The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents

Extract

The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents. By Colleen J. Shogan. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. 230p. $45.00 cloth, $22.95 paper.

This work offers a relevant, theoretically rich discussion of rhetorical strategies pursued by presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush. Colleen Shogan's accomplishment is striking not only because it is the rare presidential study that accounts for all the nation's chief executives but also because it exists at the intersection of two important, and in some respects competing, theories of presidential power, Stephen Skowronek's (1993) The Politics Presidents Make and Jeffrey Tulis's (1987) The Rhetorical Presidency. Like Skowronek, Shogan recovers the premodern presidencies, which are too often ignored, and links them to their successors by focusing on comparable political environments. This allows for fascinating and surprising conclusions across eras. Like Tulis, she focuses on rhetoric as a strategic tool that, on the one hand, can help presidents overcome constitutional limitations but, on the other hand, can raise public expectations beyond reasonable bounds. Also like Tulis, she finds Woodrow Wilson to be an important transitional figure, albeit in a more limited way. Far from introducing moralizing to presidential rhetoric, Shogan demonstrates that Wilson was the first to engage heavily in moralizing without reference to a specific policy goal, a tactic continued by Wilson's successors.