That belief and that devotion are the sources of our sense of national community. Uniquely, ours is a nation founded on an idea of human rights. From our own history we know how powerful that idea can be. Next week marks another human rights anniversary—Bill of Rights Day. Our Nation was “conceived in liberty,” in Lincoln’s words, but it has taken nearly two centuries for that liberty to approach maturity. For most of the first half of our history, black Americans were denied even the most basic human rights. For most of the first two-thirds of our history, women were excluded from the political process. Their rights and those of Native Americans are still not constitutionally guaranteed and enforced. Even freedom of speech has been threatened periodically throughout our history. Only in the last 10 to 12 years have we achieved what Father Hesburgh has called “the legal abandonment of more than three centuries of apartheid.” And the struggle for full human rights for all Americans—black, brown, and white; male and female; rich and poor—is far from over. To me, as to many of you, these are not abstract matters or ideas. In the rural Georgia country where I grew up, the majority of my own fellow citizens were denied many basic rights—the right to vote, the right to speak freely without fear, the right to equal treatment under the law. I saw at first hand the effects of a system of deprivation of rights. I saw the courage of those who resisted that system. And finally, I saw the cleansing energies that

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were released when my own region of this country walked out of darkness and into what Hubert Humphrey, in the year of the adoption of the Universal Declaration, called “the bright sunshine of human rights.” The American Bill of Rights is 187 years old, and the struggle to make it a reality has occupied every one of those 187 years. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is only 30 years old. In the perspective of history, the idea of human rights has only just been broached. I do not draw this comparison because I want to counsel patience. I draw it because I want to emphasize, in spite of difficulties, steadfastness and commitment. A hundred and eighty-seven years ago, as far as most Americans were concerned, the Bill of Rights was a bill of promises. There was no guarantee that those promises would ever be fulfilled. We did not realize those promises by waiting for history to take its inevitable course. We realized them because we struggled. We realized them because many sacrificed. We realized them because we persevered. For millions of people around the world today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still only a declaration of hope. Like all of you, I want that hope to be fulfilled. The struggle to fulfill it will last longer than the lifetimes of any of us. Indeed, it will last as long as the lifetime of humanity itself. But we must persevere. And we must persevere by ensuring that this country of ours, leader in the world, which we love so much, is always in the forefront of those who are struggling for that great hope, the great dream of universal human rights. Thank you very much. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame While Aristotle emphasized the importance of the use of logos, he did not ignore that the combination of all three available means of persuasion incited action in audiences. This speech eloquently showcases the intertwining of Aristotle’s artistic proofs, while highlighting the complexity of the canon of invention in contemporary political rhetoric. In On Rhetoric, 9 Aristotle emphasized the importance of invention, the creative way by which rhetors formulate arguments. 10 Aristotle taught rhetors that they should rely on topois or specific topics that were appropriate to the specific genres of rhetoric. Topois would allow rhetors to create arguments that were universal, and thus would have the ability to persuade an audience to action. The rhetor, according to Aristotle, was the male phronemos, or the wisest of the wise who had practical knowledge and was uniquely skilled at formulating rational universal arguments based on contingencies

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and probabilities. These arguments could take the form of syllogism, enthymeme, and example. Similar to Aristotle, Cicero in De Inventione, emphasized the importance of the canon of invention. Cicero’s theory of invention, however, was rooted in his primary interest in the forensic genre. As a result, Cicero’s theory of invention is characterized by the stasis model. 11 In the model he listed four types of stasis including conjectural, definitional, translative and qualitative. This model was particularly useful to rhetors when they needed to discuss policies and laws that were unique to different regions. Many of the elements of logos and invention as taught by Aristotle and Cicero were reflected in President Carter’s speech. Specifically, President Carter used enthymeme and examples to bolster and support the topoi of precedent. Further enhancing logos is his use of irrational appeals. Not all types of argumentation, as Kendall Phillips suggests, are universal. 12 “Irrational” forms of argumentation might better persuade an audience to take action in certain circumstances. In President Carter’s case, he specifically appealed to guilt by setting a qualitative standard of personal, collective, national, and international responsibility. Subsequently, the definition of a democratic government was gleaned through their support of the articles in the UDHR. Ultimately, what carried President Carter’s argument was the ethical power inherent in the UDHR. I begin first by addressing the manner in which President Carter restates the ethical precedent set by the UDHR and uses the US as an example of a government that was nationally and internationally positioned to promote, support, and enhance human rights through foreign policy. As part of his introduction, President Carter restated his commitment to human rights when he said, “As long as I am President, the Government of the United States will continue throughout the world to enhance human rights. No force on Earth can separate us from that commitment.” This strong statement is then followed by a continued and renewed commitment to the precedent created in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights wherein he cites Eleanor Roosevelt as stating of human rights universality, that it is “a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.” Drawing on the UDHR as a standard for democratic political practices, President Carter used enthymeme to suggest that authentically democratic governments honor the UDHR through their support for and promotion of human rights: “But governments—because of their power, which is so much greater than that of an individual—have a special responsibility. The first duty of a government is to protect its own citizens, and when government itself becomes the perpetrator of arbitrary violence against its citizens, it undermines its own legitimacy.” The audience was then expected to fill in the minor premise of this deductive argument, that is to say that the US is a democracy; therefore, the US promotes, supports, and honors human rights, “The American people want the actions of their government, our government, both to reduce human

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suffering and to increase human freedom.” He continued by stating specific ways in which the US government followed through with such actions, “In distributing the scarce resources of our foreign assistance programs, we will demonstrate that our deepest affinities are with nations which commit themselves to a democratic path to development. Toward regimes which persist in wholesale violations of human rights, we will not hesitate to convey our outrage, nor will we pretend that our relations are unaffected.” He followed these statements with an overt call to action. Arguably, the main objective in this deliberative speech is reflected in the following statement: “In the coming year, I hope that Congress will take a step that has been long overdue for a generation, the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” He then reminded the audience that to show the nation’s support for the ratification of the convention would reflect the seriousness with which the US took the lessons learned from the Holocaust. He continued this line of argument by addressing how other nations set the precedent for ratification by reminding Congress that, “Eighty-three other nations have ratified the genocide convention.” He followed this statement immediately with an unexpected shift. He directly questioned the ethos of Congress, and thereby the international perceived ethos of the US, by stating, The United States, despite the support of every President since 1948, has not. In international meetings at the United Nations and elsewhere, when I meet with foreign leaders, we are often asked why. We do not have an acceptable answer. I urge the United States Senate to observe this anniversary in the only appropriate way, by ratifying the genocide convention at the earliest possible date.

In short, the US as it regards the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide did not logically fit into the minor premise— that all democratic nations uphold, support, and enhance human rights. Despite the precedent set by the UDHR, he implied that the US grossly faltered in this area. To lead his audience toward conviction, President Carter switched to inductive reasoning by citing several examples that lead to the conclusion that the US was well positioned to be a leader for enhancing human rights worldwide. Within his inductive arguments, he appealed to the audience’s sense of responsibility and guilt by using powerful descriptions to construct the destitution in which people around the world live, “Refugees are the living, homeless casualties of one very important failure on the part of the world to live by the principles of peace and human rights. To help these refugees is a simple human duty. As Americans, as a people made up largely of the descendants of refugees, we feel that duty with special keenness.” President Carter reminded the audience, through a sense of identification, 13 that they too were

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products of refugees. Simultaneously, President Carter used aspects of testimony and facts for support, To those who doubt the wisdom of our dedication, I say this: Ask the victims. Ask the exiles. Ask the governments which continue to practice repression. Whether in Cambodia or Chile, in Uganda or South Africa, in Nicaragua or Ethiopia or the Soviet Union, governments know that we in the United States care. And not a single one of those who is actually taking risks or suffering for human rights has ever asked me to desist in our support of basic human rights. From the prisons. From the camps, from the enforced exiles, we receive one message: Speak up, persevere, let the voice of freedom be heard.

Lastly, to further support his inductive argument, he used “facts” as he literally stated: “The effectiveness of our human rights policy is now an established fact. It has contributed to an atmosphere of change—sometimes disturbing—but which has encouraged progress in many ways and in many places. In some countries, political prisoners have been released by the hundreds, even thousands. In others, the brutality of repression has been lessened. In still others there’s a movement toward democratic institutions or the rule of law when these movements were not previously detectable.” He then shifted to address specific examples that illustrated the US’s own history of human rights struggles, and through this history he reminded the audience of the precedent set by the US itself for creating domestic policy to support human rights as established in the UDHR: What unites us—what makes us Americans—is a common belief in peace, in a free society, and a common devotion to the liberties enshrined in our Constitution. That belief and that devotion are the sources of our sense of national community. Uniquely, ours is a nation founded on an idea of human rights. From our own history we know how powerful that idea can be.

This statement was followed by a reminder of the Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Rights Movement, and Native American Rights Movement; however, he did not let the US off the hook, and reminded the audience that “the struggle for full human rights for all Americans—black, brown, and white; male and female; rich and poor—is far from over.” So as not to end on a note of negativity, and reflective of the hope that was also established by the UDHR, President Carter also reminded the audience that, Like all of you, I want that hope to be fulfilled. The struggle to fulfill it will last longer than the lifetimes of any of us. Indeed, it will last as long as the lifetime of humanity itself. But we must persevere. And we must persevere by ensuring that this country of ours, leader in the world, which we love so much, is always in the forefront of those who are struggling for that great hope, the great dream of universal human rights.

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Subsequently, the rhetorical framing and definition of the problem in this speech are created in relationship to one another. Definition of the Problem Ultimately, this speech identifies a hegemonic tension for President Carter: how do you build on the ethos of the US as a powerful government that should hold other governments accountable for the promotion of human rights and democracy, while simultaneously holding your own government accountable? In an effort to do so, President Carter creates an ethos of the UDHR as a rule of law that guides moral action and US foreign policy, despite that the UDHR was not a binding document. It was clear that Congress’s unwillingness to support the ratification of the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the primary problem. However, President Carter had to proceed with caution so as not to blatantly point the finger only at Congress. Instead, President Carter made the case to rectify inconsistencies by addressing the importance that the US placed on the guiding principles of the Constitution, juxtaposed with the injustices within our own borders. Therefore, to define the problem, President Carter reminded the audience of the precedent set by the Constitution, as well as the precedent set by the UDHR. The Impact As a critical scholar in rhetoric, I find it difficult to fully substantiate the impact of a presidential speech. Simply, the speech was not an immediate success because Congress did not vote to ratify the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide until 1986, 14 eight years after the speech, and during the Reagan Administration. Ironically, it was during the Reagan administration that human rights violations were reaching their height in Latin America, specifically the genocide of the Maya Indigenous people in Guatemala. One of the downfalls of an Aristotelian approach to rhetorical analysis is that the impact of presidential speeches is determined by “effect” or whether or not an audience was moved to action. Unfortunately, classical rhetorical theory does not provide the rhetorician with adequate tools to theoretically unpack the significance of global power differentials that so obviously and problematically emerge from US presidential rhetoric. A critical approach that unpacks how power works discursively can be instructive here. For instance, I would argue that Jimmy Carter effectively and problematically positions the US as a global power. President Carter as the phronemos positions the US as a neoimperialist patriarchal power designated to discipline the behaviors of other nations, “Our pursuit of human rights is part of a

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broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met.” Furthermore, the impact is one of discursive neocolonialism 15 in so far as other “developing” nations are positioned as “in need” of US assistance and are therefore, discursively infantilized. However, this line of argument admittedly proceeds beyond the scope of this project. Nevertheless, it is important for political science scholars and scholars of presidential rhetoric to keep critical approaches in mind as these approaches can reveal much about the neoimperialist dynamics at work in US foreign policy. On the other hand, an additional impact is reflected in this speech. This speech conveys President Carter’s consistency in inextricably connecting human rights to US foreign policy, which is reflected in perhaps the most powerful line in his speech, “Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy. And I say this with assurance, because human rights is the soul of our sense of nationhood.” Therefore, the US public and Congress are to fill in the minor premise of the overall enthymeme, that the US is a democratic country that supports human rights through US foreign policy, the precedent which was set by the UDHR. Admirably, former President Carter continues to this day to live by the precedent set by the UDHR. His legacy of human rights precedes him, and will continue to do so. NOTES 1. “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2002,” accessed January 29, 2015, http:// www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2002/press.html. 2. Henry F. Carey, “Free Elections Based on Human Rights Protection: The Carter Contribution,” in Jimmy Carter: Foreign Policy and Post-Presidential Years, eds. Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 77. 3. Ibid, 78. 4. Herbert D. Rosenbaum, preface to Jimmy Carter: Foreign Policy and Post-Presidential Years, eds. Herbert D. Rosenbaum and Alexej Ugrinsky (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), xiii. 5. Carey, 77. 6. “Jimmy Carter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remarks at a White House Meeting Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Declaration’s Signing.” December 6, 1978. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=30264. 7. Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy (New York: Hamilton Press, 1986), 76. 8. “Jimmy Carter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights Remarks.” 9. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. George Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 10. Patricia Bizzel and Bruce Herzberg, “General Introduction,” in The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001), 1–16. 11. Ibid.

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12. Kendall R. Phillips, “The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere,” Communication Monographs 63, no. 3 (1996): 231. 13. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 19. 14. Emily Backes, “On This Day: U.S. Fully Adopts Genocide Convention,” Enough: The Project to End Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, last modified November 4, 2010, http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/day-us-ratifies-genocide-convention 15. Raka Shome, “Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An ‘Other’ View,” Communication Theory 6, no. 1 (1996): 40.

Chapter Fifteen

Ronald Reagan and American Drug Policy Emily Schnurr

THE BACKGROUND Alcohol and drug use have a long history in American culture. Poor water quality in the colonies resulted in high consumption of beer and cider, opium was available over the counter and used to treat a wide range of ailments in the 1800s, amphetamines were given to soldiers in WWII to improve their endurance, and cocaine was the main ingredient in the popular soft drink Coca-Cola from 1863 to 1903. These substances have historically been unregulated and readily available to Americans, which has led to problems with addiction and abuse. Until the passage of the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, manufacturers were not required to disclose the ingredients in their products, leading many unwitting Americans to become addicted to drugs without ever knowing they were ingesting them. 1 Further, very high levels of alcoholism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century led to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which prohibited the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquors in the United States. This policy was largely ineffective and was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment 24 years later. Since the repeal of prohibition, both state and federal governments regulate the production and sale of alcohol. Rates of alcohol use remain high however, with 1.4 million Americans entering alcohol treatment programs in 2010. 2 The federal government’s first attempt at drug regulation was the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, passed in 1914, which imposed heavy taxes on opiates and cocaine. 3 In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act imposed similar taxes on marijuana, effectively making the drug impossible to legally obtain. 4 How179

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ever, it was not until the Drug Abuse Control Amendments to the Food and Drugs Act in 1965 that the federal government began to specifically make the recreational use of some drugs illegal. 5 This was largely in response to the counter culture movement, which promoted the use of drugs, particularly marijuana and hallucinogens, such as LSD, to its adherents. Further, high rates of drug use among soldiers in Vietnam prompted President Richard Nixon to declare a War on Drugs in 1971. This came on the heels of perhaps the most expansive American drug policy in 1970. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act brought drug enforcement under the control of the federal government, and was among the first attempts to regulate drugs through enforcement rather than taxation. This act created the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to manage the implementation of the Act, and established the drug classification system still used today. 6 These policies did have a positive impact on overall drug use, with across the board reductions in the use of the drugs listed under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act by the 1980s. At the same time, new and unregulated drugs started to show up in American cities. The most notable of these new drugs was Crack, a crystallized form of cocaine. While cocaine is expensive and most frequently used by the middle and upper classes, Crack is very cheap and used predominately by the urban poor. As the drug began to flood inner cities, it wreaked havoc due to its highly addictive nature, causing a rise in gang violence as well as children being born addicted to the drug. Crack use also imposes significant health issues, including heart, liver, lung, and kidney damage, as well as depression and malnutrition. By 1985, nearly 6 million people were using Crack. 7 As the Crack epidemic raged, it became clear that existing drug enforcement policies were not effective at addressing the problem. According to Gallup, in 1986 Crack use was the number one concern for Americans. 8 This prompted President Ronald Reagan to begin developing an agenda aimed at reducing Crack use. In order to increase public support for these initiatives, the President, joined by First Lady Nancy Reagan, who had been on a national tour to better understand drug use in America, gave a speech to the nation. THE SPEECH 9 The President: Good evening. Usually, I talk with you from my office in the West Wing of the White House. But tonight there’s something special to talk about, and I’ve asked someone very special to join me. Nancy and I are here in the West Hall of the White House, and around us are the rooms in which we live. It’s the home you’ve provided for us, of which we merely have temporary custody.

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Nancy’s joining me because the message this evening is not my message but ours. And we speak to you not simply as fellow citizens but as fellow parents and grandparents and as concerned neighbors. It’s back-to-school time for America’s children. And while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it’s especially damaging to the young people on whom our future depends. So tonight, from our family to yours, from our home to yours, thank you for joining us. America has accomplished so much in these last few years, whether it’s been rebuilding our economy or serving the cause of freedom in the world. What we’ve been able to achieve has been done with your help—with us working together as a nation united. Now, we need your support again. Drugs are menacing our society. They’re threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They’re killing our children. From the beginning of our administration, we’ve taken strong steps to do something about this horror. Tonight I can report to you that we’ve made much progress. Thirty-seven federal agencies are working together in a vigorous national effort, and by next year our spending for drug law enforcement will have more than tripled from its 1981 levels. We have increased seizures of illegal drugs. Shortages of marijuana are now being reported. Last year alone over 10,000 drug criminals were convicted and nearly $250 million of their assets were seized by the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. And in the most important area, individual use, we see progress. In 4 years the number of high school seniors using marijuana on a daily basis has dropped from 1 in 14 to 1 in 20. The U.S. military has cut the use of illegal drugs among its personnel by 67 percent since 1980. These are a measure of our commitment and emerging signs that we can defeat this enemy. But we still have much to do. Despite our best efforts, illegal cocaine is coming into our country at alarming levels, and 4 to 5 million people regularly use it. Five hundred thousand Americans are hooked on heroin. One in twelve persons smokes marijuana regularly. Regular drug use is even higher among the age group 18 to 25—most likely just entering the workforce. Today there’s a new epidemic: smokable cocaine, otherwise known as crack. It is an explosively destructive and often lethal substance which is crushing its users. It is an uncontrolled fire. And drug abuse is not a so-called victimless crime. Everyone’s safety is at stake when drugs and excessive alcohol are used by people on the highways or by those transporting our citizens or operating industrial equipment. Drug abuse costs you and your fellow Americans at least $60 billion a year. From the early days of our administration, Nancy has been intensely involved in the effort to fight drug abuse. She has since traveled over 100,000 miles to 55 cities in 28 States and 6 foreign countries to fight school-

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age drug and alcohol abuse. She’s given dozens of speeches and scores of interviews and has participated in 24 special radio and TV tapings to create greater awareness of this crisis. Her personal observations and efforts have given her such dramatic insights that I wanted her to share them with you this evening. Nancy. Mrs. Reagan: Thank you. As a mother, I’ve always thought of September as a special month, a time when we bundled our children off to school, to the warmth of an environment in which they could fulfill the promise and hope in those restless minds. But so much has happened over these last years, so much to shake the foundations of all that we know and all that we believe in. Today there’s a drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in this country, and no one is safe from it—not you, not me, and certainly not our children, because this epidemic has their names written on it. Many of you may be thinking: “Well, drugs don’t concern me.” But it does concern you. It concerns us all because of the way it tears at our lives and because it’s aimed at destroying the brightness and life of the sons and daughters of the United States. For 5 years I’ve been traveling across the country—learning and listening. And one of the most hopeful signs I’ve seen is the building of an essential, new awareness of how terrible and threatening drug abuse is to our society. This was one of the main purposes when I started, so of course it makes me happy that that’s been accomplished. But each time I meet with someone new or receive another letter from a troubled person on drugs, I yearn to find a way to help share the message that cries out from them. As a parent, I’m especially concerned about what drugs are doing to young mothers and their newborn children. Listen to this news account from a hospital in Florida of a child born to a mother with a cocaine habit: “Nearby, a baby named Paul lies motionless in an incubator, feeding tubes riddling his tiny body. He needs a respirator to breathe and a daily spinal tap to relieve fluid buildup on his brain. Only 1 month old, he’s already suffered 2 strokes.” Now you can see why drug abuse concerns every one of us—all the American family. Drugs steal away so much. They take and take, until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out—like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child’s heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it’s time we in America stand up and replace those dreams. Each of us has to put our principles and consciences on the line, whether in social settings or in the workplace, to set forth solid standards and stick to them. There’s no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs. Our young people are helping us lead the way. Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered

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drugs, and I answered, “Just say no.” Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No club, and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country. Well, their participation and their courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable, even if it means making ourselves unpopular. Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious. They work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children’s lives, just as they’ve done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we close, they open a new door to death. They prosper on our unwillingness to act. So, we must be smarter and stronger and tougher than they are. It’s up to us to change attitudes and just simply dry up their markets. And finally, to young people watching or listening, I have a very personal message for you: There’s a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It’s exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don’t cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you, but it needs you to be clear-eyed and clear-minded. I recently read one teenager’s story. She’s now determined to stay clean but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray and after her treatment she was able to see colors again. So, to my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can’t see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say no. The President: I think you can see why Nancy has been such a positive influence on all that we’re trying to do. The job ahead of us is very clear. Nancy’s personal crusade, like that of so many other wonderful individuals, should become our national crusade. It must include a combination of government and private efforts which complement one another. Last month I announced six initiatives which we believe will do just that. First, we seek a drug-free workplace at all levels of government and in the private sector. Second, we’ll work toward drug-free schools. Third, we want to ensure that the public is protected and that treatment is available to substance abusers and the chemically dependent. Our fourth goal is to expand international cooperation while treating drug trafficking as a threat to our national security. In October 1 will be meeting with key U.S. Ambassadors to discuss what can be done to support our friends abroad. Fifth, we must move to strengthen law enforcement activities such as those initiated by Vice President Bush and Attorney General Meese. And finally, we seek to expand public awareness and prevention.

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In order to further implement these six goals, I will announce tomorrow a series of new proposals for a drug-free America. Taken as a whole, these proposals will toughen our laws against drug criminals, encourage more research and treatment, and ensure that illegal drugs will not be tolerated in our schools or in our workplaces. Together with our ongoing efforts, these proposals will bring the Federal commitment to fighting drugs to $3 billion. As much financing as we commit, however, we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that massive new amounts of money alone will provide the solution. Let us not forget that in America people solve problems and no national crusade has ever succeeded without human investment. Winning the crusade against drugs will not be achieved by just throwing money at the problem. Your government will continue to act aggressively, but nothing would be more effective than for Americans simply to quit using illegal drugs. We seek to create a massive change in national attitudes which ultimately will separate the drugs from the customer, to take the user away from the supply. I believe, quite simply, that we can help them quit, and that’s where you come in. My generation will remember how America swung into action when we were attacked in World War II. The war was not just fought by the fellows flying the planes or driving the tanks. It was fought at home by a mobilized nation—men and women alike—building planes and ships, clothing sailors and soldiers, feeding marines and airmen; and it was fought by children planting victory gardens and collecting cans. Well, now we’re in another war for our freedom, and it’s time for all of us to pull together again. So, for example, if your friend or neighbor or a family member has a drug or alcohol problem, don’t turn the other way. Go to his help or to hers. Get others involved with you—clubs, service groups, and community organizations— and provide support and strength. And, of course, many of you’ve been cured through treatment and self-help. Well, you’re the combat veterans, and you have a critical role to play. You can help others by telling your story and providing a willing hand to those in need. Being friends to others is the best way of being friends to ourselves. It’s time, as Nancy said, for America to “just say no” to drugs. Those of you in union halls and workplaces everywhere: Please make this challenge a part of your job every day. Help us preserve the health and dignity of all workers. To businesses large and small: We need the creativity of your enterprise applied directly to this national problem. Help us. And those of you who are educators: Your wisdom and leadership are indispensable to this cause. From the pulpits of this spirit-filled land: We would welcome your reassuring message of redemption and forgiveness and of helping one another. On the athletic fields: You men and women are among the most beloved citizens of our country. A child’s eyes fill with your heroic

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achievements. Few of us can give youngsters something as special and strong to look up to as you. Please don’t let them down. And this camera in front of us: It’s a reminder that in Nancy’s and my former profession and in the newsrooms and production rooms of our media centers—you have a special opportunity with your enormous influence to send alarm signals across the Nation. To our friends in foreign countries: We know many of you are involved in this battle with us. We need your success as well as ours. When we all come together, united, striving for this cause, then those who are killing America and terrorizing it with slow but sure chemical destruction will see that they are up against the mightiest force for good that we know. Then they will have no dark alleyways to hide in. In this crusade, let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is. The destructiveness and human wreckage mock our heritage. Think for a moment how special it is to be an American. Can we doubt that only a divine providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people on the world who yearn to breathe free? The revolution out of which our liberty was conceived signaled an historical call to an entire world seeking hope. Each new arrival of immigrants rode the crest of that hope. They came, millions seeking a safe harbor from the oppression of cruel regimes. They came, to escape starvation and disease. They came, those surviving the Holocaust and the Soviet gulags. They came, the boat people, chancing death for even a glimmer of hope that they could have a new life. They all came to taste the air redolent and rich with the freedom that is ours. What an insult it will be to what we are and whence we came if we do not rise up together in defiance against this cancer of drugs. And there’s one more thing. The freedom that so many seek in our land has not been preserved without a price. Nancy and I shared that remembrance 2 years ago at the Normandy American Cemetery in France. In the still of that June afternoon, we walked together among the soldiers of freedom, past the hundreds of white markers which are monuments to courage and memorials to sacrifice. Too many of these and other such graves are the final resting places of teenagers who became men in the roar of battle. Look what they gave to us who live. Never would they see another sunlit day glistening off a lake or river back home or miles of corn pushing up against the open sky of our plains. The pristine air of our mountains and the driving energy of our cities are theirs no more. Nor would they ever again be a son to their parents or a father to their own children. They did this for you, for me, for a new generation to carry our democratic experiment proudly forward. Well, that’s something I think we’re obliged to honor, because what they did for us means that we owe as a simple act of civic stewardship to use our freedom wisely for the common good.

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As we mobilize for this national crusade, I’m mindful that drugs are a constant temptation for millions. Please remember this when your courage is tested: You are Americans. You’re the product of the freest society mankind has ever known. No one, ever, has the right to destroy your dreams and shatter your life. Right down the end of this hall is the Lincoln Bedroom. But in the Civil War that room was the one President Lincoln used as his office. Memory fills that room, and more than anything that memory drives us to see vividly what President Lincoln sought to save. Above all, it is that America must stand for something and that our heritage lets us stand with a strength of character made more steely by each layer of challenge pressed upon the Nation. We Americans have never been morally neutral against any form of tyranny. Tonight we’re asking no more than that we honor what we have been and what we are by standing together. Mrs. Reagan: Now we go on to the next stop: making a final commitment not to tolerate drugs by anyone, anytime, anyplace. So, won’t you join us in this great, new national crusade? The President: God bless you, and good night. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Three important frames in the speech are: family, community, and patriotism. The first and most prevalent frame is family. Mrs. Reagan discusses the impact of drugs on families and children, even reading a newspaper excerpt about a baby born with complications because his mother was a drug user. Both the President and First Lady speak at length about the impact of drug use on children, with particular emphasis on school performance. This frame is underscored because both the President and First Lady are speaking together from their residence, rather than from the Oval Office, which reinforces the idea of family in the speech. The speech also uses a community frame. The President and First Lady make frequent references to “our” problem, and that we as a national community must work collectively to resolve it. Rather than singling out drug users, the President and First Lady seek to put this issue on everyone’s agenda. They state that the best way to end drug use is if everyone stops using drugs, and the best way to accomplish that is by working together as a people to make drug use unpopular. In other words, the President is suggesting we can reduce drug use through a sort of reverse peer pressure. Further, the President attempts to challenge the discourse surrounding drug and alco-

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hol use as a victimless crime by referencing safety and societal costs. Finally, Mrs. Reagan argues for “an unyielding intolerance for drugs,” stating that each individual must do their part, and if they do the drug problem can be eradicated. Finally, the President uses a patriotic frame. He speaks at length about the sacrifices made by previous generations, and argues that it insults the memory of those who died for our country when people use drugs. He states several times that America is the greatest, most free nation in the world, and that we must protect our global status by ending drug abuse. This is an appeal to American exceptionalism, or the idea that America is unique and superior to other nations in the world, and example of an argument based on Aristotle’s pathos, or an appeal to emotion. 10 The President implies that this drug problem is “beneath us,” and that it is, essentially, un-American to let this drug problem continue. In fact, large portions of the speech have no reference to drug use at all, and focus solely on patriotic rhetoric designed to make Americans feel inspired and proud of their nation. This allows Reagan to reinforce the community frame by creating a sense of common identity, as well as leaving his audience with a positive message at the end of the speech. Definition of the Problem The President defines the problem largely as affecting families and as being inconsistent with American ideals. While he points out that previous efforts have been effective, citing statistics about marijuana use being down and drug seizures being up, Mrs. Reagan notes that for every door that is closed, a new door is opened. In this instance, they are referring to Crack, which was, at that time, ravaging America’s cities and was not specifically listed in existing drug regulations. Having the First Lady contribute to the speech gives ethos to the President’s argument because reducing drug use was an issue Mrs. Reagan had been involved in since 1980. The President had not been very active in creating drug policy previously, therefore having Nancy in attendance gives legitimacy to the claims he makes and the policy he seeks to enact. The President and First Lady suggest that in order to protect our children and live up to the American dream, we must take action. It is important to note that the President mainly discusses the problem as one of people using drugs, rather than people importing drugs. While the President does mention increasing international cooperation to reduce trafficking as one of his proposals, the majority of the speech seems to focus on ways to stop everyday people from using drugs. The President and First Lady suggest that if people stop buying drugs, the market will dry up and there will be no reason for drugs to be imported. This is a bottom-up, rather than top-down approach to addressing the drug problem, meaning that rather than focusing as much on

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action from the federal government, every day Americans will be the ones to solve this problem. The President and First Lady seem to focus on pathos more than logos arguments in defining this problem. While they do discuss some of the consequences of drug use, such as babies born addicted, they have no discussion of how this problem came to be, and the solutions the President offers are broad and unspecific. They do provide many appeals to emotion, such as with their frequent references to school children and American exceptionalism. By appealing to Americans’ emotions, the President was able to convince the people this is a problem that needs solving without having to detail his solutions, giving him more license to enact sweeping reforms with diminished public debate. The Impact The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was introduced in Congress shortly before the President and First Lady delivered this speech. 11 With high levels of public support for tackling the Crack epidemic, the Act was signed into law on October 27, 1986. Previously, The Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act had eliminated mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession, in favor of focusing on rehabilitation for addicts. President Reagan had begun reinstating mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers in 1984. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act followed this trend by creating mandatory minimum sentences aimed at those caught trafficking Crack, meaning that sentences would be automatically determined based upon the amount of the drug possessed. For example, anyone caught with 50 grams of Crack would receive a mandatory 10-year prison sentence. For powder cocaine, a different form of the same drug, a 10-year sentence was generated for possessing 5 kilograms, a 100-to-1 disparity. While initially well received, this sentencing system quickly became controversial due to its disproportionate impact on African Americans. This law has led to a very high number of African American men being arrested and imprisoned for having a comparatively small amount of the drug. 12 Over time, mandatory sentencing for Crack and other drugs, including marijuana and heroin, has led America to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. 13 While the President and First Lady spoke at length of families being broken up by drug use in their speech, families being broken up by strict sentencing laws seems to be less worrisome. In response to growing concerns about the racial disparities in sentencing resulting from the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, on August 3, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act. 14 This law changed the amount of Crack required to generate a mandatory minimum sentence from 5 grams to 28 grams for a 5-year sentence, and from 50 grams to 280 grams for a 10-

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year sentence. This reduced the ratio between the amount of Crack and cocaine necessary to generate a mandatory sentence from 100-to-1 to 18-to1. Though Crack use overall is down from its peak in 1986, this drug still causes many problems in American cities. Further, mandatory minimum sentencing has caused overcrowding in federal prisons, and the government’s focus on enforcement rather than rehabilitation means that many of those who go to jail for possessing drugs continue using even after they are released from prison. While President Reagan’s tough sentencing policies did have an impact on Crack use, the human cost of those policies, specifically in terms of the incredibly high incarceration rates of African Americans, had unintended consequences we as a nation are just beginning to address. NOTES 1. 34 Stat. 768 (1906) 2. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Use Disorder. National Institues of Health, 2014. 3. 38 Stat. 785 (1914) 4. 50 Stat. 551 (1937) 5. 79 Stat. 226 (1965) 6. 84 Stat. 1236 (1970) 7. Office of National Drug Control Policy. America’s Drug Use Profile, Executive Office of the President (1999). 8. Jennifer Robison. “Decades of Drug Use: The ’80s and ’90s.” Gallup (2002). 9. Ronald and Nancy Reagan: “Speech to the Nation on the Campaign Against Drug Abuse.” September 14, 1986. Online by The University of Virginia, The Miller Center, http:// millercenter.org/president/reagan/speeches/speech-5465. 10. Roberts, W. Rhys (trans), Rhetorica: The Works of Aristotle, Vol. 11 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). 11. 100 Stat. 3207 (1986) 12. In some cities, as many as half of all African American men are under the control of the corrections system. Nationally, 1 in 3 African American men are under correctional control. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2012). 13. As of 2013, the United States represents 5 percent of the global population, but contains 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. 14. Public Law 111–220 (2010)

Chapter Sixteen

George H. W. Bush and the Persian Gulf War Elizabeth A. Dudash-Buskirk and Nicholas J. Nickols

It would not be an understatement to claim that the Middle East has been a center for strife and unrest since the beginning of recorded history. It is also not an understatement to suggest that the geopolitics of today is greatly affected by—if not defined by—this unrest. In fact, fallout from the War on Terror has been mainly a problem in definition of who the enemy is, what the main goals are, and how a resolution could be made. One might argue that these three current rhetorical—and therefore, political—problems stem from the 1991 Desert Shield and Desert Storm Operations. In an attempt to understand the humble beginnings of a large problem in the public discourse, this chapter is an analysis of George H. W. Bush’s February 27, 1991, “End of the War” Address following a brief six-week war in Kuwait. Specifically, how this speech shaped his policy immediately following the war and the policies of subsequent presidencies guides this analysis. THE BACKGROUND Beginning in the 1950s and spanning into the 1970s, a dual threat of both a nuclear arms race and a rise of communistic states captured the attention of global superpowers. Specifically, the Soviet Union established a nuclear presence by announcing their development of an extensive arsenal. 1 At the same time, Vietnam emerged onto the global stage as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, recognized by both China and the Soviet Union. These two events set the stage for American war discourse at the time. 191

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Reacting to both Vietnam and the Soviet Union, the U.S. Congress sought to protect its global presence of dominance. First, during the 1960s Congress backed multiple Nuclear Use Theories (NUTs). However, the Soviet Union’s retaliatory threat pushed both nations into a “strategic stalemate” of mutually assured destruction (MAD). 2 Second, following a successful U.S. led Vietnamese coup in 1963, together the U.S. military and Congress wandered into a quagmire. More specifically, the unforeseen efforts of the Viet Cong and convoluted U.S. Congressional decisions to send more troops to Vietnam cost the U.S. 58,000 deaths and ended the debacle with a U.S. withdraw and a communist surge. These prominent events developed a U.S. military “pattern of experience” left uncontested until the 1990s. 3 In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, a small country in the midst of Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar known as the Persian Gulf in-group. The United States had attempted to oust Iraq by starving them through economic and trade sanctions that proved ineffective. On August 5, 1990, three days after the invasion into Kuwait, which was driven by Iraq’s desire to reclaim a border oil field, President George H. W. Bush sent a message to the world that the United States would “not stand” for this invasion of Kuwait. On the sixth of that month, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia asked for help from President Bush in a meeting with Vice President Cheney. On August 8, the U.S. Air Force arrived in Saudi Arabia and in October President Bush doubled the number of forces there. As the U.S. presence grew, the United Nations authorized “all means necessary” to remove Iraq from Kuwait and on January 12, 1991, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of force. Six weeks later, the United States proclaimed victory with its allies when all Iraqis fled Kuwait. 4 On February 27, 1991, President Bush announced in a nationally televised address that the war was over and encouraged Iraq to follow the ceasefire agreement. He further stated that if Iraq did not follow the cease-fire, then peace would be impossible. Sadly, his statement was more of a portent than a threat or promise. Strife in the Middle East continued and the Gulf became a center point of reference for understanding the strife. This was the penultimate war in which a specific country was named as the enemy; later the war in Afghanistan would turn into a War on Terror and the known enemy would become elusive. The beginning of the narrative, in Bush’s speech, sets the stage for later addresses on war in the region. What was a short, decisive, and clear-cut war in the Persian Gulf later became a war of multiple enemies and unclear goals.

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THE SPEECH 5 Kuwait is liberated. Iraq’s army is defeated. Our military objectives are met. Kuwait is once more in the hands of Kuwaitis, in control of their own destiny. We share in their joy, a joy tempered only by our compassion for their ordeal. Tonight the Kuwaiti flag once again flies above the capital of a free and sovereign nation. And the American flag flies above our Embassy. Seven months ago, America and the world drew a line in the sand. We declared that the aggression against Kuwait would not stand. And tonight, America and the world have kept their word. This is not a time of euphoria, certainly not a time to gloat. But it is a time of pride: pride in our troops; pride in the friends who stood with us in the crisis; pride in our nation and the people whose strength and resolve made victory quick, decisive, and just. And soon we will open wide our arms to welcome back home to America our magnificent fighting forces. No one country can claim this victory as its own. It was not only a victory for Kuwait but a victory for all the coalition partners. This is a victory for the United Nations, for all mankind, for the rule of law, and for what is right. After consulting with Secretary of Defense Cheney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Powell, and our coalition partners, I am pleased to announce that at midnight tonight eastern standard time, exactly 100 hours since ground operations commenced and 6 weeks since the start of Desert Storm, all United States and coalition forces will suspend offensive combat operations. It is up to Iraq whether this suspension on the part of the coalition becomes a permanent cease-fire. Coalition political and military terms for a formal cease-fire include the following requirements: Iraq must release immediately all coalition prisoners of war, third country nationals, and the remains of all who have fallen. Iraq must release all Kuwaiti detainees. Iraq also must inform Kuwaiti authorities of the location and nature of all land and sea mines. Iraq must comply fully with all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions. This includes a rescinding of Iraq’s August decision to annex Kuwait and acceptance in principle of Iraq’s responsibility to pay compensation for the loss, damage, and injury its aggression has caused. The coalition calls upon the Iraqi Government to designate military commanders to meet within 48 hours with their coalition counterparts at a place in the theater of operations to be specified to arrange for military aspects of the cease-fire. Further, I have asked Secretary of State Baker to request that the United Nations Security Council meet to formulate the necessary arrangements for this war to be ended.

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This suspension of offensive combat operations is contingent upon Iraq’s not firing upon any coalition forces and not launching Scud missiles against any other country. If Iraq violates these terms, coalition forces will be free to resume military operations. At every opportunity, I have said to the people of Iraq that our quarrel was not with them but instead with their leadership and, above all, with Saddam Hussein. This remains the case. You, the people of Iraq, are not our enemy. We do not seek your destruction. We have treated your POW’s with kindness. Coalition forces fought this war only as a last resort and look forward to the day when Iraq is led by people prepared to live in peace with their neighbors. We must now begin to look beyond victory and war. We must meet the challenge of securing the peace. In the future, as before, we will consult with our coalition partners. We’ve already done a good deal of thinking and planning for the postwar period, and Secretary Baker has already begun to consult with our coalition partners on the region’s challenges. There can be, and will be, no solely American answer to all these challenges. But we can assist and support the countries of the region and be a catalyst for peace. In this spirit, Secretary Baker will go to the region next week to begin a new round of consultations. This war is now behind us. Ahead of us is the difficult task of securing a potentially historic peace. Tonight though, let us be proud of what we have accomplished. Let us give thanks to those who risked their lives. Let us never forget those who gave their lives. May God bless our valiant military forces and their families, and let us all remember them in our prayers. Good night, and may God bless the United States of America. George H. W. Bush THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame American war dialogs demarcated Bush’s exigency for a peacetime proclamation of victory following the six-week war. For instance, the Vietnam War ended without proclaiming a clear victor. Further, American military investments in Vietnam were unjustified. As a result, the quagmire narrative materialized. Partly, this narrative grew in prominence due to the U.S. government’s misuse of terms and mismanagement of foreign policy. Precisely, the American public had been presented a war of inexplicable tragedy that transcended the confines of a rationale paradigm, an event in which there was neither a clear and definite hero nor a definable justification for action. 6, 7 In other words, U.S. aid appeared to tip the scales of both sides during the Vietnam War and the American public had the difficult task of deriving

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meaning from the convoluted event. To resolve tensions presented by the Vietnam War, the quagmire narrative imposed meaning that was otherwise absent. Likewise, prominent civil leaders, such as Martin Luther King voiced their concerns regarding the moral efficacy of the American war effort, further aggravating the public’s perception and perpetuating the quagmire narrative. 8 Yet, the preponderance of discourse accompanying the Vietnam War paradoxically prepared the nation for and propagated the narrative of the Cold War stalemate. In essence, because there was not a narrative with a definitive enemy and friend; winner and loser; good guys and bad guys; or an outcome of definitive attribute, Americans became used to the idea of accepting sense-making without an ending. Stories, specifically war narratives of the United States, no longer needed an ending—something which were always necessary in the justification of and engagement of war. Counterpart to the Vietnam War, the United States engaged the Soviet Union in a strategic arms race deemed the Cold War. The measures that escorted the Cold War into the American public sphere shared descriptive features with that of the quagmire narrative. For instance, paradoxical Congressional decisions supporting American nuclear projects appeared defensive and reactionary. The use of a militarily defensive approach equivocally juxtaposed offensive tactics presented in the Vietnam debacle. Further cultivating the need for a narrative interpretation of the Cold War, drawn-out political justifications were presented for the use of military force, or more importantly for the use of reactionary threats. These confusing political and military decisions further perplexed the minds of the American public. Thus, the leading interpretation of the Cold War pointed to the stalemate narrative. The use of this narrative assisted with explaining political nuclear projects and military conundrums. In the end, the Cold War was understood as another American war effort offering both an unclear victor and problematic political decisions. The use of both narratives illustrated above imported meaning into a spur of insincere discourses and worked to devalue long-drawn-out explanations of American war efforts. However, both the quagmire and the stalemate were not momentary explanations. Rather, their presence dominated popular interpretations of American war efforts leading up to the Gulf invasion. In their shadow, the six-week victory, outlined by Bush, presented the American public with a shining competitive narrative that would redefine and realign the rhetorical trajectory of American wars, beginning with Bush’s cavalier demands from a defeated Iraq. Aside from the list of demands made to Iraq for the cease-fire peace to continue indefinitely, Bush utilizes three main themes: Coalition action; ensuring peace; and American pride. Studies of presidential rhetoric specific to Inaugural Addresses suggest that the job of the president is to do several things including “reassuring the allies” and “warning our enemies” that we

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will act when necessary. 9 In this ending of a war, Bush argues that America will not act unilaterally in the hunt for Hussein or the securing of peace in the Gulf. Instead, Bush says that we would always act with the coalition. He also draws a line for American pride by defining that pride in the operation of Desert Storm. In the wake of success, this point of pride is not problematic, but it provides a stage for foreshadowed conflict. Furthermore, Bush sets the new narrative of the United States in position for a “new world order” to come following the defeat of Iraq in Kuwait. This positioned reclamation of dominance in the world order. Attempting to fulfill the exigencies of the speech while also overcoming the specific constraints of the past, Bush builds on the idea of a new world order in which the United States is not left in a quagmire, but is once again a dominant militaristic force capable of more than an economic Cold War. George H. W. Bush’s end of the Gulf War speech is an exercise in epideictic rhetoric. 10 Although traditionally only considered for ceremonial addresses, epideictic rhetoric is used for praise and blame. Within the realm of reassuring our friends and warning others, this type of rhetoric for the Inaugural Address is clear. However, as a practice of praise and blame, Bush’s end of war/peace speech also meets the requirements of epideictic discourse. Praise is reserved for the American and Coalition troops who fought for Kuwait’s freedom and blame is placed directly on Iraq’s leadership. Bush is clear in saying that the Coalition forces respect the Iraqi people, but the Iraqi leadership is warned of failure to comply. By practicing the particular elements of praise and blame in the declaration of the end of the war, Bush provides a rhetorical space for future war requests in the Middle East while laying the groundwork for the delineation of opposing forces. In addition, epideictic address allows the President to create a sense of tradition and atmosphere for constructing the narrative of the new world order and the new American wars. 11 Bush must move the discourse away from the Vietnam quagmire, away from the long, drawn out fear of the Cold War threat, and toward a story of American victory. At the point of Bush’s peace speech the country was still reeling from twenty years of uncertainty about what could be considered victory as the Cold War did not seem to have a meaningful end and the Vietnam War was never declared. Victory, then, was undefined and elusive not only in a material sense, but in the framework of the American narrative abroad. Definition of the Problem As mentioned above, prior to the Persian Gulf War, American war narratives had become dominated by both uncertain discourse and confused action. Attempting to establish meaning, the American public sought resolution in narrative form. The Cold War narrative of a stalemate suggested American

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military forces were defensive and reactionary, while the Vietnam narrative of a quagmire portrayed American forces as offensively impotent and lacking clear vision. Here, two identifiable rhetorical trajectories were crafted and perpetuated, built upon the ethos of American wars. The dominant rhetorical trajectories of American wars predefined problems that had become realized during the Persian Gulf War. Primarily, the American public’s perception of war discourse had become familiar with tragedies as witnessed by past disappointments to declare victory. Additionally, the American public grew to expect a miscarriage of military force and strategy. Subsequently, the American war trajectories prefigured a rhetorical space within which Bush was obligated to define his war. As a result, Bush perorated a new competitive narrative and thus a new American war trajectory. However, the problems revealed by both the quagmire and the stalemate trajectories would set the stage for Bush’s rhetoric of global peace and American victory. Bush defines the problem in his own words when he states that the war is over and now we must secure peace. His projection of peace differed drastically from dominant American war narratives of ineptitude or of being unfinished. He also, however, said that peace would be up to Iraqi forces as they decide to follow the peace agreement or ignore it. In this speech, George H. W. Bush begins to delineate the lines between Americans and the Coalition and other countries and the lines between us and them, good and evil, peace and war, and American versus other cultural values. In acknowledging that America did not act alone, he also claims American pride in the victory and setting the leadership role of the United States in future endeavors. Moreover, focusing attention on both America’s victory and leadership role, Bush corrected the rhetorical trajectory of American war narratives. Perhaps the most important point of stasis in Bush’s speech is that while the objectives of Operation Desert Storm were met (forcing Iraq out of Kuwait), those victories could not be considered complete unless Iraq complied with the terms. Bush was in a difficult position when declaring the end of a war that would possibly continue if Iraq did not completely comply. Here, Bush toed the line between past American war trajectories of foundering and his declaration of victory. Yet, Bush’s confidence in declaring a definable triumph reconstructed a new rhetorical environment. Consequently, he had to provide assurances to the American people to declare victory while warning Iraq that they were under threat of America and the Coalition forces. Last, and equally important to the objectives of Desert Storm, Bush begins the war narrative of the Middle East. He separates the war in the Gulf from the Vietnam narrative. The Vietnam metaphor of the Gulf and surrounding area was a popular argument against Desert Shield and opponents defined Desert Storm Operations as the Gulf of a quagmire. Fears of a lengthy and bloody war with great loss for Americans were the defined fear.

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This metaphor forced President Bush into a promise of quick attack and withdraws after lengthy sanctions proved ineffective in Iraq. Therefore, Bush’s objectives for the war were short-term objectives and the promise of peace for the Kuwaiti people was assured with the removal of Iraq. The war only took six weeks, objectives were met, the cease-fire signed within that short time and a new American war trajectory commenced. 12 The Impact The short-term impact of the speech was celebratory as expected. Parades were held and the declarations of peace at the end of war were abundant. Praise for American troops, a strong alliance with Europe, and American patriotism followed immediately. Longer-term impacts were apparent during and after Bush’s presidency. In the declaration of dominance, Bush retells the American story of a leader on the world stage. This reconstruction is necessary for the President because the allies and enemies are a part of a global community in ways they were not prior to the age of television. The first of the long-term impacts of the speech was a watch group of U.N. forces tracking Iraqi movement. The need to ensure peace treaty policies was left to U.S. forces and U.N. forces leaving the troops in the Middle East for some time following the end of the war. Every day that passed without Iraqi compliance with the cease-fire agreement was a delay in the Bush promise of sustained peace in the region. Foreign policy specialists did not predict peace in the Gulf who knew that Iraq could potentially move again quickly once it appeared U.S. and U.N. forces were leaving. But full peace and the declaration of war as over were not declared by the United Nations until April 11, 1991. The second long-term impact on guiding policy for the rest of Bush’s presidency was that multinational cooperation was possible and that the U.N. was effective in using force when needed. Bush had proven that the United States could still stand strong, draw lines in the sand, and militarily protect its interests in the post-Cold War era. This rhetorical trajectory broke ties with past interpretations of bungling American military force. Bush led American forces down a new rhetorical trajectory and is still recognized as changing the narrative and naming this as the “new world order” of global politics. This terminology of a new order replaced the old guard fears about another Vietnam scenario where the United States acts through fear. Further, it reified the United States as an offensive player, no longer resting in a reactionary military state. In the new order, the United States reacts quickly and with force to complete objectives in weeks, creating a new rhetorical American war trajectory of victory and action. Finally, in the new order and with the new narrative, Bush lays the framework for a new discussion about the Middle East where the United States

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acts after negotiations fail. This course began by sanctioning Iraq, then warning Iraq to withdraw, then providing a quick war of six weeks and achieving a small goal of protecting Kuwaiti oil. Bush was able to demonstrate that in the new order, the United States would determine effective action and other nations would follow. Furthermore, the U.N. became a part of the scenario of working for the United States’ interests. For a brief time, the new world order meant that the United States was untouchable and would intervene when necessary. Most importantly, perhaps, the United States had shed the specter of the Vietnam debacle, the difficulties of the Cold War, and proven itself potentially assertive on the world stage once again. In the way that an eulogy functions to reconstruct a person’s life and set forth their legacy, the victory speech after a won war does the same for the legacy of those involved. 13 When there exists a clear-cut ending to an operation, there also exists an immediate exigency for praise and narrative construction. In the case of Vietnam, which left the United States in a quagmire for an extended period of time and never seemed to end to the point that the story was exhausted, the legacy was determined by the war. In the case of the Gulf war, the narrative and legacy of the war—that is to say, the rhetorical space of the war—was defined by President Bush. In Bush’s case, the story was a reordering that was coerced by the lesson of the Gulf War but underscored by the recent lessons of the Cold War and tempered by the still present specter of Vietnam. The speech was not only necessary, but also demanded by the rhetorical situation to maintain the Presidency, restructure the world order, and set forth the Middle East plan for the coming presidencies. The narrative of the victory in the Persian Gulf Operations should have propelled G. H. W. Bush to an easy reelection in 1992 and it is often regarded as a coup that Bill Clinton eventually won the election. In this case, the war narrative did not help Bush because Clinton’s campaign crafted a message of domestic policy and claimed that Bush was out of touch with domestic issues. 14 Using the Bush victory story as evidence of how the economy was failing, the Clinton success seems obvious in hindsight. However, Bush’s narrative would be a legacy after eight years of Clinton leadership. Soon after George W. Bush was elected in 2000, the 9/11 attacks led to discussions of retaliation in the Middle East. Initially, the story focused on Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and then a generic monster of terror. As a general enemy, terrorism could be proven in any part of the Middle East that the government wanted to justify as a target including Iraq. During the G. W. Bush presidency, Saddam Hussein was captured and killed by hanging. Some in the public sphere argued that this capture was a son “finishing the job” of the father. This claim of a completed mission is only possible if the narrative of the Gulf war set forth by G. H. W. Bush was successful.

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By all measures, the speech delivered on February 27, 1991, claiming victory in the Persian Gulf war was an impactful and effective message of American dominance, multinational cooperation, and the new world order that President Bush so desperately wanted to establish. His legacy as president is still unfolding, especially as the son bears out the story of the father, but this narrative of peace in the Middle East begins with Bush’s insistence on reconstructing the United States as a willing partner with the U.N. and as a force of leadership on the world stage. It was Bush’s reconstruction of the United States military efforts that recalled the power of the Cold War while mitigating the quagmire of Vietnam allowing foreign policy discussions to once again be premised on the idea that America would defend itself, defend its allies, and warn its enemies. Bush’s framing of America as an actor who will not kowtow to military bullies, especially in the Middle East region, and as a cooperative nation that wants to lead, allowed his son to later borrow similar arguments in the War on Terror. G. W. Bush drew on the division of “us” and “them” as set forth by his father as good versus evil in terms of defining the enemy. George H. W.’s speech also allows the narrative of American confidence and pride to continue as the threat of “with us” or “against us” that became enthymematic following 2001. The risk and fallout of a narrative of American success without the full adherence to a peace treaty (such as was the case with Iraq in 1991) is that it later becomes difficult to define victory and success. In 2014, President Obama would struggle with explanations of the presence of American forces in Iraq and the Gulf. Moreover, in 2015 President Obama faces the threat of ISIL and struggles to engage rhetorical completion for a resurgence of American troops to the Middle East. In other words, the problem of definition regarding who the enemy is, what the main goals are, and how a resolution could be made have evolved once again as new enemies are defined, strategic goals are discussed within the rhetorical space of American wars, and resolutions are yet to be determined. George H. W. Bush’s speech of peace was successful in convincing the U.S. citizens that the war was over but decades later presidents would be reconstructing that same narrative, engaging the epideictic strategy of memoria to help the audience remember success, and fighting the same specter of unending wars that George H. W. Bush faced in 1991. NOTES 1. “Cold War: A Brief History.” Nuclear Deterrence. http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/coldwar/page15.shtml. 2. Ibid. 3. Dionisopoulos, George N., Victoria J. Gallagher, Steven R. Goldzwig, and David Zarefsky. “Martin Luther King, the American Dream and Vietnam: A Collision of Rhetorical Trajectories.” Western Journal of Communication 56 (1992): 91–107.

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4. Frontline, “Chronology of the Persian Gulf War,” Public Broadcasting System, http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/cron/. 5. Miller Center/University of Virginia, “Address on the End of the Gulf War,” Miller Center, http://millercenter.org/president/bush/speeches/speech-5530. 6. Fisher, Walter R. “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case Of Public Moral Argument.” Communication Monographs 51 (1984): 1–22. 7. Wilson, Mary. “‘Incomplete and Profoundly Confused’: Bibliographic Essay on the Vietnam War.” Vanguard University Library RSS2. November 1, 1995. Accessed February 12, 2015. http://www.vanguard.edu/library/staff/mary-wilson/bibliographic-essay-on-the-vietnamwar/. 8. Dionisopoulos et al., “Martin Luther King, the American Dream and Vietnam: A Collision of Rhetorical Trajectories.” 91–107. 9. Rowland, Robert, Analyzing Rhetoric: A Handbook for Informed Citizens in a New Millenium, 2nd ed. (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2002). 10. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 48. 11. Ibid., 80. 12. Frontline, “Chronology of the Persian Gulf War,” Public Broadcasting System, http:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/cron/. 13. Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard, “The Public Value of Epideictic Rhetoric,” College English 58, no. 7 (1996): 765–94. 14. Michael Kelly, “THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats—Clinton and Bush Compete to Be Champion of Change; Democrat Fights Perceptions of Bush Gain,” New York Times, October 31, 1992.

Chapter Seventeen

Bill Clinton Race and the Crisis of the American Spirit Kevin R. Anderson

BACKGROUND On April 29, 1992, a jury in Los Angeles returned a Not Guilty verdict against four police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King. The beating had been caught on video by civilian George Holliday and had been shown on the national news several times before the verdict was announced. The decision to not convict the four officers after the wide dissemination of the video sparked several days of unrest in Los Angeles with over 11,000 arrested and 53 deaths. 1 The civil disorder in Los Angeles sparked a public discussion on racism, police conduct, and the criminal justice system in the United States and in particular, how the nation and the President should define and discuss the problem of racism in American society. The 1992 Presidential election culminated with the election of Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas as President. President Clinton was the first Democrat to be elected in twelve years and he won with significant support from the African American community who viewed him (and the Democratic Party more generally) as much more supportive of African American political concerns. In the early days of the Clinton presidency however, there were a number of political missteps on issues of interest to the African American political activists: loss of a jobs program targeting minority youth in an early budget bill, the firing of African American Jocelyn Elders as Surgeon General, and most famously, withdrawing the nomination of law professor Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights after President Clinton realized that he did not completely share her views on minority voting rights. 203

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In this context, President Clinton traveled to Memphis on November 13, 1993, to give his first major speech on race. Did President Clinton need to shore up support among African Americans? Is this a policy speech on issues pertinent to African Americans or a larger philosophical discussion of race in America? How does he approach the question of race in America? Does he discuss the historical impact of race, its contemporary effects on daily life, or how race works in American politics? Here is the speech delivered by the President: THE SPEECH 2 Proverbs says, “A happy heart doeth good like medicine, but a broken spirit dryeth the bone.” This is a happy place, and I’m happy to be here. I thank you for your spirit. By the grace of God and your help, last year I was elected President of this great country. I never dreamed that I would ever have a chance to come to this hallowed place where Martin Luther King gave his last sermon. I have worked hard to keep faith with our common efforts: to restore the economy, to reverse the politics of helping only those at the top of our totem pole and not the hard-working middle class or the poor; to bring our people together across racial and regional and political lines, to make a strength out of our diversity instead of letting it tear us apart; to reward work and family and community and try to move us forward into the twenty-first century. I have tried to keep faith. Thirteen percent of all my Presidential appointments are AfricanAmericans, and there are five African-Americans in the Cabinet of the United States, 2 1/2 times as many as have ever served in the history of this great land. I have sought to advance the right to vote with the motor voter bill, supported so strongly by all the churches in our country. And next week it will be my great honor to sign the restoration of religious freedoms act, a bill supported widely by people across all religions and political philosophies to put back the real meaning of the Constitution, to give you and every other American the freedom to do what is most important in your life, to worship God as your spirit leads you. We have passed a law called the family leave law, which says you can’t be fired if you take a little time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick. We know that most Americans have to work, but you ought not to have to give up being a good parent just to take a job. If you can’t succeed as a worker and a parent, this country can’t make it. We have radically reformed the college loan program, as I promised, to lower the cost of college loans and broaden the availability of it and make the repayment terms easier. And we have passed the national service law that

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will give in 3 years, 3 years from now, 100,000 young Americans the chance to serve their communities at home, to repair the frayed bonds of community, to build up the needs of people at the grassroots, and at the same time, earn some money to pay for a college education. It is a wonderful idea. On April 15th when people pay their taxes, somewhere between 15 million and 18 million working families on modest incomes, families with children and incomes of under $23,000, will get a tax cut, not a tax increase, in the most important effort to ensure that we reward work and family in the last 20 years. Fifty million American parents and their children will be advantaged by putting the Tax Code back on the side of working American parents for a change. Under the leadership of the First Lady, we have produced a comprehensive plan to guarantee health care security to all Americans. How can we expect the American people to work and to live with all the changes in a global economy, where the average 18-year-old will change work seven times in a lifetime, unless we can simply say we have joined the ranks of all the other advanced countries in the world; you can have decent health care that’s always there, that can never be taken away? It is time we did that, long past time. I ask you to help us achieve that. But what I really want to say to you today, my fellow Americans, is that we can do all of this and still fail unless we meet the great crisis of the spirit that is gripping America today. When I leave you, Congressman Ford and I are going to a Baptist church near here to a town meeting he’s having on health care and violence. I tell you, unless we do something about crime and violence and drugs that is ravaging the community, we will not be able to repair this country. If Martin Luther King, who said, “Like Moses, I am on the mountaintop, and I can see the promised land, but I’m not going to be able to get there with you, but we will get there”? If he were to reappear by my side today and give us a report card on the last 25 years, what would he say? You did a good job, he would say, voting and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin. You have more political power, and that is good. You did a good job, he would say, letting people who have the ability to do so live wherever they want to live, go wherever they want to go in this great country. You did a good job, he would say, elevating people of color into the ranks of the United States Armed Forces to the very top or into the very top of our Government. You did a very good job, he would say. He would say, you did a good job creating a black middle class of people who really are doing well, and the middle class is growing more among African-Americans than among nonAfrican-Americans. You did a good job; you did a good job in opening opportunity.

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But he would say, I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see 13-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9-year-olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do. I fought for freedom, he would say, but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of the children walk away from them and abandon them as if they don’t amount to anything. I fought for people to have the right to work but not to have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for. My fellow Americans, he would say, I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon. The other day the Mayor of Baltimore, a dear friend of mine, told me a story of visiting the family of a young man who had been killed 18 years old, on Halloween. He always went out with little bitty, kids so they could trickor-treat safely. And across the street from where they were walking on Halloween, a 14-year-old boy gave a 13-year-old boy a gun and dared him to shoot the 18-year-old boy, and he shot him dead. And the Mayor had to visit the family. In Washington, DC, where I live, your Nation’s Capital, the symbol of freedom throughout the world, look how that freedom is being exercised. The other night a man came along the street and grabbed a 1-year-old child and put the child in his car. The child may have been the child of the man. And two people were after him, and they chased him in the car, and they just kept shooting with reckless abandon, knowing that baby was in the car. And they shot the man dead, and a bullet went through his body into the baby’s body, and blew the little bootie off the child’s foot. The other day on the front page of our paper, the Nation’s Capital, are we talking about world peace or world conflict? No, big article on the front page of the Washington Post about an 11-year-old child planning her funeral: “These are the hymns I want sung. This is the dress I want to wear. I know I’m not going to live very long.” That is not the freedom, the freedom to die before you’re a teenager is not what Martin Luther King lived and died for. More than 37,000 people die from gunshot wounds in this country every year. Gunfire is the leading cause of death in young men. And now that we’ve all gotten so cool that everybody can get a semiautomatic weapon, a person shot now is 3 times more likely to die than 15 years ago, because they’re likely to have three bullets in them. A hundred and sixty thousand children stay home from school every day because they are scared they will be hurt in their schools.

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The other day I was in California at a town meeting, and a handsome young man stood up and said, “Mr. President, my brother and I, we don’t belong to gangs. We don’t have guns. We don’t do drugs. We want to go to school. We want to be professionals. We want to work hard. We want to do well. We want to have families. And we changed our school because the school we were in was so dangerous. So when we showed up to the new school to register, my brother and I were standing in line and somebody ran into the school and started shooting a gun. My brother was shot down standing right in front of me at the safer school.” The freedom to do that kind of thing is not what Martin Luther King lived and died for, not what people gathered in this hallowed church for the night before he was assassinated in April of 1968. If you had told anybody who was here in that church on that night that we would abuse our freedom in that way, they would have found it hard to believe. And I tell you, it is our moral duty to turn it around. Now when we react that foreign visitors come to our shores and are killed at random in our fine State of Florida, when we see our children planning their funerals, when the American people are finally coming to grips with the accumulated weight of crime and violence and the breakdown of family and community and the increase in drugs and the decrease in jobs, I think finally we may be ready to do something about it. And there is something for each of us to do. There are changes we each can make from the outside in; that’s the job of the President the Congress and the Governors and the mayors and the social service agencies. And then there’s some changes we’re going to have to make from the inside out, or the others won’t matter. That’s what that magnificent song was about, isn’t it? Sometimes there are no answers from the outside in; sometimes all the answers have to come from the values and the stirrings and the voices that speak to us from within. So we are beginning. We are trying to pass a bill to make our people safer, to put another 100,000 police officers on the street, to provide boot camps instead of prisons for young people who can still be rescued, to provide more safety in our schools, to restrict the availability of these awful assault weapons, to pass the Brady bill and at least require people to have their criminal background checked before they get a gun, and to say, if you’re not old enough to vote and you’re not old enough to go to war, you ought not to own a handgun, and you ought not to use one unless you’re on a target range. We want to pass a health care bill that will make drug treatment available for everyone. And we also have to do it, we have to have drug treatment and education available to everyone and especially those who are in prison who are coming out. We have a drug czar now in Lee Brown, who was the police chief of Atlanta, of Houston, of New York, who understands these things. And when the Congress comes back next year, we will be moving forward on that.

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We need this crime bill now. We ought to give it to the American people for Christmas. And we need to move forward on all these other fronts. But I say to you, my fellow Americans, we need some other things as well. I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life. It gives meaning and self-esteem to people who are parents. It gives a role model to children. The famous African-American sociologist William Julius Wilson has written a stunning book called “The Truly Disadvantaged” in which he chronicles in breath-taking terms how the inner cities of our country have crumbled as work has disappeared. And we must find a way, through public and private sources, to enhance the attractiveness of the American people who live there to get investment there. We cannot, I submit to you, repair the American community and restore the American family until we provide the structure, the values, the discipline, and the reward that work gives. I read a wonderful speech the other day given at Howard University in a lecture series funded by Bill and Camille Cosby, in which the speaker said, “I grew up in Anacostia years ago. Even then it was all black, and it was a very poor neighborhood. But you know, when I was a child in Anacostia, a 100 percent African-American neighborhood, a very, poor neighborhood, we had a crime rate that was lower than the average of the crime rate of our city. Why? Because we had coherent families. We had coherent communities. The people who filled the church on Sunday lived in the same place they went to church. The guy that owned the drugstore lived down the street. The person that owned the grocery store lived in our community. We were whole.” And I say to you, we have to make our people whole again. This church has stood for that. Why do you think you have 5 million members in this country? Because people know you are filled with the spirit of God to do the right thing in this life by them. So I say to you, we have to make a partnership, all the Government agencies, all the business folks; but where there are no families, where there is no order, where there is no hope, where we are reducing the size of our armed services because we have won the cold war, who will be there to give structure, discipline, and love to these children? You must do that. And we must help you. Scripture says, you are the salt of the Earth and the light of the world, that if your light shines before men they will give glow to the Father in heaven. That is what we must do. That is what we must do. How would we explain it to Martin Luther King if he showed up today and said, yes, we won the Cold War, Yes, the biggest threat that all of us grew up under, communism and nuclear war, communism gone, nuclear war receding. Yes, we developed all these miraculous technologies. Yes, we all have got a VCR in our home; it’s interesting. Yes, we get 50 channels on the cable. Yes, without regard to race, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can get into a service academy or a good college,

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you’ll do just great. How would we explain to him all these kids getting killed and killing each other? How would we justify the things that we permit that no other country in the world would permit? How could we explain that we gave people the freedom to succeed, and we created conditions in which millions abuse that freedom to destroy the things that make life worth living and life itself? We cannot. And so I say to you today, my fellow Americans, you gave me this job, and we’re making progress on the things you hired me to do. But unless we deal with the ravages of crime and drugs and violence and unless we recognize that it’s due to the breakdown of the family, the community, and the disappearance of jobs, and unless we say some of this cannot be done by Government, because we have to reach deep inside to the values, the spirit, the soul, and the truth of human nature, none of the other things we seek to do will ever take us where we need to go. So in this pulpit, on this day, let me ask all of you in your heart to say: We will honor the life and the work of Martin Luther King. We will honor the meaning of our church. We will, somehow, by God’s grace, we will turn this around. We will give these children a future. We will take away their guns and give them books. We will take away their despair and give them hope. We will rebuild the families and the neighborhoods and the communities. We won’t make all the work that has gone on here benefit just a few. We will do it together by the grace of God. Thank you. THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame President Clinton, speaking in the same church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the last speech of his life, attempts to combine a number of different approaches in this speech. The speech attempts to fulfill a number of goals; The President outlines the specific proposals of a policy speech while also attempting to invoke the “American jeremiad” or political sermon. A policy speech attempts to list and explain a number of proposals that are believed to be necessary to address a specific crisis in a community. The idea of the jeremiad is to marry a moral argument to a political concern in order to produce an urgency regarding action on the issue. 3 The stated purpose of the speech was to discuss the enduring issue of race in American politics and as a newly elected President with overwhelming support from the African American community, how the President addressed issues of concern related to race was an essential moment early in his presidency. The speech begins with a religious proverb which is both an invocation of the historical importance of faith in the African American community and a call to see the

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righteousness of racial equality in America. President Clinton also offers a profession of gratitude for the support shown to him in the 1992 Presidential election and then the President proceeds to list the African American appointments to his Cabinet and highlights the policies and proposals believed to be important to the African American community. In the context of listing these accomplishments, President Clinton attempts to establish both his credibility as a friendly Democratic President and as someone familiar with the urgent political needs of the African American community. The President touts the newly enacted Family Leave law, designed to allow workers time off from work to care for a sick child or relative without fear of losing their jobs, reforms in the College Loan Program including the implementation of a National Service Program that allows students to work on community service projects while earning money for college, a tax cut plan for families making less than $23,000 a year, and the newly proposed Health Care plan being touted by First Lady Hillary Clinton. These proposals while universal in nature, are believed to be especially important to African Americans as many disproportionally earn less money and have less access to college financial aid and health care coverage than other groups. Definition of the Problem The early political program of the Clinton administration, while emphasizing middle class Americans, did not focus specifically on problems that disproportionally affected African Americans. This approach, an outgrowth of the 1992 presidential campaign, emphasized the universal nature of “middle class” programs designed to appeal to both a traditional constituency of the Democratic party but also to the “Reagan Democrats”; working class whites who had historically voted Democratic but who had increasingly voted Republican in the last three elections. An argument put forward by journalists Thomas and Mary Jane Edsall in their influential 1992 book Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics argued that candidates supporting policies that targeted minorities were politically and electorally weak as modern middle class white voters did not believe that racism was a severe problem for African Americans anymore and viewed any advocacy on behalf of African Americans as unfair; thus universal policy proposals, disconnected from the historical impact of racism in American society, were deemed to be politically much more palatable. 4 The universal nature of the policy proposals meant that much of what was offered to the audience that day was symbolic: minority representation in the Cabinet of the new administration and inclusion in the broader set of Clinton policy initiatives. The implication is that minority inclusion in these programs is part of an overall strategy of attacking some of the major problems in the African American community yet, these proposals (and the larger

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strategic politics behind them) do not attack larger structural questions of the effects of racism in American society. Does the portion of the speech that reflects the spirit of the African American jeremiad confront these larger issues? The memory of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. invokes a moral force that transcends politics in many ways. He is known for his nonviolent activism on behalf of civil rights and equality under the law but his continuing call for these changes rested on a call to do this because it was the moral thing to do; it was part of “God’s plan” for a morally right nation. Dr. King fused the religious and political and often used the quote attributed to Unitarian minister Theodore Parker; “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” 5 His life and work fused the political and religious in a way that challenged the nation to not just be politically powerful and economically prosperous but spiritually righteous and morally equitable. Did President Clinton use that approach in this speech? President Clinton used the frame of the jeremiad to invoke the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and he attempted to use the memory of Dr. King as a moral and political leader to analyze our modern society. How have we as African Americans progressed since Dr. King was assassinated in 1968? Has the African American community built upon the gains created by the activism and sacrifices of the civil rights generations? What gains have we made and what problems remain? How many of these problems are a function of structural barriers and how many reflect a moral failure to act in the face of crisis? And more to the point what do we as a nation in general and the African American community in particular have to do to realize the “Dream” of Martin Luther King Jr.? The Impact The central thrust of the argument put forward by President Clinton in this speech focuses less on material and political advancements than on what he describes as our spiritual crisis. The President discusses the terrible increase in crime and gun deaths among African Americans as reflecting a diminishing degree of the faith that once undergirded a powerful political movement. It is a loss of faith that the nation, he argues, cannot afford given the urgency of the problems we face. This loss of faith according to the President also has had baneful effects on a critical institution, the African American family. The loss of job opportunities has damaged the structure of families and weakened the spirit that sustained so many African American communities during the civil rights era. In the speech, the President quotes an African American speaker extolling the virtues of an African American community that had middle class professionals and political leaders living and worshiping together with their less fortunate brethren. This anecdote, while powerful, ignores

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the systemic barriers that created that community. The African American middle class business owners and leaders who lived in the community did so because legal discrimination (in the form of Redlining) kept many out of other middle class neighborhoods. A number of businesses thrived due to a captive customer base that had limited options due to the exclusionary policies in place in many cities across the country; thus the nostalgia for a lost morally right community ignores the larger forces of race and politics in America that made them possible in the first place. The speech does acknowledge some of the larger inequities of life for African Americans but speaks to them as problems of moral breakdown and spiritual failure rather than as the result of structural constraints or policy failures. The President, speaking in the voice of Dr. King, cites a terrible contemporary problem: I did not live and die to see 13 year old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9 year olds just for the kick of it. I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes destroying the lives of others. . . . My fellow Americans, he would say, I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon.

This quote illustrates two fundamental problems with the speech President Clinton delivered; although the general theme of the speech reflected an emphasis on the American spirit, the focus of the speech is on the African American community improving itself without speaking to the responsibility of the larger American society. African American politics and society do not exist in a vacuum and the call to action of a minority community to put its house in order without supporting resources from the larger polity can be seen as politically and rhetorically empty. Does the message of Dr. King resonate with Americans concerned with inequality beyond racism? Is the nation as a whole committed to embracing the work necessary to improve these communities? Are we willing to spend the money necessary to improve inner city schools, create affordable housing, and have safe policing, or make possible business investment in urban communities? To call on the African American community to improve itself while the larger society is silent or ignores the problems is difficult to reconcile with the theme of the speech. The argument put forward by the President also does not completely represent the fullness of Dr. King as a political activist. First, while Dr. King utilized moral means to shock the consciousness of the nation into action in regards to racial segregation, it does him a disservice to argue that destroying segregation in America was his only goal. The removal of racial barriers to the ballot box, education, and housing were essential to the program of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but so was economic justice and anti-war activism. One year before his death (April 4th, 1967),

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Dr. King delivered “A Time to Break Silence,” his rebuke of President Johnson and the escalating conflict in Vietnam. 6 The increasing significance of economic issues fatefully led Dr. King to Memphis in 1968 to support striking sanitation workers protesting for equal pay and better working conditions while also planning a “Poor People’s March” for later that year to highlight the barriers facing minorities beyond race. Racial barriers for Dr. King were symptomatic of larger moral questions of equality and justice in American society. From his 1956 sermon Paul’s Letter to American Christians 7 to his final book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? 8 published in 1967, his public pronouncements reveal an on-going commitment to a broader vision of equality in American society. To invoke Dr. King as a moral reminder of how modern actions have harmed Dr. King’s dream without acknowledging that the systemic barriers he fought against are still influential in modern society, is an incomplete argument in the broader context of the life and legacy of Dr. King. The second concern with the speech is that while the jeremiad is often used to provoke moral outrage and political action, Dr. King most often used it to attack the larger institutional inequities of life in America. The jeremiad could be invoked by a leader standing on the edge of a community looking inward and trying to create morally inspired improvement among the people but it could also be used by a leader standing between a minority community and a majority community to reveal previously ignored problems and to prick the conscious of the larger society. President Clinton in this speech is attempting to use the first model of a jeremiad and while Dr. King did use this model in his work, he more often used the latter model as a foundation for his political activism. Dr. King attacked state repression—legal segregation that led to unequal opportunities in education, employment, and at the ballot box—as examples of the moral failure of society at large. It is true that Dr. King was critical of those black and white individuals who chose to sit on the sidelines or counseled patience while immoral conditions existed in African American communities (see Dr. King’s Letter From Birmingham City Jail 9 for an example of this approach) or indulged in criminal conduct which could devolve into violence that overshadowed and sometimes contradicted his campaign for civil rights; yet his focus remained on the larger moral actions of a society simply because the effects of public policy rippled through to all individuals, black as well as white. To invoke his life and memory to be critical of the African American community or individual behavior without noting the larger structural barriers existing in the United States is again an incomplete evocation of the meaning of his work. The President does present a number of policy proposals to attack some of the structural problems of the nation—increasing the number of police officers on the street, banning assault weapons, drug intervention and treatment programs in place of incarceration to deal with massive effects of crime

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on African American communities—yet the emphasis of the speech remains on the spiritual support and building of cohesive family structures as the solutions to problems facing African Americans. The speech does not touch on racial profiling, police brutality, or sentencing disparities as part of the problems associated with crime in the African American community. These issues are essential to a comprehensive program of reform but they are policies that require government action—actions that could be supported as the morally right thing for the nation to follow in the pursuit of a more just society. The importance of faith historically in African American communities and the moral inspiration of the modern civil rights movement is an important part of understanding and engaging with African American political ideas, yet this approach ultimately limits the role of the federal government in solving contemporary political problems. If the true cause of crime— failing schools and unemployment—is a crisis of spirit or lack of historical memory, then the onus for improvement rests with the people of that community who need the moral/spiritual inspiration provided by an American jeremiad. This is problematic because so much of the political and social advancement achieved by African Americans has come as the result of civil rights agitation that provoked government action on their behalf. The ideas of selfhelp, community action, and cultural and moral improvement of the individual are all significant parts of African American political activities but they have all been directed toward interactions with the larger American society. If that society is unable or unwilling to reciprocate, then the crisis of the American spirit will remain a vexing political problem. President Clinton speaking in Memphis in 1993 invoked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on Race in America. In the wake of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising in the aftermath of the acquittal of the police officers videotaped beating motorist Rodney King, how would the newly elected President address the issue of race in American politics? The central thrust of the speech was to invoke the memory and moral leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in trying to understand and analyze our contemporary racial problems, yet the speech lacked the broader context of the world Dr. King gave his life to change. The President described how Dr. King might feel about both the promise and perils of contemporary political life without acknowledging the impact of Dr. King on the larger American polity. The emphasis on crime and specifically black on black crime was a very important issue in African American politics and the words of the President were effective and emotionally resonant for his audience, yet the speech in invoking the memory of Dr. King failed to fully reflect the complexity of his life and message. How close are we to truly equal schools? Can we claim equal access to jobs and healthcare? And how committed to these goals is the

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larger American society? In the context of speaking in the church where Dr. King delivered his final public address, it is noteworthy to understand both what the President said and did not say in his speech. The invocation of the memory of Dr. King as a call to action by a President is important historically and politically in that his life and the movement he led effected positive change for the nation and they are both legitimized by the rhetoric of the President of the United States as a significant moment in American political history. The use of the “bully pulpit” to call for African Americans to do better as a community and for the nation to seriously grapple with the legacy of race in America makes it an essential issue that all Americans must face. If African Americans heed the call to improve their communities will the programs of President Clinton and his administration be an asset in the on-going project of political and social empowerment? The speech while incomplete in terms of the totality of Dr. King and his life and work, was an important step in generating a larger conversation on how race impacts contemporary life, a conversation that continues today. NOTES 1. Serrano, Richard, and Tracy Wilkinson. “All 4 in King Beating Acquitted: Violence Follows Verdict: Guard Called Out,” Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1992. 2. Clinton, Bill. “Race and the Crisis of the American Spirit” in: The Politics of Race: African Americans and the Political System. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1995. 3. Bercovitch, Savan. The American jeremiad. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978. 4. Edsall, Thomas B., and Mary Jane. Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton Publishers, 1992. 5. Parker, Theodore. Ten Sermons of Religion. Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library, 2005. 6. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “A Time to Break Silence” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. James Melvin Washington, ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 7. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” in The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. Volumes 1–4. Edited by Claybourne Carson. 1956. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1992. 8. King, Martin Luther, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? New York: Harper and Row, 1967. 9. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” in Non-Violence in America: A Documentary History. Staughton Lynd, ed. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co. 1966.

Chapter Eighteen

George W. Bush Terrorism and American Security Dani May Nier-Weber

THE BACKGROUND Nine days after the events of September 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people in the worst terrorist attack in American history, President George W. Bush went before a joint session of Congress to respond. This speech is generally regarded as one of the most important, and perhaps one of the greatest, speeches of Bush’s presidency. Speaking at a unique moment in history that was marked by a number of calamitous “firsts,” including the devastating number of civilian casualties on U.S. soil, President Bush had to reach an audience that was not only in deep mourning, but that had been traumatized, even irrevocably changed, by the events of 9/11. Eight months before the attack, Bush took office after one of the most contested elections in U.S. history. After the entire country waited over a month for the final result, Bush was finally declared the winner by the Supreme Court of the United States in a late-night 5-4 decision, Bush v. Gore, on December 12, 1999. Although he had received nearly 540,000 total fewer popular votes than Al Gore, 1 this decision gave George W. Bush the Florida electoral votes he needed to win the presidency. Bush had little claim, however, to an actual mandate from the American people when he entered the White House on January 20, 2001, and on the day of his inauguration, “tens of thousands” 2 protested against what many saw as a lack of democratic process. As Spring and Packer have noted, author Kevin Phillips, commenting in The American Prospect shortly after the inauguration, dubbed Bush “His Fraudulency the Second,” 3 presumably mocking both his legitimacy 217

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and his privileged (and to many unearned) status as a member of a political dynasty. Despite the cloud of uncertainty that hung over Bush’s presidency at the beginning of his first term, the first eight months were characterized by a mix of successes as well as failures. According to Gallup, Bush’s initial approval rating stood at 57 percent, but then slipped from nearly 60 percent in the early months of his presidency to just above 50 percent by early September. 4 However, to use one of the leading clichés of the era, “9/11 changed everything.” In the eleven days following the attacks, Bush’s approval ratings— like those of New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani and others—skyrocketed. By September 22, 2001, two days after Bush’s televised speech to the joint session, the president’s approval ratings stood at nearly 90 percent. 5 In the aftermath of the attacks, the U.S. was experiencing a rare moment of unity, unprecedented in the recent history of a country that over the last several decades had grown increasingly politically and ideologically divided. On the night of the speech, CNN commentator Aaron Brown saw an “extraordinary coming together in American life these past nine days.” 6 The election controversy had suddenly become mere “political bickering [that] “seems a long time ago” 7; “The President,” Brown observed, had “enjoyed . . . unparalleled support and acclamation” 8 since the attacks. Arguably, no other president before him had addressed an audience as eager to hear him speak as Bush did on September 20. In fact, no president had gone before Congress due to an act of war since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor stood as the deadliest attack on U.S. soil until the morning of September 11, 2001; however, unlike the September 11 attacks, Pearl Harbor had occurred in an actual context of war. Europe had already been in conflict for two years, and Roosevelt had been pondering how to convince a nation to enter the military fray that, up to that moment in December, had been largely reluctant to do so. September 11, on the other hand, had taken the nation by complete surprise, occurring as it did in the midst of a period of relative prosperity and calm. Despite lesser terrorist attacks during the previous decade, including those on the World Trade Center, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the U.S.S. Cole less than a month before the 2000 election, until 9/11 most people—including, arguably, the Bush administration— were not focused on Al-Qaeda as a serious global and existential threat. This speech was Bush’s second to Congress after he took office; his first speech on February 28, 2001, had received a vastly different response. Then, mention of the Supreme Court had drawn hisses before Bush entered the chamber. Republicans and Democrats alternated partisan responses to the speech by standing and sitting in opposite groups—seesawing, as AP reporter Calvin Woodward put it—while the speech itself drew a few isolated boos. As Woodward stated, “emotions were [still] raw from the drawn-out post-

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election struggle over who really won.” 9 The September 20 speech, in contrast, received repeated standing ovations from all members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Ideally, Bush’s September 20 speech to the joint session had to meet a number of goals. First, the president had to articulate a coherent emotional response to the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, which included reassuring the country that life would go on and justice would be served. Secondly, Bush had to provide comfort to the American people and help them feel safe in a world that suddenly no longer seemed as secure or benevolent as it had on September 10. The speech was also intended to prepare the country for possible war—a notion many, under these new circumstances, and similar to Roosevelt’s audience after Pearl Harbor, were ready—even hungry—to hear. Lastly, Bush needed to reach beyond U.S. borders to unite the country’s allies across the globe so that they, too, would stand behind whatever decisions he made. This multi-faceted task, in some ways at least, was not as difficult as it might normally have been. In fact, the night of Bush’s speech, the country had never seemed—and perhaps had never been—as united as it was at that moment. The final body count from the attacks had not yet been determined, and months would pass before the actual count would be known. So many were missing in the chaotic aftermath that some briefly feared the total could reach seven thousand. Although the final count would turn out to be less than half that sum—a devastating number in any event—the country was justifiably in deep mourning the night of Bush’s address. Moments before the address, the president entered the chamber and moved slowly toward the podium, shaking hands and greeting numerous members of Congress, dignitaries, and guests. In another “first,” the president received over three minutes of continuous applause and cheering from every person in the house as he made his way across the room. Watching, a female CNN commentator remarked, “You know there’s an expression, ‘rise to the occasion,’ and I think it’s fair to say that whatever this president says tonight will be well received by the people in the chamber.” 10 Senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield speculated that “this is the hardest task that a leader of the west has faced,” with two possible exceptions: Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons in 1940 to rally support for war against Germany, and John Kennedy’s address to the nation in 1962 as the U.S. faced the risk of nuclear war. As Greenfield put it, This speech, and this moment, is every bit as serious and every bit as consequential [as those speeches] when you consider that buried beneath the World Trade Center rubble are the bodies of more Americans who have ever died in one day in American history on American soil, worse than Pearl Harbor, worse than the Civil War. 11

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CNN commentator Aaron Brown, who had reported for 17 straight hours the day of the attacks and who NPR 12 later characterized as the voice of 9/11, observed that the president had to do so many things, not the least of which is talk to an American population that believes itself to be vulnerable to attack. That’s something that even Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not have to face after Pearl Harbor, in the sense that the American continent was relatively secure, so when you realize the burden on George W. Bush’s shoulders . . . it is almost beyond comprehension. 13

Bush’s job, paradoxically, was to comfort and calm his audience, but at the same time rouse them—and the world—to support the actions he was about to take. Despite having the sympathy of nearly the entire watching world, Bush had a complex task before him. As Brown observed, the country was experiencing not only grief, but a sense of vulnerability and shock as never before. Responses ran the full gamut of emotion, from sadness to bewilderment to rage to a strong desire for retaliation. The president needed to capitalize on this rare moment of unity while bringing comfort to a grieving people. Perhaps naively, many had previously believed the country to be, not only exceptional, even beloved, but also invulnerable. Americans had now abruptly awakened to their own vulnerability—even if the 9/11 Commission Report would later judge that “the 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise.” 14 THE SPEECH 15 Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans: In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed. It has already been delivered by the American people. We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground—passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer . . .We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We have seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers—in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own. My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union—and it is strong.

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Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done. I thank the Congress for its leadership at such an important time. All of America was touched on the evening of the tragedy to see Republicans and Democrats joined together on the steps of this Capitol, singing “God Bless America” . . . And on behalf of the American people, I thank the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate . . . On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars—but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war—but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks—but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day—and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. Americans have many questions tonight. Americans are asking: Who attacked our country? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as al Qaeda. They are the same murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole. Al Qaeda is to terror what the mafia is to crime. But its goal is not making money; its goal is remaking the world—and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere. The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics—a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam. The terrorists’ directive commands them to kill Christians and Jews, to kill all Americans, and make no distinction among military and civilians, including women and children. This group and its leader—a person named Osama bin Laden—are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror. They are sent back to their homes or sent to hide in countries around the world to plot evil and destruction. The leadership of al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaeda’s vision for the world. Afghanistan’s people have been

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brutalized—many are starving and many 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. The United States respects the people of Afghanistan—after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid—but we condemn the Taliban regime. It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens, you have unjustly imprisoned. Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country. Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and hand over every terrorist, and every person in their support structure, to appropriate authorities. Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating. These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate. I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in this chamber—a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms—our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating

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from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way. We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions—by abandoning every value except the will to power—they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies. Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war—to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network. This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat. Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice: We are not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans . . . These measures are essential. But the only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows . . . This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. We ask every nation to join us. We will ask, and we will need, the help of police forces, intelligence services, and banking systems around the world. The United States is grateful that many nations and many international organizations have already responded—with sympathy and with support. Nations from Latin America, to Asia, to Africa, to Europe, to the Islamic world. Perhaps the NATO Charter reflects best the attitude of the world: An attack on one is an attack on all. The civilized world is rallying to America’s side. They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own cities, their own citizens may be next.

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Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments. And you know what—we’re not going to allow it. Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat. I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith . . . I ask for your patience, with the delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security; and for your patience in what will be a long struggle. I ask your continued participation and confidence in the American economy. Terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity. They did not touch its source. America is successful because of the hard work, and creativity, and enterprise of our people. These were the true strengths of our economy before September 11th, and they are our strengths today . . . Tonight, we face new and sudden national challenges. We will come together to improve air safety, to dramatically expand the number of air marshals on domestic flights, and take new measures to prevent hijacking . . . We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act, and find them before they strike. We will come together to take active steps that strengthen America’s economy, and put our people back to work . . . After all that has just passed—all the lives taken, and all the possibilities and hopes that died with them—it is natural to wonder if America’s future is one of fear. Some speak of an age of terror. I know there are struggles ahead, and dangers to face. But this country will define our times, not be defined by them. As long as the United States of America is determined and strong, this will not be an age of terror; this will be an age of liberty, here and across the world. Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment. Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom—the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time—now depends on us. Our nation—this generation—will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. It is my hope that in the months and years ahead, life will return almost to normal. We’ll go back to our lives and routines, and that is good. Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass. Each of us will remember what happened that day, and to whom it happened. We’ll remem-

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ber the moment the news came—where we were and what we were doing. Some will remember an image of a fire, or a story of rescue. Some will carry memories of a face and a voice gone forever . . . I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people. The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them. Fellow citizens, we’ll meet violence with patient justice—assured of the rightness of our cause, and confident of the victories to come. In all that lies before us, may God grant us wisdom, and may He watch over the United States of America. Thank you. —George W. Bush, September 20, 2001 THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame Frames, narratives, and language choices are important. They help shape audiences’ views of the world and how they think about and interpret problems as well as what actions should be taken in response. Unsurprisingly, George W. Bush’s speech uses, above all, appeals to emotion, or pathos, to reach his audience. Bush does this, first of all, by using the primary moral/ religious framing of good vs. evil, i.e., a “morality trope,” 16 to characterize the events of 9/11, which he frames as acts of war. He further uses an ordinary hero frame to construct American identity in juxtaposition to the attacks. In this framing, the American people are cast as noble innocents, unsuspecting victims under attack from evil forces, which both articulates and appeals to emotions such as shock, outrage, and the desire to protect and avenge. At the same time, however, Bush describes the state of the union as “strong,” appealing on the other hand to his listeners’ sense of resilience, unity, defiance, and pride: ordinary heroes in the face of adversity. His opening description of the events of 9/11 includes anecdotal stories of courageous “passengers who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground,” and of decent, “loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own.” In this epic narrative frame, good and caring people stand together against evil forces that seek to destroy them. Bush equates the abstract term freedom with good as well, a concept he characterizes as “the greatest achievement of our time.” Freedom in this narrative is the ultimate pure and innocent victim; in Bush’s words, evil struck “at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning” in a “surprise attack” against thousands of civilians, after which “night fell on a different

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world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.” Not only is 9/11 thus framed as an act of war in which good battles evil, but Bush also characterizes the events of the day as world-changing, redefining terrorism as an existential threat that jeopardizes the nation’s survival. As he says a bit later in the speech, “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.” At stake in the battle of good vs. evil is the continued existence of a country that ostensibly serves as a beacon of freedom and democracy. They hate us, Bush claims, because we have “a democratically elected government” while “their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” Throughout the speech, this hatred of freedom is cast as simply what is; it remains irrational and inexplicable, and requires no discussion of complex causes or context, no further exploration of action and reaction on a world stage. Evil, in other words, just happens, just is. The “enemies” or “enemies of freedom” who committed the terrorist attacks, conversely, are equated with the morality trope evil. In this framing, the terrorist threat is sweeping and dangerous; Bush warns his audience that “there are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries,” making a clear appeal to fear. Bush first introduces the attackers as “a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as Al Qaeda,” then reminds his audience that they are also “the murderers indicted for bombing American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and responsible for bombing the USS Cole.” He describes the organization as powerful and wide-reaching, part of a “global terror network” and, alternatively, a “radical network of terrorists.” Al Qaeda, Bush says, “is to terror what the Mafia is to crime . . . [but] its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.” The terrorists are cast, in other words, as no less than “threats to the moral order.” 17 Using clear appeals to fear allows Bush to lay the groundwork for persuading the audience that the actions he subsequently outlines, including military solutions, should and must be taken. Beyond employing the good vs. evil frame, Bush also uses the strategy of clearly delineating an in-group against an out-group. Michelle and Annita Lazar, building on Teun van Dijk’s conception of the “ideological square” in which the positives and negatives of in- and out-groups are alternately minimized or maximized, have identified a discursive strategy known as “‘outcasting,’ a process by which individuals and/or groups are systematically marked and set aside as outcasts.” 18 Among the four micro-strategies that comprise the macro-strategy of outcasting are enemy construction and (e)vilification, which, like the other strategies of “criminalization [and] orientalization . . . rest upon a logic of binarism” 19 such as the good vs. evil frame. Enemy construction and (e)vilification are apparent, for example, in Bush’s descriptions of the attackers as “the heirs of all the murderous ideolo-

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gies of the twentieth century . . . [who] sacrifice[e] human life to serve their radical visions . . . [and] follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism.” Aligning the terrorists with the worst specters of recent history constructs them as an evil of such magnitude that Bush is able not only to make powerful appeals to fear and the need for revenge, but also to legitimize any and all means for “the disruption and . . . the defeat of the global terror network.” Thus he implicitly constructs the further sacrifice of human life, in turn, as an appropriate response and prepares his audience for extended battle, in his words “a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.” Bush’s address to Congress thus relies heavily on antithesis, 20 the use of absolute binaries such as good vs. evil or “freedom and fear, justice and cruelty,” and the construction of in- versus out-groups. Such morality tropes presume the legitimacy of “common sense” interpretations of events shared by the constructed in-group. Repeatedly, Bush delineates the absolute boundaries between a “civilized” in-group and an “uncivilized” out-group; the “civilized world,” Bush states, “is rallying to America’s side.” He provides numerous details about this global in-group throughout the speech, thanking them for the “outpouring of support” and sympathy. Bush is also careful to include “our Muslim friends,” or those who subscribe to a non-violent version of Islam that is “good and peaceful,” in the in-group. In fact, Bush’s rhetorical construction of a united and global in-group is so embedded in the speech that the words we and our are the top two most frequently used content words used, each appearing 53 times and placing 5th/6th on a frequency list of all words used, just after and, the, of, and to. The linguistic choice we clearly constructs the global audience as part of the in-group. As Bush explains, this is “not . . . just American’s fight. . . . This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.” Appealing to a global sense of belonging, Bush defines the virtuous in-group and challenges his wider audience to identify as members of a united world community. In addition, Bush’s rhetorically constructed out-group consists not only of Al Qaeda and the global terrorist network he describes in detail, but also the controlling “Taliban regime” in Afghanistan that “is aiding and abetting murder” and therefore “committing murder.” Further, it includes the “fringe” movement of Islamic extremism and indeed “every government that supports” terrorists. By clearly relegating members of the out-group to an amorphous “fringe” of global society, Bush opens the door for an ill-defined war against an abstract concept, a war without boundaries or limits that “begins with Al Qaeda, but . . . does not end there.” The new war on terror Bush is declaring will, in fact, “not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” In perhaps the most famous antithetical binary of the speech, Bush allows no room for neutral space, proclaiming,

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“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” As Lazar and Lazar put it, “in the realm of morality there are no ambiguities; no middle ground is to be had.” 21 In Bush’s moral framing, therefore, the lines of demarcation are absolute; there is only either/or. Definition of the Problem The very first phrase of the speech, “In the normal course of events,” signals a key aspect of the way Bush defines the situation: as decidedly not normal. Again, the attack comes out of the blue, an evil and inexplicable act of war that stems from a hatred of “our freedoms,” against an unsuspecting but strong, hard-working, and successful people who are then epically “called to defend freedom.” In defining the problem, Bush appeals to a common sense of grievance—“Great harm has been done to us. We have suffered great loss”—but also seeks to inspire and soothe: “I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat. I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them.” In part by reminding his U.S. audience of the nobility of their heroic collective identity, Bush constructs Americans as ultimately greater and more powerful than the threat they face. In defining the problem, therefore, Bush is walking a fine line. He has to cast the threat of terrorism as powerful and even existential, without making it seem so overwhelming that it appears impervious to defeat, and possibly arousing feelings of despair or hopelessness. Throughout the speech, as he defines the problem and proposes his preferred solutions, Bush alternates between appealing to negative emotions such as anger and fear, and positive emotions such as solidarity, comfort, and national pride. For example, although he admits that “terror, unanswered, can not only bring down buildings, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments” (a claim he does not further explain), he shortly after reminds us that the “terrorists attacked a symbol of American prosperity—they did not touch its source.” The threat is real and dangerous, but Bush repeatedly appeals to his audience’s sense of confidence, reassuring them that the country will ultimately prevail: “our nation, this generation will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. . . . We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.” In addition, Bush’s use of alliteration (“falter, fail”) here and elsewhere (“pretenses to piety,” “trained in the tactics of terror”), as well as his use of anaphora, a rhetorical scheme that repeats first words of a phrase, creates a sermonic effect that uplifts and inspires. Arguably typical of his leadership style, Bush’s problem definition is also characterized by a focus on action rather than on in-depth analysis or logos. Using the same primary strategies he uses in his framing, i.e. appeals to

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pathos and the juxtaposition of antithetical binaries, Bush outlines not only the problem but his proposed solutions. Again, the threat is cast as existential: “These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.” Bush is careful, however, to capitalize on the country’s newfound sense of unity as he reassures them that “we will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage.” He describes specific actions people can take in response to the “atrocity,” from having patience and cooperating with law enforcement to hugging their children and carrying on with their lives. He outlines multiple measures law enforcement will take and also places the U.S. in a position of strength, giving the “Taliban regime” a laundry list of non-negotiable demands that must be fulfilled swiftly if they wish to avoid the same fate as al Qaeda. Finally, slipping from we to a specific I, Bush also outlines what he himself will not do—”I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people”—tapping into the same heroic identity construction (and anaphora) that he uses to characterize his fellow Americans. Bush also details a list of escalating actions that lead up to his proposed solution of fighting and winning a war against not only al Qaeda, but ultimately against the abstract terms terror and threat. He states, “We will direct every resource at our command, every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war to the defeat and the destruction of the global terror network.” Arguably, Bush’s language choices help legitimize the culminating military action he seeks by first naming other, non-military approaches that make the final military action seem “necessary” and likely unavoidable, especially to allies (and some Americans) who feared “that hasty military action not only would be ineffective in deterring future terrorism but also would shatter any hopes of building an international coalition.” 22 Further, his memorable phrase, “either we bring the terrorists to justice, or bring justice to the terrorists,” which uses antimetabole or syntactic reversal, opens the door to extrajudicial solutions that may take place far outside any court of law, or even far from the traditional battlefield. The Impact On September 12, NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in its history, “offering immediate assistance from all members to the USA, although the Bush administration would pursue its war effort outside NATO structures.” 23 On September 14, 2001, six days before Bush’s speech, Congress passed an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” (AUMF), giving the president the authority to use military force against those who had either perpetrated the attacks of 9/11 or aided and abetted them. The AUMF reflected a “compromise between Congress and the Bush Administration, which had sought

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an even broader and more open-ended grant of authority” 24 —i.e. the authority to use force against any entities deemed a threat, not just those linked to 9/ 11. The AUMF passed nearly unanimously. Only California Democrat Barbara Lee voted against it, eloquently warning against granting sweeping war powers and pleading, in the words of the priest Nathan Baxter, that “as we act we not become the evil we deplore.” 25 In a secret memo three days after the speech, the Office of Legal Counsel’s John Yoo would pen a secret legal memo that essentially negated the limits on presidential power Tom Daschle, Carl Levin, and others had sought to enshrine in the AUMF. Yoo’s memo essentially granted the president the authority to act pre-emptively and unilaterally to “take whatever actions he deems appropriate” 26 in the new “war on terror,” prompting foreign correspondent Gregory D. Johnsen to call the AUMF “the most dangerous sentence in U.S. history,” 27 especially in light of all that followed. What followed included drone strikes, Guantanamo, torture, extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, NSA spying, and well over a decade of war. The September 20 address helped lay the foundation for the sweeping military response Bush’s administration intended to pursue and helped silence or mute possible opposition. The open-ended language used in the speech erected an ill-defined, universal battlefield. Bush warned clearly that the war on terror would begin with Al Qaeda but would not end there, not until “every terrorist group of global reach” had been eradicated; he vowed to “strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act, and find them before they strike.” Further, the September 20 address not only legitimized a military response but indeed made it seem inevitable. In perhaps the most revealing moment of the speech, Bush stated, “The American people are asking, how can we win this war?” without first exploring alternatives to war or allowing for the obvious response, “What war?” Employing what Patricia Dunmire identifies as a rhetoric of temporality, Bush thus constructed the future he had already chosen, achieving “the rhetorical force of interested and motivated proposals for action, in part, by presenting those proposals as necessitated by disinterested, objective future ‘reality.’” 28 In other words, he cast his preferred future of war as present reality and spoke as if it already existed, as if the war had already begun. Thus Bush’s speech, emblematic of much of the rhetoric after 9/11, helped rally a base of support that may be rare in the country’s history, garnering enough backing to lead the country into two wars that would last through Bush’s two terms and well into the second term of his successor, Barack Obama. One month after the speech, on Oct. 20, 2001, the first 200 U.S. ground troops deployed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, with the troops of numerous allies soon to follow. Whether the goals Bush outlined in the address have actually been met, nonetheless, is open to ongoing debate.

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For a nation hungry for vengeance and strong action, however, the speech more than fulfilled its purpose, rallying the country while comforting its citizens. Bush was able to appeal strongly to pathos by creating a portrait of America, and Americans, that held up heroic ideals such as patience, resoluteness, and fortitude, and offered a shocked and traumatized people a path along which they could begin to move forward. The speech may, in fact, have been one of Bush’s finest moments. Similar to Bill Clinton’s ability to reach people, as described for example by journalist Peter Baker after the Oklahoma City bombing, Bush too may have “found a way to embrace the country to help them channel their grief, their confusion . . . and [get] into the mode of being a national leader, the person that the country can look to for assurance, . . . reliance and strength.” 29 On the other hand, as The Atlantic commentator James Fallows recently noted, “In 13 years of continuous combat under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the longest stretch of warfare in American history, U.S. forces have achieved one clear strategic success: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.” 30 That single success would take place at the end of Obama’s first term, nearly ten years after Bush’s speech, and long after the President had left office. NOTES 1. Nate Silver, “Would Al Gore Have Won in 2000 Without the Electoral College?” New York Times, September 20, 2011, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/wouldal-gore-have-won-in-2000–without-the-electoral-college/. 2. Liz Butler quoted in Daryl Lindsay, “Thousands Protest Bush’s Inauguration,” January 20, 2001, Salon, http://www.salon.com/2001/01/21/protests_8/. 3. Quoted in Sarah E. Spring and Joseph Clayton Packer, “George W. Bush: An Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People” (20 September 2001), Voices of Democracy 4 (2009): 120–131, http://www.voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/. 4. “Presidential Approval Ratings—George W. Bush,” Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/ poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx. 5. Ibid. 6. “9/20/01 News Coverage: Bush Addresses a Joint Session of Congress part 1,” CNN Live, September 20, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uie6uKmano. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Calvin Woodward, “On a War Footing, a President Again Turns to Congress in Search of National Purpose and Patience,” The Topeka Capital-Journal, September 20, 2001, http:// cjonline.com/stories/092001/ter_bushcongressa.shtml. 10. “9/20/01 News Coverage.” 11. Ibid. 12. “How Aaron Brown Became CNN’s Voice of September 11,” NPR, September 11, 2011, podcast audio, http://www.npr.org/2011/09/11/140365073/how-aaron-brown-becamecnns-voice-of-sept-11. 13. “9/20/01 News Coverage.” 14. “The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,” National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, August 24, 2004, http://www.9–11commission.gov/report/911Report_Exec.htm.

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15. George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People,” September 20, 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/ 20010920–8.html. 16. Annita Lazar and Michelle M. Lazar, “The Discourse of the New World Order: ‘Outcasting’ the Double Face of Threat,” Discourse & Society 15 (2004): 227, doi:10.1177/ 0957926504041018. 17. Ibid., 227. 18. Ibid., 227. 19. Ibid., 223. 20. See Spring and Packer, “George W. Bush,” for an in-depth discussion of Bush’s use of antithesis. 21. Lazar and Lazar, “The Discourse of the New World Order,” 227. 22. Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, “We Will Rally the World,” Washington Post, January 28, 2002, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/07/18/ AR2006071 800686 _pf.html. 23. Rick Fawn, “From Ground Zero to the War in Afghanistan,” in Global Responses to Terrorism: 9/11, Afghanistan, and Beyond, eds. Mary Buckley and Rick Fawn (London: Routledge, 2003), 13. 24. Jennifer Daskal and Stephen I. Vladack, “After the AUMF,” Harvard National Security Journal 5 (2014): 115. 25. Quoted in Gregory D. Johnsen, “60 Words and a War Without End: The Untold Story of the Most Dangerous Sentence in U.S. History,” BuzzFeedNews, January 16, 2014, www.buzzfeed.com/gregorydjohnsen/60–words-and-a-war-without-end-the-untold-story-ofthe-most#.hjpNGYY9VD. 26. John Yoo, “The President’s Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorists and Nations Supporting Them,” Memorandum, September 25, 2001, 19, http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/. 27. Johnsen, “60 Words and a War Without End.” 28. Patricia L. Dunmire, “Knowing and Controlling the Future,” Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism 32, no. 3 (2010), doi:10.1080/01440357.2010.528921, 242. 29. Peter Baker, “Bonus Video: The Oklahoma City Bombing,” The American Experience, podcast audio, 1996–2012, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bonusvideo/presidents-crisis-clinton/?flavour=mobile. 30. James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” The Atlantic, January/February 2015, http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/the-tragedy-of-the-americanmilitary/383516/.

Chapter Nineteen

Barack Obama and Hate Crime Legislation The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act Grant Walsh-Haines

THE BACKGROUND James Byrd, Jr. died on June 7, 1998, at the hands of three white men, Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King, outside of rural Texas town, Jasper. The three men severely beat Byrd, Jr., urinated on him, and then chained him to the back of their pickup truck. They dragged his mutilated body for several miles. 1 Evidence indicates that Byrd, Jr. survived the dragging, until his bruised and battered body hit a culvert. The force of impact severed Byrd, Jr.’s right arm and head from his body, killing him. Police later found his remains and possessions in 75 different places. 2 One of Byrd Jr.’s perpetrators, Shawn Berry, was sentenced to life in prison. Despite Berry’s role in the murder (he was the driver of the truck that dragged Byrd more than three miles), the courts could not prove that Berry physically harmed Byrd, Jr. prior to the dragging, nor could they prove that Berry’s actions were motivated by racism. Lawrence Brewer and John King were both well-known white supremacists in Jasper. Both received the death penalty, in large part because racism was a clear motivator for their violent and brutal actions. One of Byrd, Jr.’s assailants, Lawrence Brewer, became the first white person to be convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of an African American. 3 Later that same year, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson robbed, assaulted, and murdered Matthew Shepard on the night of October 6, 1998. 233

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After meeting at the Fireside bar in Laramie, Wyoming, McKinney and Henderson targeted Shepard, pretended to be gay, drove him to the outskirts of town, and brutally beat Shepard. He was found tied to a fence in a coma the next morning. After surviving the pistol-whipping and beating, Shepard died in a Ft. Collins hospital six days later on October 12, 1998. 4 A primary defense used by McKinney and Henderson was the gay panic defense. McKinney’s counsel argued that McKinney was driven to temporary insanity by Shepard’s homosexual advances. 5 Henderson opted to reduce his sentence with a plea, exchanging incriminating evidence against McKinney for two consecutive life sentences. Judge Barton Voight threw out the gay panic defense. McKinney was found guilty of felony murder and not guilty of premeditated murder. While initially sentenced with the death penalty, Shepard’s parents pled the courts to reconsider. McKinney and Henderson are now each serving two consecutive life sentences. 6 Matthew Shepard was gay. During the time of the trial, McKinney and Henderson could not be prosecuted for hatred towards sexual orientation minorities, which might have resulted in harsher punishments meted out by the courts. Federal hate crimes legislation did not include protections for sexual orientation or gender identity during the time of the trial. The state of Wyoming does not have hate crimes legislation. A hate crime is a crime motivated by prejudice based on perceived characteristics of the victim such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Hate crimes legislation emerged from the notion that “not all crimes are created equally.” Opponents of this type of legislation claim that hate crimes legislation creates special rights only accessible to certain groups of individuals. Because not everyone can access these special rights, opponents claim hate crimes legislation to be unconstitutional. Opponents also claim that hate crimes legislation creates a slippery slope: “if the government can enhance penalties for bigoted motives, it can enhance penalties for any disfavored motive.” 7 Arguments against hate crimes legislation emphasize freedom of speech. Key to that argument is the careful separation between speech and action. The perpetrators of these crimes deserve punishment. What kind of punishment is suitable? Scholars identify clear trends that victims of hate crimes experience negative consequences as a result of victimization more than victims of similar crimes that were not targeted out of hatred. 8 Supporters of hate crimes legislation also claim a desire to shift the mindset of perpetrators. The use of harsher punishments is intended to deter prejudiced thinking and violent behavior. 9 When perpetrators embody hatred in their actions, supporters of hate crimes legislation argue that punishments meted out by the courts ought to reflect those subjective differences. There is no uniform agreement on the necessity nor importance of hate crimes or bias crimes legislation and enforcement. The trend in the United

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States reveals an increasing number of hate crimes legislation at the state level over time. Race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability operate differently under federal level hate crimes related statutes. The origins of hate crimes legislation can be traced to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which added penalties for crimes motivated by hate against specific groups (race, color, religion, and national origin) engaged in federally protected activities. 10 Those activities include: “(1) applying for or enjoying employment; (2) serving as a juror in state court; (3) enrolling or attending public school or college; (4) travelling in interstate commerce; (5) enjoying the goods and services of certain places of public accommodation; and (6) participating in a program or activity provided by state or local government.” 11 Nearly thirty years later, additional legislation reflecting the intention of protected clauses emerged. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act (1990) made the gathering and accurate reporting of hate crimes a requirement of the federal government. The first iteration of the law required reporting of hate crimes “that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” 12 Once the federal government had statistical evidence of hate crimes, additional legislation broadening the reach of the Civil Rights Act emerged. The Violence Against Women Act (1994) included gender in protected clauses, broadening hate crimes to include types of gendered violence. (The current version of the Violence Against Women Act includes protections for gays, lesbians, transgender individuals, Native Americans, and immigrants; the updated version became law in 2013). 13 The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994) attached legal meaning to race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, and gender when prosecutors seek additional punishment on the grounds that a hate crime was committed. 14 Federal law has embraced the need for subjectivity in sentencing in response to hatred. In 1998, the world watched as these pieces of legislation failed to protect Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. in the same way. The prosecution of their perpetrators was successful, but nuanced in its success. Henderson and McKinney were not held accountable for their homophobic hatred and violence. Hate crimes legislation failed to uphold strict justice for perpetrators of anti-gay murder because sexual orientation was not included as a protected status. No state-level clauses existed in Wyoming or Texas at the time of these brutal murders. (As of this printing, Texas includes sexual orientation in the protective clause; Wyoming has no such legislation.) Ten years later, the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was passed on October 22, 2009. President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on October 29, 2009. The Hate Crimes Prevention Act worked towards increasing the size of the umbrella and including more protected statuses. 15 The inclusion of sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability in the language of the law created a landmark

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moment in United States history. The law reads, “The incidence of violence motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim poses a serious national problem.” 16 THE SPEECH 17 President Obama delivered the following speech in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on October 28, 2009. The room was populated with press, the surviving family members of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., and key legislative players that aided the legislative process. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much, and welcome to the White House. There are several people here that I want to just make mention of because they helped to make today possible. We’ve got Attorney General Eric Holder. (Applause.) A champion of this legislation, and a great Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. (Applause.) My dear friend, senior Senator from the great state of Illinois, Dick Durbin. (Applause.) The outstanding Chairman of Armed Services, Carl Levin. (Applause.) Senator Arlen Specter. (Applause.) Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House, Representative John Conyers. (Applause.) Representative Barney Frank. (Applause.) Representative Tammy Baldwin. (Applause.) Representative Jerry Nadler. (Applause.) Representative Jared Polis. (Applause.) All the members of Congress who are here today, we thank you. Mr. David Bohnett and Mr. Tom Gregory and the David Bohnett Foundation— they are partners for this reception. Thank you so much, guys, for helping to host this. (Applause.) And finally, and most importantly, because these were really the spearheads of this effort—Denis, Judy, and Logan Shepard. (Applause.) As well as Betty Byrd Boatner and Louvon Harris—sisters of James Byrd, Jr. (Applause.) To all the activists, all the organizers, all the people who helped make this day happen, thank you for your years of advocacy and activism, pushing and protesting that made this victory possible. You know, as a nation we’ve come far on the journey towards a more perfect union. And today, we’ve taken another step forward. This afternoon, I signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. (Applause.)

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This is the culmination of a struggle that has lasted more than a decade. Time and again, we faced opposition. Time and again, the measure was defeated or delayed. Time and again we’ve been reminded of the difficulty of building a nation in which we’re all free to live and love as we see fit. But the cause endured and the struggle continued, waged by the family of Matthew Shepard, by the family of James Byrd, by folks who held vigils and led marches, by those who rallied and organized and refused to give up, by the late Senator Ted Kennedy who fought so hard for this legislation—(applause)—and all who toiled for years to reach this day. You understood that we must stand against crimes that are meant not only to break bones, but to break spirits—not only to inflict harm, but to instill fear. You understand that the rights afforded every citizen under our Constitution mean nothing if we do not protect those rights—both from unjust laws and violent acts. And you understand how necessary this law continues to be. In the most recent year for which we have data, the FBI reported roughly 7,600 hate crimes in this country. Over the past 10 years, there were more than 12,000 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone. And we will never know how many incidents were never reported at all. And that’s why, through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (Applause.) And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability. At root, this isn’t just about our laws; this is about who we are as a people. This is about whether we value one another—whether we embrace our differences, rather than allowing them to become a source of animus. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died. But we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity—the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share. We have for centuries strived to live up to our founding ideal, of a nation where all are free and equal and able to pursue their own version of happiness. Through conflict and tumult, through the morass of hatred and preju-

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dice, through periods of division and discord we have endured and grown stronger and fairer and freer. And at every turn, we’ve made progress not only by changing laws but by changing hearts, by our willingness to walk in another’s shoes, by our capacity to love and accept even in the face of rage and bigotry. In April of 1968, just one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, as our nation mourned in grief and shuddered in anger, President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation. This was the first time we enshrined into law federal protections against crimes motivated by religious or racial hatred—the law on which we build today. As he signed his name, at a difficult moment for our country, President Johnson said that through this law “the bells of freedom ring out a little louder.” That is the promise of America. Over the sounds of hatred and chaos, over the din of grief and anger, we can still hear those ideals—even when they are faint, even when some would try to drown them out. At our best we seek to make sure those ideals can be heard and felt by Americans everywhere. And that work did not end in 1968. It certainly does not end today. But because of the efforts of the folks in this room—particularly those family members who are standing behind me—we can be proud that that bell rings even louder now and each day grows louder still. So thank you very much. God bless you and God bless the United States of America. (Applause.) THE FRAME, PROBLEM DEFINITION, AND IMPACT The Frame The role in racial politics is stitched into the ethos, logos, and pathos in this presidential speech. The listener plays a vital part in the process, which is emphasized in the following rhetorical analyses. 18 Even before Obama speaks, audiences bring preformed notions of race to their listening experience. This phenomenon is unmatched by any president before Obama: listeners react to Obama’s Blackness a priori the message of the speech. There are a number of different reactions listeners might have including ideas about living in a post-racial society or outright hostility. The role of the listener creates dialogue that creates and re-creates a dialectical process. 19 Ideas and constructions about race precede the dialectical process. According to Lipari, listening in the process is just as important as the speaking: “Listening is a form of co-constitutive communicative action fundamental to dialogic ethics . . . [and] is the invisible and inaudible enactment of the ethical relation itself; on it, everything depends.” 20 Listeners project Obama’s complex racial identity onto the words in the speech. The experiences and assumptions the listener has about race guide what the listener hears. The

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use of rhetoric in the form of binaries and grandstanding found in the speech guide the listener to react to Obama’s connections between hate crimes legislation and the role of race, sexual orientation, and disability. A binary or dualism sets up diametrically opposed sides of an argument. The frame of binary logic and race can be traced to Garrisonian abolitionists. During Jim Crow, white abolitionists who favored dismantling Jim Crow policies played a key role in bridging the gap between black and white abolitionists. Olson describes the importance of using the black/white dichotomy as a resource to compel whites to choose a side rather than remain undecided on race problems. 21 This Manichean logic pervades the way Americans think about racial and minority experiences today and is everpresent in the logos of the speech. Obama works to apply this logic to sexual orientation in the way it has been used to include protections for racial minorities for hate crimes legislation. The corollary present in Obama’s speech urges the audience to choose to support the inclusion of protections for sexual orientation minorities and individuals with disabilities in the hate crimes provisions. In the context of the speech, if the listener does not support hate crimes legislation, the listener must support homophobic and racist violent action. The frame of binary logic leads to an emphasis on bridging the gap between “us and them,” between “alikes and unlikes.” Obama emphasizes equality and bridges the gap for differences of race, sexual orientation, and disability in order to compel the listener toward support of the legislation. Evidence must also support the binary logic. “People are like and unlike in an infinite number of ways—age, wealth, race, religion, gender, eye color, and so on. How then can we measure whether government is treating likes alike and unlikes differently?” 22 In order to answer the question of whether or not “unlikes” are treated differently, Obama incorporates federally supported facts into the speech. Minorities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime and the statistics Obama integrates demonstrate clear trends of violence against sexual orientation minorities. According to the Human Rights Campaign, sexual orientation is the third-highest motivator for hate crimes, whereas race-based hate crimes are the most prevalent and represent nearly half of reported crimes. 23 “Equality, according to Aristotle, demands that people who are alike be treated alike, and correlatively, people who are unlike be treated unlike in proportion to their unlikeness.” 24 Therefore, the government is compelled to provide increased protections for “unlikes” in order to bring Americans closer to equal treatment under the law. The speech draws on another problematic rhetorical tool. Grandstanding, or the use of emotional, charged language simultaneously works as a persuasive rhetorical tool while it also perpetuates false assumptions about living in a post-racial and post-gay society. By drawing on notions of freedom and humanity, Obama asks the listener to ignore identity in exchange for a broad-

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er, colorblind humanity. The illustration of walking down the street holding hands as an example of freedom draws the listener into a state of empathy. Anyone can relate to this simple example. The reaction for the listener is to think, “we are all just human and should be allowed to walk down the street with the person we love!” By encouraging the listener to react this way, the speech minimizes the role of sexual orientation. This combination of logos and pathos works to persuade the listener toward support for hate crimes legislation at the risk of simultaneously promoting a false sense of equality in a post-racial and post-gay society. Evidence clearly indicates that Americans do not really live in a postracial (“post-caring-about-race”) society: racial inequality is ever-present in forms of police abuse and mass incarceration, and assumptions about Black masculinity. 25 Racial and sexual orientation minorities are subjected to violence at rates much higher than other Americans. To suggest that we live in a post-racial and post-gay society implies that identity is no longer relevant in the construction and performance of human experience. Minimizing the role of sexual orientation by grandstanding (focusing on freedom and humanity) makes it easier for the listener to be supportive of sexual orientation minorities to be included in the hate crimes provisions. In so doing, the speech falls into the trap of creating a post-gay rhetoric that mimics a post-racial one. This runs counter to the very purpose of including sexual orientation in the hate crimes legislation discussed in the speech. Definition of the Problem The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act works to correct the problem of narrowness in the definition of hate crimes. The history of hate crimes legislation protected racial minorities, national origin, and religious freedoms. History has demonstrated a need for broadening these protections. Specifically, the Violence Against Women Act and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act expanded the law to protect victims of violence and gendered violence. Obama’s speech demonstrates the need for continuing to broaden the reach of hate crimes legislation to include all Americans, including sexual orientation minorities as well as disabled individuals. Obama’s use of the concepts of “freedom” and “humanity” connect the listener with sympathy. Humanity, in this context, trumps identity. This rhetorical move urges the listener to look beyond racial or sexual orientation minority status to see something broader. Humanity cannot coexist with the violence demonstrated against Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Anyone can relate to the basic and simple freedom of “[holding] the hand of the person they love” and freedom from violence. The framework President Obama created during this speech connects the need for protection against

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violence to moments of activism and resistance. This appeal draws on deeply American cultural notions and a history of deeply held beliefs about humanity, perhaps at the cost of negating the importance of identity. Hate Crimes legislation and the broader implications discussed here successfully address the problem of broadening protections. The further implication is the potential to punish perpetrators of violent crimes motivated by hatred to the maximum letter of the law. Obama also brings the broader cultural problems of racism and homophobia into the conversation. The violence demonstrated in continuing crimes motivated by hatred must be addressed by legislation. But legislation and the use of hate crimes to punish perpetrators is limited to responding to crimes after they occur. Key to these initiatives was a lack of protection of sexual orientation minorities, gender identity, and disability. All are now included as protected statuses according to the federal law as a result of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The Impact Including protective clauses in legislation requires finesse. How does protecting minority status fit into constitutional rights? The language of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act describes the importance of protecting individuals and communities from harm in order to protect interstate commerce. 26 The strategy to use commerce clause as a legal justification for protective statuses was the result of a ten-year period of failed legislative attempts. The use of the clause also removes the previous requirement that a victim be engaged in a federally protected activity, so that the protection applies to citizens all of the time, not only when voting, for example. Part of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act delegates both funding and responsibility to local and state authorities. Because the bill relies upon the commerce clause, the bite must also operate by delegating federal power to states. The tangible impacts of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act are many and varied: the federal government is now required by law to track hate crimes statistics 27 for sexual orientation and gender identity and federal dollars are delegated to states with the intent of decreasing hate crimes through law enforcement agencies. The clear aim of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act is to reduce the number of violent attacks against sexual orientation minorities. Recent data, mentioned by Obama in the speech, demonstrate just such a trend to be true; nationally rates of violent hate crimes are showing slight decline in the past five years. 28 The federal hate crimes legislation described here, originating with the Civil Rights Act, emphasizes protection for citizens engaged in federally protected activities. There remains a serious disconnection between the examples Obama offers (of freedom to love, handholding, etc.) and the reach

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and purpose of this hate crimes legislative reform. Even while listeners can relate to the allusions to humanity, freedom, and love, these remain mere rhetorical techniques that are not relevant to the application of the law. Legislation is one approach to working towards decreased hate crimes. The approach is a reaction to violence. It does not prevent the underlying hatred that exists in American culture, it reacts to violent actions once they have already take place. Given the tools Congress and the President can wield, a bill is an effective and long-term even as it is an incremental approach. Will legislation work to eradicate deeply rooted homophobia and racism? What other approaches exist? What does President Obama mean when he invokes the word activism? Until activism confronts and disrupts cultural norms like violent masculinity and heteronormativity (the assumption that everyone is heterosexual), hate crimes violence against sexual orientation minorities will persist. NOTES 1. Korva Coleman, “Texas Executes White Supremacist Convicted of Racially Motivated Murder,” NPR, September 21, 2011, http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/09/21/ 140666067/texas-set-to-execute-notorious-murderer. 2. Melissa Block, “Jasper, Texas: 10 Years After a Racist Murder,” NPR, June 13, 2008, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91489022. 3. Paul Burka, “James Byrd, Jr.,” Texas Monthly 27, no. 9 (1999): 126. 4. Beth Loffreda, Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder (Columbia University Press, 2001). 5. Cynthia Lee, “The Gay Panic Defense,” University of California, Davis Law Review, vol. 42, no. 2 (2008–2009): 479. 6. James Brooke, “Gay Murder Trial Ends With Guilty Plea,” New York Times, April 6, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/06/us/gay-murder-trial-ends-with-guilty-plea.html. 7. Lynn Adelman and Pamela Moorshead, “Bad Laws Make Hard Cases: Hate Crimes Laws and the Supreme Court’s Opinion in Wisconsin v. Mitchell,” Gonzaga Law Review 30.1 (1995): 1–27. 8. Paul Iganski, “Hate Crimes Hurt More,” The American Behavioral Scientist 45.4 (2001): 626–38. 9. Laura Meli, “Hate Crime and Punishment: Why Typical Punishment Does Not Fit the Crime.” University of Illinois Law Review 3 (2014): 921–66. 10. Federally Protected Activities, 18 USC (1969), §245(b). 11. Laura Meli, “Hate Crime and Punishment: Why Typical Punishment Does Not Fit the Crime.” University of Illinois Law Review 3 (2014): 921–66. 12. HR 1040, Public Law 101–275, “Hate Crimes Statistics Act (1989),” (April 23, 1990). 13. US Department of Justice, Office for Civil Rights, “Nondiscrimination Grant Condition in the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013,” Frequently Asked Questions (April 9, 2014). 14. Duties of the Commission, 28 USC (1994), §994(d). 15. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 18 USC §249. 16. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 18 USC §249. 17. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at Reception Commemorating the Enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act,” The White House, October 28, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-receptioncommemorating-enactment-matthew-shepard-and-james-byrd.

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18. Lisbeth Lipari, “Rhetoric’s Other: Levinas, Listening, and the Ethical Response,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 45.3 (20–12): 227–45. 19. Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening (Routledge, 1990). 20. Lisbeth Lipari, “Rhetoric’s Other: Levinas, Listening, and the Ethical Response,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 45.3 (20–12): 227–45. 21. Joel Olson, The Abolition of White Democracy (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). 22. Neal Devins, “The Rhetoric of Equality,” Vanderbilt Law Review 44.15 (1991): 15–44. 23. Michelle Marzullo and Alyn Libman, “Research Overview: Hate Crimes and Violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People,” Human Rights Campaign Foundation, (2009): 1–20. 24. Neal Devins, “The Rhetoric of Equality,” Vanderbilt Law Review 44.15 (1991): 15–44. 25. Jessica Wells Cantiello, “From Pre-Racial to Post-Racial? Reading and Reviewing A Mercy in the Age of Obama,” MELUS 36.2 (2011): 165–83; Noah C. Rothman, “Taking Sides in Ferguson: The Media’s Shameful Performance,” Commentary (2014): 18–22; William T. Hoston, Black Masculinity in the Obama Era: Outliers of Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2012). 26. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 18 USC §249 (6). 27. HR 1040, Public Law 101–275, “Hate Crimes Statistics Act (1989),” (April 23, 1990). See also Hate Crimes Statistics Act, 28 USC (1990), §534. 28. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Hate Crimes,” 2015, http://www.fbi.gov/aboutus/investigate/civilrights/hate_crimes.

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Index

administrative efficiency, 74 Afghanistan, 160, 192, 199, 221–222, 230 African American, 27, 122, 149, 188, 189, 210, 211, 213, 214, 215 African American suffragists, 27 Agricultural Adjustment Act, 89 Agricultural Marketing Act (1929), 68, 73, 77 Alabama. See United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama Alabama National Guardsmen, 116 Alaska, 27, 29 Alcatraz Island, 142 Alice Paul. See National Women’s Party alliteration, 228 Al Smith Catholicism, 70 Al Qaeda, 160, 218, 221, 222, 226, 227, 228, 230 American Bill of Rights, 172 American exceptionalism, 148, 149, 150, 187, 188 American Farm Bureau Federation, 63 American government, 24 American Indians, 142, 147 American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, 151 American Individualism, 69 American individualism, 77 Americanism, 77 American jeremiad, 120, 148–149, 150, 209, 214. See also jeremiad

The American Prospect, 217 American Relief Administration, 68 American system, 77 American Women Suffrage Association, 27 Amnesty International, 168 anaphora, 228 Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, 188 Antiquities Act of 1906, 2 Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, 151 Aristotelian terms. See Aristotle Aristotle, x, xi, xii, 34, 132, 149, 150, 168, 172, 187, 239 Arizona, 22, 27 Arizona constitution, 19 arrangement (disposition), xi, xii assistant secretary for Indian and Territorial Affairs, 147 assistant secretary for public land management, 147 Atlantic coast, 6 Attorney General Palmer, 49 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), 229–230, 231 AWSA. See American Women Suffrage Association Bahrain. See Persian Gulf in-group Baker, Secretary of State, 193, 194 Baldwin, Tammy (Rep.), 236

255

256 Barber, James David, 53 Baxter, Nathan, 230 Beasley, Vanessa, 53 Berry, Shawn, 233 bin Laden, Osama, 221, 231 Birmingham, 116 Birnbaum. See scholars Bizell, ix Black, Eugene, 130 Blue Lake Restoration Act, 150 Boatner, Betty Byrd, 236 Bohnett, David, 236. See also David Bohnett Foundation Bostdorff, Denise, 159 Boston Home Market Club, 43, 47, 49, 50 Boston Police strike, 49 Brady bill, 207 Brain Trust, 82, 88 Brandenburg Gate, 221 Brewer, Lawrence, 233 Brewster, Senator, 126 Brown, Aaron, 218 Brown, Lee, 207 Bull Moose Party, 21, 22, 24, 41 bully pulpit, xiii, 23, 24, 215; agendasetting function of, 23; bully pulpit optimist, 25; bully pulpit pessimist, 24 Buckingham Palace, 221 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 146 Burgehardt, Carl, 75 Bush, George H. W., 159, 191, 192, 194, 195–196, 197, 198–200, 218, 220, 225–227, 228–229, 230–231 Bush, George W., 160, 200, 217 Bush v. Gore, 217 Byrd, James, 233, 235, 236, 237 California, 27 Cambodia, 170 Campbell and Jamieson, 120 Capper-Volstead Act (1922), 68 Carlin, Diana B., 99 Carson, Rachel, 137 Carter, Jimmy, 167–168, 173, 174, 175, 176–177 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 27, 37 Chamber of Commerce, 55, 63, 64 Cheney, Dick (Secretary of Defense), 193 Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 141

Index Chile, 170 Chinese-Americans, 27 chronos, 108 Churchill, Winston, 219 Cicero, xi, 172 Civilian Conservation Corps, 11, 89 civil rights, 115, 116, 120, 123, 142, 203, 211, 214; Civil Rights Act of 1968, 234–235; Civil Rights bill, 116, 122; Civil Rights Movement, 134 Civil War, 49, 186 Clinton, Bill, 199, 203–204, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 231 Clinton, Hillary, 209 cocaine, 188 Cold War, 103, 104, 109, 110, 111, 115, 125, 126, 133, 194–195, 198–199 Colorado, 27 collective action, 10 college loan program, 209 Commerce Court, 19 commissioner of Indian affairs, 147 community frame, 186 Community Improvement Corps, 160 Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act, 179, 180 Conference of Governors on the Conservation of Natural Resources, 2 Connor, “Bull” (Sheriff), 116 conservationist frames. See conservationists conservationists, 1 Constitutional Convention, 10 Conyers, John (Rep.), 236 Coolidge, Calvin, 48, 53–54, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63–64 Cooper, Anna Julia. See African-American suffragists cooperative marketing (orderly marketing), 68, 76 Cooperative Marketing Act of 1926, 68 Cooper Union Address, 22 cooptive refutation, 21 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 168, 169, 174, 176 corporatism, 74 Cosby, Bill and Camille, 208 Council on Wage and Price Stability, 155

Index Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey, 7 crack, 183, 187, 188–189 Crawford, Stuart F, 54 Cuba, 170 Daschle, Tom, 230 Daugherty, Harry, 42 David Bohnett Foundation, 236 Declaration of Independence, 121 de Gaulle, Charles, 133 De Inventione, 171 delivery (action), xi, xii democracy, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 96, 98, 107, 109, 173, 176, 225 Democratic Party, 18, 20, 22, 28, 42, 137, 203, 210 Democrats, 18, 19, 28, 31, 93, 94, 100, 103, 218, 221 Department of Justice, 147, 155 Department of the Interior, 147 Desert Shield, 191, 197 Desert Storm, 191, 197 Deuteronomy, 135 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 125 discipline of defeat, 15 Drug Abuse Control Amendments to the Food and Drugs Act in 1965, 179 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 179, 181 Dunmire, Patricia, 230 Durbin, Dick, 236 Economy Act, 90 Edsall, Thomas and Mary Jane, 210 Edwards, G. E., 21 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 103–104, 108, 109–111, 112, 132, 141, 142 Elders, Jocelyn, 203 Emergency Banking Relief Act, 89 emotion, ix, xii environmental policy, 1, 10, 11–12 Equal Pay Act of 1963, 149 Ethiopia, 170 ethos, x, 22, 108, 135, 168, 187; personal, 109, 111 Evers, Medgar, 123 expectation frames, 60

257

Fahd, King, 192 Fair Sentencing Act, 188 Fallow, James, 231 Family Leave law, 209 fascism, 223, 226 FBI, 237 Federal Bank Deposit Insurance Corporation, 89 Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 89 Federal Farm Board, 70 Federal Securities Act of May 27, 89 female suffrage, 27 Finkelstein, Leo, 87 Florida, 207, 217 Ford, Gerald, 153–154, 158–164 Foreign Relations Committee (senate), 46 Fort Myer, 29 Frank, Barney (Rep.), 236 free-riders, 9 French colonialism, 125 Fritchen, Dean, 164 Future Farmers of American, 158, 163 Garland, Mr., 126 General Motors, 94 genocide of the Maya Indigenous people in Guatemala, 176 Germany, 36, 37 Glass-Steagall Act, 89 Going Public, 77 Golden Rule, 121 Gorgias. See Sophists Gould, Lewis, 55 government centralization, 74 Great Britain, 31 Great Depression, 64, 153 Greece, ix Greek Rhetorician, x Gregory, Tom, 236 Griffin, Leland, 16 Guantanamo, 230 Guiliani, Rudy, 218 Gulf coast, 6 Gulf War, 159, 196, 197, 199 Harding, Warren G., 24, 41–42, 46, 47–48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 68 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, 179

258

Index

Hartley, Fred A. Jr. (Rep.), 94 hate crime, 234, 235, 237 Hate Crimes Prevention Act, 235, 236 Hate Crimes Statistics Act (1990), 235 Henderson, Russell, 233–234, 235 heroin, 188 Herzbeg, ix Hitler, Adolf, 159 Holder, Eric (Attorney General), 236 Holliday, George, 203 Holmes, Justice, 7 Holocaust, 174, 185 Home Loan Bank Board, 81 Hoover Committee. See Mississippi Flood Committee Hoover, Herbert C., 64, 67, 68, 70, 73–77, 77–78, 81, 82, 87, 90 Houck, Davis W., 88 House Committee on Education and Labor, 94 House Concurrent Resolution 108, 141, 143 House of Commons, 219 Howard University, 208 Howe, Louis, 82 Hudkins, 25 Humphrey, Hubert, 171 Hussein, Saddam, 159, 160, 194, 195, 199 Idaho, 27 ideological square, 226 Independence Hall, 3 Indiana, 42, 49 Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, 151 Indian Education Act of 1978, 150 Indian Financing Act of 1974, 150 Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976, 150 Indian Trust Counsel Authority, 147 individualism, 74 Indochina, 170 Industrial Revolution, 1 International Commission of Jurists, 168 internationalist, 63 International League for Human Rights, 168 invention (inventio), xi, xii Iran. See Persian Gulf in-group

Iraq, 112, 160, 192, 194, 195–196, 197, 198, 200 ISIL, 200 Islamic Jihad, 221 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, 221 isolationist, 48, 63 issue framing, xii Jackson, Andrew, 12 Jardine, William M, 69 Jasper, 233 Jefferson, Thomas, 12; in his inaugural address, 35 jeremiad, 211, 213 Johnsen, Gregory D., 230 Johns Hopkins University, 125, 135, 138 Johnson, Hiram, 41, 42 Johnson, Lyndon Baines (president), 125–126, 132–134, 135–138, 238 Joint Strike Fighter, 112 Just Say No club, 182 kairos, 108, 163 Kansas City, 158 Kennedy, John F., 48, 109, 111, 115–116, 120–121, 122, 219 Kennedy, Robert F (Sen.), 137 Kennedy, Ted (Sen.), 237 Kenya, 218, 221, 226 King, John, 233 King, Martin Luther, Jr, 115, 116, 123, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214–215; “I Have a Dream”, 116, 123 King, Rodney, 214 Korean War, 103 Kuwait, 191, 192, 193, 195–196, 197, 198 laissez faire, 81 La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, 142 Lakaff. See scholars Lani Guinier, 203 Laramie. See Wyoming Lasker, Albert, 50 Lazar, Michelle and Annita, 226 Leaders of Men, 35 League of Nations, 48, 55 Lebanon, 170 Lee, Barbara, 230 Lee, R. Alton, 94

Index Letter From Birmingham City Jail, 213 Levin, Carl, 230, 236 Lewis, John L., 94 liberal anticommunists, 134 Lincoln, Abraham, 12, 22, 118, 186 Lincoln Bedroom, 186 logos, x, xi, 22, 75, 99, 100, 133, 168, 173, 188 Los Angeles, 203 Louvon, Harris, 236 Lowden, Frank, 41–42 Lucy Burns. See National Women’s Party magnification, 159 Main Supreme Bench, 7 Malcolm X, 116 Manifest Destiny, 1 marijuana, 188 Marijuana Tax Act, 179 Maryland, 4 McAdoo, William, 48 McKinney, Aaron, 233–234, 235 McNary-Haughen legislation, 63, 69; McNary-Haughen Bill, 70; McNaryHaugenism, 69–70; McNaryHaugenites, 69, 70, 76 Medhurst, Martin, 63, 108 Mediterranean, 3 Meese, attorney general, 183 Mekong project. See Tennessee Valley Authority Mekong River. See Tennessee Valley Authority melodrama, 99 melodramatic frame. See melodrama memory (memoria), xi, xii Memphis, 204, 212, 214 Mencken, H. L., 48 Menominee Restoration Act of 1973, 150 Meredith, James, 115, 116 Merriam report, 141 Mervin, 21 Minh, Ho Chi, 136 Mississippi Flood Committee, 74 Mississippi Valley, 6 modernization theory, 126, 134, 137 Moley, Raymond, 82 Montana, 27, 49 Muir, John, 1–2

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Murray. See scholars mutually assured destruction, 192 Nadler, Jerry (Rep.), 236 National Association of Colored Women, 27 National Business Survey Conference, 81 National Conservation Commission, 11 National Forest Service, 2 National Guard, 116 National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), 89 National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act 1935), 93 National Liberation Front (NLF), 125 National Park System, 11 National Women’s Party, 27, 28, 29, 30 Native Americans, 27, 141, 150, 171 Native American Rights Movement, 175 NATO charter, 223 natural resources, 1–2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 147 National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 27–29, 30, 37 nazism, 223, 226 Neustadt, Richard, 77 Nevada, 27 New Federalism, 142 Newman, Wallace (“Chief”), 142 new world order, 195 New York Chamber of Commerce, 55, 63 New York Times, 48, 153 Nicaragua, 170 Nineteenth Amendment, 28, 37, 53 Nixon, Richard, 142, 148–149, 150–151, 153, 179 Nobel Peace Prize, 167 Nocasia, Mihaela, 88 nonrenewable resources, 9 Norbeck, governor, 36, 37 Normandy American Cemetery, 185 North Carolina, 30 North Vietnam, 125, 135, 136, 137 Nuclear Use Theories (NUTs), 192 Obama, Barack, xiii, 188, 200, 230–231, 235–236, 238–239, 240–242 Ohio, 42 Oklahoma City bombing, 231

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Index

Old Testament prophet, 120 Ole Miss, 115 On Rhetoric, 172 OPEC, 153, 158; oil crisis, 163 orator, xi O’Rourke, Daniel, 159 Oval Office, 103, 186 Pacific coast, 6 Parker, Theodore, 211 Paris, 221 pathos, x, xi, 23, 75, 77, 99, 100, 132, 134, 168, 188, 225, 228 patriotic frame, 187 Paul’s Letter to American Christians, 212 Pearl Harbor, 218, 219, 220 Pearson, Lester, 133 Pelosi, Nancy, 236 Pennsylvania, 126 People’s Party, 28 Permanent Court of International Justice, 59, 62, 63 Persian Gulf in-group, 192 Peter, Baker, 231 Philadelphia, 3, 4, 10 Phillips, Kendall, 171 Phoenician, 3 Phronemos, 171, 176 Pinchot, Gifford, 1, 2, 11 Polis, Jared (Rep.), 236 Politics or Policy? How Rhetoric Matters to Presidential Leadership of Congress, 77 popular unrest, 16, 17, 23, 24 Populist Party, 28 Pou, Edward W, 30 Powell, general, 193 preservationist frames. See preservationists preservationists, 1 presidential commission report (1924), 68 Presidential Power, 77 problem definition, xii, 9 Progressive Party, 27, 28 progressive reformers, 21 progressives, 16, 21 prohibition, 179 prohibition activists, 28 pro-suffrage coalition, 28 Protagoras. See Sophists

public policy, ix, xiii, 62, 110 Public Works Administration, 89 Qatar. See Persian Gulf in-group Quaker, 142 Reagan Democrats, 210 Reagan, Nancy, 182, 186–187 Reagan, Ronald, 47, 180, 188, 189 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 64, 81 reformers, 19 renewable resources, 9 Republican Party, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21–22, 23–24, 25, 27, 42, 48, 62, 64, 68, 93 Republicans, 18, 19, 20, 22, 94, 218, 221 Return to Normalcy, 46–47, 50 Rex, 21 rhetoric, ix, x, xi, xiii, 2, 16, 21, 29, 35, 38, 46, 75, 77, 154, 172, 176, 215, 230, 238, 240; campaign rhetoric, 49; classical rhetorical theory, 176; deliberative rhetoric, 34, 36, 37; epideictic rhetoric, 196; five canons of, xi; goal of, 73; mandate rhetoric, 77, 78; political rhetoric, xii, 16, 46, 47, 172; presidential rhetoric, 25, 38, 53, 176, 195; rhetorical appeal, 78; rhetorical autocrat, 43; rhetorical presidency, 24, 27, 63; rhetorical situation, 73, 74, 199; rhetorical trajectory, 16, 195, 196, 197, 198; Roosevelt’s rhetoric, 9, 11, 12; study of, ix; Taft’s rhetoric, 23; war rhetoric, 21, 29, 159 Rhetorica, x rhetorically restrained, 53 The Rhetorical Presidency, xiii, 15, 77 Riker. See scholars Rochefort. See scholars Roosevelt, Franklin, 12, 81, 98, 153, 154, 218; daughter, 98; Roosevelt’s New Deal, 90 Roosevelt, Theodore (TR), xiii, 2, 12, 15, 41, 53 Russia, 37 Russian women, 35 Ryan, Halford Ross, 90

Index Saudi Arabia. See Persian Gulf in-group Scandinavia, 37 Schattschneider. See scholars scholars, xii schools of choice, xii Schwarz, Jordan, 82 scientific management, 1, 2, 74 scientific-technological elite, 110 Scud missiles, 194 Secretary of Commerce, 68 Senate Labor Committee, 94 Senator Root, 16 Senator Tydings, 126 September 11, 2001(9/11), 217, 221, 225, 229, 230 Shepard, Denis, Judy, and Logan, 236 Shepard, Matthew, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237 Sierra Club, 1 Silent Cal, 53 Silent Spring, 137 Skowronek, Stephen, 54 socialism, 16, 18, 22; definition of, 18 social movements, 27 Soil Conservation Service, 11 Sophists, x, xi, xii South Africa, 170 South Dakota, 36–37 South Dakota legislation: Amendment E, 37. See also South Dakota South Dakota Universal Franchise League, 36 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 212 southern Democrats, 29, 93 southern populists. See Populist Party southern women, 27 South Vietnam, 8, 125, 133, 137 Soviet Union, 130, 192 Specter, Arlen (Sen.), 236 stasis, 23 stasis model, 173 Stewardship Presidency. See Roosevelt, Theodore style (elocution), xi, xii Supreme Court of Maine, 6 suffrage convention, 29 suffrage schools, 28 systematic rationality, 74

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Taft, Chief Justice, 24 Taft-Hartley Bill, 94–95, 96, 97, 98–99, 100–101 Taft, Howard William, 15–17, 21–22, 23–25, 27 Taft, Robert (Sen.), 94 Taliban regime, 222, 227 Tanzania, 218, 221, 226 Taos Indians. See Taos Pueblo Taos Pueblo, 145, 150 Tax Code, 205 Tennessee Valley Authority, 11 termination period, 141 Terrel, Mary Church, 27 Thailand, 128 Tibet, 127 Topoi, 168, 172 totalitarianism, 223 tragedy of the commons, 9 The Truly Disadvantaged, 208 Truman, Harry, 94–95, 98–99, 100–101 Tumulty, Joseph, 30 Uganda, 170 unions (labor), xii, 93–94, 96, 100–101 United Arab Emirates. See Persian Gulf ingroup United Nations, 127, 130, 192, 193 United Nations Charter of Human Right, 134 United Nations General Assembly, 169 United Nations Security Council, 193 United States (U.S.), 1, 8, 10, 11, 16, 27, 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 54, 85, 86, 106, 118, 145, 153, 154, 156, 160, 162, 192, 193, 195, 198, 203, 222, 223, 224, 234, 238; Congress, 141, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150–151, 156, 158–159, 160, 162, 168, 169, 176, 177, 188, 192, 207, 217, 218, 220, 221, 227, 229, 236, 242; Constitution, 11, 12, 18, 19, 20, 23, 148, 171, 176, 204, 237; economy, 164; foreign policy of, 171; government, 148, 151, 168, 173; House of Representatives, 30, 94, 96; people of the, 8, 86, 154; Senate, 19, 27, 30, 34, 37, 42, 63, 78, 96, 100, 101, 104, 154, 170; Supreme Court of the, 7, 24, 119, 217, 218

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Index

United States Air Force, 192, 205 United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama, 116 United States Food Administration, 68 United States Forest Service, 2 Universal Declaration (of Human Rights), 168, 169, 171–172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 University of Alabama, 116 unrestricted individualism, 8 U.S.S. Cole, 218, 221, 226 Utah, 22, 27 van Dijk, Teun, 226 Vermont, 22 victimless crime, 181, 186 Viet Cong, 192 Vietnam, 112 Vietnam War, 111, 138, 153, 194–195, 196 Violence Against Women Act (1994), 235 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (1994), 235 Virginia, 4 Voight, Barton Judge, 234 volunteerism, 74 voting rights, 27 Wagner Act. See National Labor Relations Act Wallace, George Governor, 116 Wallace, Henry Cantwell, 100 War on Terror, 191, 192 Washington, 4, 27, 123, 142, 144, 206 Washington, George, 10, 12, 60, 109 Washington Post, 206 Watergate, 138 Welliver, Judson, 54 West Berlin, 117

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, 212 Whip Inflation Now (WIN), 154, 158, 163, 164; WIN gardens, 163 Whistle-Stop Campaign, 98 White House, 3, 11, 16, 29, 30, 54, 81, 88, 100, 126, 137, 157, 168, 180, 236 White House Conference on Conservation of Natural Resources, 11 Williams, Fannie Barrier. See AfricanAmerican suffragists Williams, Ralph, 110 Wilson, Harold, 136 Wilson, William Julius, 208 Wilson, Woodrow, 12, 23, 29–30, 33–34, 35, 36, 37–38, 41, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 67, 135; Wilson, Kaiser, 29; Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 35; Wilson’s inauguration, 29; Wilson’s New Freedom, 67 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 28 Women’s Peace Party, 37 Wood, Leonard, 41–42, 49 Woodward, Calvin, 218 World Bank, 130 World Trade Center, 218 World War I (WWI), 36, 41, 61, 67, 172, 174 World War II (WWII), 64, 128, 134, 156, 161, 179, 184 Wyoming, 233, 234 Yoo, John, 230; Yoo’s Method of Persuasion, 37 Yosemite, 2, 112n1, 113n2, 123n1, 123n2, 123n3, 123n4, 177n1, 177n2, 177n3, 177n4, 215n1, 231n1, 231n2

About the Editors and Contributors

Kevin R. Anderson is an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Missouri and teaches courses in Political Theory and African American Politics. His research focuses on American and African American Political Thought. Jeffrey S. Ashley is a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University where he teaches American government, state and local politics, and public administration. His research interests center primarily on tribal sovereignty and environmental policy. His publications include three books and numerous articles and book chapters on topics ranging from the separation of powers and environmental policy to tribal sovereignty and the social impact of former first lady, Betty Ford. David H. Carwell is a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. He earned his bachelor’s from Western Kentucky University, and a PhD from the University of Kentucky. He teaches in the areas of comparative politics and international relations. His research interests focus on democratic transitions and conflict resolution. Elizabeth A. Dudash-Buskirk is an associate professor of communication in the Department of Communication at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. Her research interests are focused on political talk and public address and she teaches in the areas of political communication, rhetoric, and social movement rhetoric.

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About the Editors and Contributors

Jason A. Edwards is an associate professor of communication studies at Bridgewater State University. He is the author of Navigating the Post-Cold War World: President Clinton’s Foreign Policy Rhetoric and co-editor of The Rhetoric of American Exceptionalism: Critical Essays. Additionally, he has authored over three dozen articles and book chapters appearing in venues such as Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Communication Quarterly, Southern Journal of Communication, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and The Howard Journal of Communications. He is currently working on a book that traces the rhetorical contours of American foreign policy rhetoric and in the early stages of an edited book project on civil religion, rhetoric, and American politics. Richard G. Frederick is professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, where he specializes in 20th century United States history. His publications include a 2010 biography of William Howard Taft and the Greenwood Press Bibliography of Warren G. Harding. Marita Gronnvoll is an assistant professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication at Eastern Illinois University. She earned her PhD in rhetorical theory and criticism from the University of Georgia in 2008. She is the author of Media Representations of Gender and Torture Post 9/11, published in 2010 by Routledge. Her research interests focus on gender politics and political science pedagogy. Marla J. Jarmer is the director of the writing center at Danville Community College and teaches courses in rhetoric and women’s literature. She has had several articles published in different literary venues and is interested in studying human rights issues primarily those related to women’s rights and indigenous rights in the United States. Eric Morris is an assistant professor of communication at Missouri State University. He holds degrees from Missouri State University (BS), Kansas State University (MA), and the University of Kansas (PhD). His teaching interests include political communication (particularly presidential), rhetorical criticism, and communication theory. His research interests include argumentation and presidential debates. He was selected as coach of the year in 2008–2009 by the National Debate Tournament, and continues to actively coach. Melinda A. Mueller is a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. She earned her BA from Susquehanna University, and PhD from the University of Rochester. She teaches in the area of American politics and

About the Editors and Contributors

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public policy. Her research focuses on women and politics, particularly at the state and local levels. Nicholas J. Nickols is a master’s student at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. He is an expert in rhetorical theory and criticism and intends to continue those studies as they pertain to technology and politics. Dani May Nier-Weber has a PhD in English with a concentration in rhetoric and composition from Ball State University and is an assistant professor at SUNY Sullivan Community College. Her research interests include effective practices in the teaching of writing and mixed-method analyses of political rhetoric. She is currently working on an analysis of the top ten convention speeches of the 2012 presidential election. Stephen F. Robar is the associate dean of Academic Affairs, and associate professor of political science and environmental policy at the University of Pittsburgh—Bradford. He received his PhD in political science and his MPA from Northern Arizona University, and his BA in political science from SUNY New Paltz. His primary work and teaching is in the areas of public policy and American institutions and processes, with a specialty in environment. Joshua M. Scacco is an assistant professor of media theory and politics in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. He received his PhD in communication studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. His research interests include political communication, media and politics, and research methods. Specifically, he focuses on presidential communication in an evolving media environment. Emily Schnurr is a PhD candidate at Northern Arizona University. She received her BA from the University of Northern Iowa. Her research interests include social movements, political symbolism, and race and ethnicity in politics. Teresa Maria Linda Scholz is an assistant professor in communication studies, as well as affiliated women’s studies and Latin American studies faculty at Eastern Illinois University. She completed her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in speech communication at Colorado State University, with a master’s certification in women’s studies. She earned her PhD in communication studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, with an emphasis in rhetorical theory and criticism, and feminist theories. Her research articulates and explores the connections between rhetorical theory, postcolonial and transnational feminist theories, and Latina/Chicana and Latin

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About the Editors and Contributors

American critical communication studies. Working from within each body of literature, she explores the counterhegemonic discourses produced by Latin American subjects, illustrating and building on theories of subjectivity and rhetorical agency. Michael Shirley, who holds doctorates in history and law, has taught world and American history at Eastern Illinois University since 1998. He is the author of articles on British radical politics and journalism, and is the coeditor of Splendidly Victorian: Essays in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British History in Honour of Walter L. Arnstein (Ashgate, 2001). Paul Franz Testa received a BA in government and economics from Cornell University. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he studies American politics. His research interests include political communication, mass behavior, and public policy. Grant Walsh-Haines is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. His research focuses on the strategies of gay and lesbian interest groups working through conservative channels (e.g., the Log Cabin Republicans) to impact change toward inclusion and equality for sexual orientation minorities. He teaches Introduction to Women’s Studies through the University of Wyoming. Edmund Wehrle is professor of history at Eastern Illinois University, where he has taught since 2000. He is author of “Between a River and a Mountain”: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005) and coauthor (with Lawrence Peskin) of America in the World: Ideas, Trade and Warfare (Johns Hopkins Press, 2011). He is currently working on a manuscript exploring the experience of Vietnamese employees of associated U.S. contractors during the Vietnam War.