Presidents and Protestors: Political Rhetoric in the 1960s

By Theodore O. Windt

An excellent and lucid introduction to the study of political rhetoric

The decade of the 1960s was a time of passionate politics and resounding rhetoric. The “resounding rhetoric,” from Kennedy’s celebrated inaugural address, to the outlandish antics of the Yippies, is the focus of this book. The importance of this volume is its consideration of both people in power (presidents) and people out of power (protesters), and its delineation of the different rhetorical bases that each had to work from in participating in the politics of the 1960s.

Presidents and Protesters places rhetorical acts within their specific political contexts, changing the direction of previous rhetorical studies from the sociological to the historical-political. Above all, this is an intellectual history of the 1960s as seen through the rhetoric of the participants, which ultimately shows that the major participants utilized every form of political discourse available and, consequently, exhausted not only themselves but the rhetorical forms as well.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780817389390

Book preview

Presidents and Protesters

STUDIES IN RHETORIC AND COMMUNICATION

General Editors:

E. Culpepper Clark

Raymie E. McKerrow

David Zarefsky

Hear O Israel:

The History of American Jewish Preaching, 1654–1970

Robert V. Friedenberg

A Theory of Argumentation

Charles Arthur Willard

Elite Oral History Discourse:

A Study of Cooperation and Coherence

Eva M. McMahan

Computer-Mediated Communication:

Human Relationships in a Computerized World

James W. Chesebro and Donald G. Bonsall

Popular Trials:

Rhetoric, Mass Media, and the Law

Edited by Robert Hariman

Presidents and Protesters:

Political Rhetoric in the 1960s

Theodore Otto Windt, Jr.

Presidents and Protesters

Political Rhetoric in the 1960s

Theodore Otto Windt, Jr.

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa and London

Copyright  ©  1990 by

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487–0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Science-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Windt, Theodore.

Presidents and protesters: political rhetoric in the 1960s / Theodore Otto Windt, Jr.

       p.       cm. — (Studies in rhetoric and communication)

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 0-8173-0588-2 (alk. paper)

  1.  United States—Politics and government—1961–1963.  2.   United States—Politics and government—1963–1969.  3.  Rhetoric—Political aspects—United States—History—20th century.  4.  Presidents—United States—History—20th century.  5.  Vietnamese Conflict. 1961–1975—Protest movements.  6.  Peace movements—United States—History—20th century.  I.  Title.   II.  Series.

 E841.W55       1990

 808.53'0883512—dc20

90-35831

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-8939-0 (electronic)

For my wife,

Beth,

and my sons,

Ted III and Thad

Contents

Preface

Presidents

1. Presidential Rhetoric: Perspectives

2. The Crisis Rhetoric of President John F. Kennedy: The First Two Years

3. The Crisis Rhetoric of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Year

4. Americanizing the Vietnam War: President Johnson’s Press Conference of July 28, 1965

5. Understanding Richard Nixon: A Psycho-Rhetorical Analysis

Protesters

6. A Rhetorical Sketch of Protests: Perspectives

7. Liberal Protest: Procedural Politics and Deliberative Rhetoric

8. The Administrative Rhetoric of Credibility: Changing the Issues

9. The Dynamics of Ideology and Forms of Ideological Rhetoric

10. The Diatribe or the Subversion of Delicacy

11. Postscript to a Decade

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

In his critique of the published papers from the Temple University conference on genres of political discourse, Richard A. Joslyn, a political scientist, observed: some of the analyses of political discourse in this volume strip the rhetoric of its political meaning. Political beliefs, worldviews, ideologies, and intentions are occasionally mentioned, but only in passing, in favor of attention to the more stylistic aspects of the discourse. While this is not uniformly true of all or even most of the chapters in this volume, it is troubling when political discourse is depoliticized so thoroughly.¹ Earlier in his essay Joslyn listed a series of topics that an examination of political discourse ought to reveal: the rhetor’s political worldview, the rhetor’s behavioral intentions, the locus and intensity of political conflict, the locus and legitimacy of political power, and the role of the public. Taken together, these topics are quite different from the constellation of topics addressed by many of the participants at the conference. In his critique Joslyn made the political perspective even more specific by posing questions under each topic that he believed anyone concerned with political discourse ought to address. Among these questions:

1. What does the discourse reveal about the belief system of the rhetor?

2. How may we characterize the belief system of the rhetor—populist, progressive, liberal, libertarian, conservative, anarchist, internationalist, and so forth?

3. What does the discourse reveal about the predispositions of the rhetor?

4. What does the discourse reveal about the holding and exercise of power in political systems?

5. What expectations or norms about popular participation are revealed and encouraged in political discourse?

6. Can the mode of analysis distinguish the rhetoric of liberals from conservatives, of moralists from pragmatists, of ideologues from nonideologues, or of isolationists from internationalists?²

These questions, direct questions about politics and political discourse, are some of the questions addressed in this volume.

Presidents and Protesters is about political rhetoric in the 1960s. All the chapters are bound together by the fact that they deal with the 1960s, a time of passionate politics and resounding rhetoric. The resounding rhetoric is the focus. I have attempted to deal with both the rhetoric of authorities and the rhetoric of protest. Thus, the first part consists of five chapters on presidential rhetoric, or to be more precise, an introductory chapter on presidential rhetoric and four chapters on aspects of the rhetoric of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. The second part concentrates on the rhetorical development of protests during the 1960s, specifically on an analysis of the political stances that people took toward protest and the rhetorical genres they used or created as consequences of those stances.

It cannot be stressed strongly enough that these critiques are about political rhetoric only during the 1960s, not the 1970s or 1980s. Those are topics for other books. My interest here is in analyzing some of the significant rhetorical efforts of one decade and, following Joslyn, describing the political significance of those efforts. It is always tempting to see the past through the lens of the present, especially when one considers the presidents and the protests, but I have sought not to succumb to that temptation.

But this book is also bound together by critical perspectives and methods that are brought to bear on the study of political rhetoric. Each chapter examines different political stances that various people and groups took toward issues, events, and even politics itself during the decade. The political rhetoric originates in those stances and the events or attitudes that created them. It is the political stance or the way someone views and interprets events and issues that generates the rhetoric intended to justify that stance and to persuade others that such an interpretation should be believed and supported. Examination of the political stance an advocate takes is the first step in rhetorical criticism. The chapters on protest examine four different political stances toward protest.

The second step in criticism is to analyze the public discourse. My analysis draws heavily on the theory of rhetorical genres, that is, the notion that some forms of persuasive argument are repeated, either by others in similar situations or by a particular person.³ Genre analysis of the public discourse requires the critic to elucidate the various topoi or lines of argument that constitute and define that genre and to understand the politics and psychology that inform those topoi. In the case of President John F. Kennedy, I examine the various forms of crisis rhetoric that he used when speaking as president, noting as well the occasions when he did not resort to such a rhetoric. President Nixon, I believe, presents a different case. Much of his rhetoric came from his mind-set about how politics functions. Thus, in his case one is looking at a psychopolitical genre that differs considerably from other forms of political rhetoric. In the analysis of protest, I have sought to delineate a number of different forms that came from the political stances that people took toward issues and politics. However, I do not feel that genre or any other method of criticism ought to be a critical straitjacket. In the case of President Johnson’s opening statement at his July 1965 press conference, I am more interested in the ways in which he used the prevailing anticommunist ideology to defend his policy of massive escalation of the war and the ways he sought to deflect public attention from that decision. Nonetheless, it is the lines of argument that people use to attempt to persuade that most interest me as a critic and that provide a means of studying both the techniques and the content of persuasive acts.

The third step in criticism is the analysis of symbolic acts committed to confirm a rhetorical effort. Anyone who depends on rhetoric as a resource of political power must also depend to a large extent on personal credibility to make the rhetoric work. Symbolic acts are part and parcel of the rhetorical process. Thus, advocates often act in symbolic ways to demonstrate their sincere (and serious) commitment as well as their willingness to act upon what they have said. Such a critical approach does not minimize the results that may come from such actions. And there may be dire consequences. One thinks of the revolutionary orator who plants a bomb to demonstrate his or her commitment to revolution. That people may be hurt or maimed or even killed by such an action should never be ignored. But what I believe is equally important, especially to understanding rhetoric, is that such a bomb generally does not create a revolution, but instead demonstrates commitment to revolution and thus gives authentic identification to that revolutionary orator.

Furthermore, in a mass society and in a nuclear world, one sometimes can act only symbolically or may want to act only symbolically. For example, President Kennedy viewed the missiles Premier Khrushchev put in Cuba in 1962 as a threat to the United States. That was Kennedy’s rhetorical stance. But he was whipsawed by the choices he had. He wanted the missiles removed, but he did not want to start World War III. Therefore, after demanding removal of the missiles, he acted symbolically to demonstrate to Khrushchev that he meant business. The evacuation of Americans from Guantanamo, the naval quarantine of Cuba, and the other decisions he announced on October 22, 1962, were intended to demonstrate that he meant what he said without going directly to war with either Cuba or the Soviet Union. All of these acts were fraught with danger, but they turned out to be essentially symbolic; they were meant to convince Khrushchev how seriously Kennedy viewed the situation and how deliberately he intended to act. As one reads these chapters, one should realize how important such symbolic acts are to the rhetorical process. Put quite simply, people commit such acts to be taken seriously. Indeed, wasn’t the American war in Vietnam fought principally to prove to the communist world that the United States would resist communist expansion? For policy makers, this symbolic or proxy war was a realistic alternative to all-out war with the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of China.

Finally, the critical process requires a judgment about rhetorical efforts. Political rhetoric mandates political judgments. Politics is not science or philosophy, although each may play a role within the practice of politics. But still, politics is politics, and that is often forgotten. And just as scientists and philosophers would be greatly offended by having their work judged by political standards, so too politicians are sensitive to having their work judged by standards other than political ones. I have tried to take that into account.

So, too, I have tried to rescue political rhetoric from the current fashion, to analyze it by using literary methods (metaphoric and cultural criticism) or sociological methods (theories of social movements) and so on. Instead, the view presented here is a political-historical view of a very political decade and the categories of rhetoric used for analysis are therefore political ones.

A political perspective mandates a significant change in the rhetorical critic’s conception of audience. In the long ago day before mass media, a speaker spoke to an audience that had assembled to hear the speech. It was quite appropriate under those circumstances to talk about the audience in the singular. But with the rise of mass communication the singular usage is obsolete. There are multiple audiences for every public presentation. And with multiple audiences there are multiple responses. Therefore, throughout these chapters I talk about different audiences (or to put it in strictly political terms, different constituencies) and how they responded to rhetorical efforts.

In making judgments through the course of this book, I have employed varying standards (except when it comes to the issues of human rights and the possibility of human extinction), inasmuch as the very different kinds of political rhetoric considered here demand such diversity. One judges a specific presidential speech differently from the way one judges ideological discourse, especially when one is dealing with genres of protest rhetoric. Many of these differences will become clear as one reads the essays. However, let me orient the reader by citing a few differences.

In the case of a presidential speech, the critic asks whether the speech presented a plausible definition of the situation, whether reasonable arguments were marshaled in response to the situation, whether language was used well or misused, what the effects of the speech were, and a variety of other questions depending on the speech, the speaker, and the occasion.

But can a critic ask the same kinds of questions of an ideologue? What does one say when a feminist ideologue, for instance, says, All men have oppressed women? Or how does the critic respond to a contrary truth claim, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles? How does one prove or disprove such statements? Indeed, how does the judicious critic deal with the entire history of all hitherto existing society or with all men and all women? How does the critic determine whatever it is that history proves? How does a critic respond to all statements, be they statements made by the left or the right? Quite simply, either the critic accepts or rejects such statements, or the critic asks different kinds of questions for ideological claims than one asks when dealing with truth claims about individual incidents or events.

When it comes to ideological rhetoric, then, I take my critical cue from Henri Lefebvre, who wrote: The Marxian sociologist will study the emergence of forms, the way forms react on contents, structures on processes. The results of the processes of change illumine the latter retrospectively on the one hand, and modify them on the other.⁴

If rhetorical critic is substituted for Marxian sociologist, one will have an apt distillation of the approach I am using to ideological and cynical rhetoric: the study of the forms and structures of that discourse and their interaction with content and with each other in the process of protest and change.

In attempting to distinguish ideological rhetoric from other forms of political rhetoric, the critic runs into a fundamental problem. The problem is in the very word and concept ideology itself. What does it mean? There seem to be as many meanings for the word as there are people to use it.⁵ Add to this problem another that occurs even when ideologues agree upon what it means. Alvin Gouldner noted that Marxism, as an ideology, can be used as a scientific critique (theory) or as a guide to action (practice).⁶ In the 1960s the search for an ideology had both as its goals. However, in the past ten years or so (at least in the United States) the use of ideology as critique has been more dominant than ideology as a practical plan of action. In dealing with the rhetoric of the 1960s, these different uses can become confusing.

Lest the reader be misled into thinking that ideology is the sole province of the left, let me say that the right has had its share of ideologies. The most insidious of these certainly was fascism. In America the most prominent and powerful ideology is anticommunist. Michael Parenti wrote: Endowed with an imposing ideology, and a set of vivid images and sacred dogmas, it commands the psychic and material resources of the most potent industrial-military arsenal in the history of mankind. Its forces are deployed on every continent, its influence is felt in every major region, and it is capable of acts which—when ascribed to the communists—are considered violent and venal. Our fear that communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anticommunism already has. If America has an ideology, or a national purpose, it is anti-communism.⁷ Reactionary groups, such as the John Birch Society, and particular individuals, such as Joseph McCarthy, took the anticommunist ideology as a creed, one that explained every foreign and domestic failure (and some triumphs as well) in American life.

But this analysis is about protest in the 1960s, and that protest was led by the left. Therefore, I have not analyzed the ideology or rhetoric of the right, except as it was expressed by authorities justifying policies or used by other authorities in responding to protests.

Although the word and concept ideology is used in the chapters on presidential rhetoric (especially in connection with anticommunist ideology), it is not carefully defined until Chapter Six and then expanded upon in Chapter Nine. I have chosen to define the concept in a narrow sense of a doctrinaire discourse that strives for a universal apprehension of social and political reality, its major agents for change and reaction to change, and the motivations that compel agents to act as they do. This choice was not arbitrary. Ideology has been defined and used in that manner by radicals and reactionaries during much of the twentieth century. But I would be remiss not to note that it was probably from my early studies of Khrushchev’s rhetoric that I was influenced in this direction rather than another. Even more important, however, much of the discourse that came out of one segment of the protests in the 1960s was in form and structure very much like the doctrinaire uses of ideology in the past. That structure of discourse set itself off from other kinds of protest rhetoric in definitive ways that are analyzed and distinguished in some of these chapters.

In dealing with ideological rhetoric, my attempt has not been to resolve the controversies over the term, or to come to some definitive answer about what ideology really is. That subject is so vast and the writings on ideology so extensive that to attempt a full scholarly treatment of it would require—at the very least—another volume. Instead, I have chosen to use one concept of ideology consistently as a clarifying concept in contradistinction to other forms of political discourse. In addition, I have often used the designation doctrinaire with ideology to remind the reader that my use of it is different from the more expansive and elastic uses of the term by other scholars. For whatever theoretical weaknesses this traditional conception of ideology has, it helps illuminate several forms of political discourse that emerged during the 1960s.

This book is both an analytical and a personal book.

Let me conclude with the personal. What I have written is informed as much by my history as it is by my study of the period. I came of age in the 1960s, and in more ways than one. I was involved in the civil rights movement, in the free speech battle at Ohio State, in the black power movement, and in the antiwar protests. During that time I signed petitions, gave speeches, attended long strategy sessions, and participated in sectarian debates. The decade was intensely political, and I—like so many other young people at the time—became intense about my politics.

When the Cambodian invasion occurred and the protests against that invasion seemed to have little effect on President Nixon, I retired from active participation in protest. (And I mean the last part of the previous sentence with all the ironic ambiguity that precision in language can muster.) I began instead to teach courses in presidential rhetoric and the rhetoric of American radicalism in my attempts to understand the tumultuous decade I had lived through. Soon thereafter, I added a course in cynicism. Now, two decades later, I focus my efforts on scholarship in my professional field—rhetoric—to present part of the results of thinking and teaching about the 1960s.

Some of the chapters in this book were first published as independent essays, but each has been revised for this volume. The analysis of Kennedy’s rhetoric surrounding the test-ban treaty was previously published in a slightly different form (Seeking Detente with Superpowers: John F. Kennedy at American University) in Essays in Presidential Rhetoric, edited by Theodore Windt with Beth Ingold, 2nd ed., (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1987), pp. 71–84, and is used by permission. The analysis of Kennedy’s rhetoric after the Bay of Pigs was previously published in a slightly different form also in Essays in Presidential Rhetoric, pp. 77–82, and is used by permission. The chapter on administrative rhetoric first appeared as Administrative Rhetoric: An Undemocratic Response to Protest in Communication Quarterly 30 (1982): 245–250, and is used by permission.

Chapter 10 on the diatribe requires special mention. A different version was previously published under the title The Diatribe: Last Resort for Protest by the Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (February 1972): 1–14. (Used by permission.) However, my thinking about cynicism has changed so much over the years that this chapter is almost an entirely new essay. I had originally believed cynicism to be a form of ideological rhetoric and took that line in the original essay. I no longer believe that. Rather, I now see cynicism as an entirely different kind of thinking from both procedural political thinking and ideological thinking. This new version then incorporates those changes.

There are several people I wish to thank for their encouragement and assistance. James Chesebro and Karlyn K. Campbell read an early draft of the chapters on protest back in 1974 (I believe it was) and offered valuable criticism. More important, the professional encouragement they extended developed into close friendships that have grown over the years. I want to thank Ray E. McKerrow and Robert V. Friedenberg for their careful and insightful critiques of the current manuscript. Mrs. Sally Samuels typed the bibliography and saved me enormous headaches by so doing. Barbara B. Reitt did a superb job of copyediting that not only caught errors but also sharpened style.

Needless to say, none of these is responsible for what is written in the following pages, but I do value greatly their contributions.

The dedication says it all about what I owe to my family, and even that is not enough.

The decade of the 1960s was a time of great passion. Passionate oratory resonated throughout the land. The diversity of events and people created and very nearly exhausted an equally diverse set of rhetorical forms and ideas. This volume attempts to note and examine those many different forms, as well as analyze some of the ideas they contained. I do not presume that these chapters are the final or definitive word on the resounding rhetoric of the period. But I do hope they are a contribution to a better understanding of some things that were thought and spoken during that time.

Theodore Otto Windt, Jr.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Presidents

1

Presidential Rhetoric

Perspectives

Political rhetoric creates the arena of political reality within which political thought and action take place. Among the politicians who seek to erect this linguistic colosseum, none is more powerful than the president of the United States. In national affairs presidents establish the terms of discourse. Presidents speak with an authority, especially in foreign affairs, that no senator or representative or citizen can match. Moreover, modern presidents have instant access to television to present their messages to the public and thus can set the initial terms for argument about issues and politics. Their messages create the arenas in which others will do rhetorical and political battle.

Equally important, discourse is a source of power for presidents.¹ Contemporary presidents now have the option of going public over the head of Congress and directly to the American people to marshal public support for their policies.² In doing so, presidents attempt to build the most persuasive case possible for the policies they advocate or the positions they defend. Politics is not an academic seminar. A president is not a distinguished professor occupying an endowed chair of American government. And the primary purpose of presidential rhetoric is not to educate, but to assist in governing, to provide one part of presidential leadership. Every recent presidency has been accused of news management.³ Often, this accusation has been made by journalists and others because presidents have presented only their side of an issue before the public. David Gergen, director of communications in the first Reagan administration, answered this criticism succinctly: Mr. Gergen [said] that, whereas the news media had an obligation to ‘describe reality’ and air all viewpoints, a president did not. ‘He has several responsibilities,’ Mr. Gergen said. ‘One is to describe reality, and one is to lead.’ He then said that Mr. Reagan’s use of one-sided anecdotes helped him ‘lead, show direction, emphasize and advocate a point of view.’⁴ Such a description of the function of presidential discourse is a distinctly rhetorical description. But it is not merely the use of one-sided anecdotes that makes up presidential rhetoric. It is the entire way in which presidents present their case: from the choice and definition of issues to the political ways in which they describe those issues to the arguments they marshal to support positions to the audiences they choose to address. Giandomenico Majone noted that public policy is made of language and . . . argument is central in all stages of the policy process.⁵

But political language cannot be used capriciously. Politicians, especially presidents, are both liberated and imprisoned by language. They are free to define issues within the context of their political beliefs, traditions, circumstances, past history, and political affiliations. Once having spoken for the public record, they have to defend their words and the policies that issued from them. Other politicians, journalists, and the public (on occasion) demand consistency. Thus, political language and rhetoric become a two-edged sword.

Two of the most powerful weapons in the rhetorical arsenal of modern presidents are: (1) the power to define issues; and (2) the ethos (or what political scientists call the prestige) of the presidential office. Let us examine these two in more detail.

The Power of Definition

The starting point for any study of presidential rhetoric is the political definitions that presidents assign to events, policies, and people. These definitions come from presidential beliefs, from unique worldviews, from individual political psychologies, from their political history, from advice given by advisers, and from a multitude of other sources both conscious and not so conscious. Such definitions can reinforce the prevailing view about politics and issues or can modify or change—if the rhetoric is successful—that prevailing view.⁶ Presidents may also define an issue in such a way that heightens the importance given one issue over another. Put it another way, political language gives political meaning to events that might otherwise be seen or interpreted outside a political context.

Scholars often talk about television as creating mediated realities. That is, television news, in particular, picks and chooses what events or people to broadcast and thus assigns significance to each. But at a deeper level all language does the same. By choosing to describe an event or an experience with one word or set of words rather than others, a person has chosen to assign a certain meaning to that event or experience rather than other meanings. Specific words and language, in general, provide the link between experience and meaning, and it is the choice of what words to use that creates meaning.

To explain what I mean, let me use a specific example that will serve not only to illustrate my point but also will give an opening perspective on the two chapters on President Kennedy’s crisis rhetoric. Let me begin with an examination of the rhetorical nature of political crises.

Crisis is one of those politically evocative words that became popular during the Kennedy years as an inflated description of the making of hard decisions. But crisis is only a word, a descriptive word applied to an event or series of events to give them meaning. Events rarely carry their own meaning with them. People use words to apply meaning to events. And crisis is a singular word that Kennedy used repeatedly to describe and give meaning to selected events during his administration. What, then, are the characteristics of political crises pertinent to understanding how definition works in rhetoric and to understanding the crisis rhetoric of President Kennedy?

First, political crises are primarily rhetorical. Presidents announce to the people, usually over national television, that a situation critical to the United States exists. They contend that the situation requires decisive action and call upon Congress and the public for full support. Invariably, the policy advocated is elevated from a political decision to an issue involving world peace (in foreign affairs) or an attack on the public interest (in domestic affairs). Situations rarely create crises. Rather, presidents’ perceptions of situations and the rhetoric they use to describe them mark events as crises. Because modern presidents have immediate access to television to give their interpretations of critical situations, usually they can implement policies with a minimum of opposition. In fact, a crisis speech is often given to announce actions already taken by the president.

The second characteristic of a political crisis is that presidents can depend on tremendous public support for whatever policy they pursue in situations they deem "critical. Nelson Polsby observed: Invariably, the popular response to a President during international crises is favorable, regardless of the wisdom of the policies he pursues."⁷ Letters and telegrams will range from 2-1 upward in support of presidents and their actions. People support the president overwhelmingly in these situations because they see the president as the personification of the country.

One can further discern the rhetorical nature of crises by noting the time that elapses between a precipitating event and the crisis. Generally, dictionaries describe a crisis as a turning point, a decisive moment. With the Truman Doctrine speech of March 1947 (surely a crisis speech), three weeks elapsed (February 21–March 12) between the time the British government informed the Truman administration that it could no longer provide aid to Greece in that civil war and the time of Truman’s speech. In the Cuban missile crisis, six days passed (October 16 to 22) between the time when President Kennedy was first informed about the missiles and the time of his crisis speech. With President Nixon’s Cambodia speech, no concrete timetable can be given about when he received information about a specific external event or set of events that caused his crisis speech. Indeed, only ten days before he announced the invasion of Cambodia, Nixon had assured the American public in a nationally televised address that the policy of Vietnamization was progressing so well that he could withdraw an additional 150,000 troops from Vietnam. If the events that provoked the crisis had been inherently so critical, there would not have been this long time elapsing between information about those events and the speech—that is, if the situation itself defined the crisis. Certainly, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt took only one day before he rushed to Congress to request a declaration of war. Thus, a crisis that does not involve a direct external military attack on the United States is a political event rhetorically created by the president in which the public predictably rallies to his defense. But only presidents can create such crises, and the reason for that lies in the ethos of the office, the second major weapon in the presidents’ rhetorical arsenal.

The Ethos of the Presidency

In the conduct of foreign affairs, the American presidency, originally conceived as a democratic executive office, has evolved into an elected monarchy, a striking example of modern Caesarism. The multitude of writings about the office and the popular perceptions of it have created a reverence for the presidency to the point that the office and the person who occupies it are frequently confused with the true and only destiny of the nation. During the debates about the federal Constitution, Charles Pickney stated that he supported a strong federal executive, but he feared prophetically that extending to the president the powers over war and peace would render the Executive a monarchy, of the worst kind, to wit an elective one.⁸

In the popular mythology, and even in scholarly circles, the presidents are different from any other political officials. More is expected of them even as less is suspected about them. They personify American government. The president is President of all the People. In the words of Clinton Rossiter in his popular book on the presidency: He reigns, but he also rules; he symbolizes the people, but he also runs their government.⁹ There is a reverence that surrounds the presidency, and much of this reverence comes from the fact that people believe that the president has superior information and knowledge about national affairs. James MacGregor Burns and Jack W. Peltason, certainly not unsophisticated scholars of the presidency, wax romantic about this aspect of the presidency: "The President has not only the authority but the capacity to act. For example, he has at his command unmatched sources of information. To his desk come facts channeled from the entire world. Diplomatic missions, military observers, undercover agents, personal agents, technical experts gather tons of material which are analyzed by experts in the State Department and elsewhere. Since the President draws on the informed thinking of hundreds of specialists, his pronouncements have a tone of authority.¹⁰ Inherent in these descriptions of the president, regardless of who that person is, is a predisposition to believe the president, a predisposition that does not exist in the same extreme degree for any other official. In the words so often used in letters to editors in newspapers, the President knows best. The psychology persistent here makes the presidential decisions seem wise and prudent even when they turn out to be stupid. The aura of reverence shapes a will to believe presidents when they speak, and more often than not, places the burden of disproving any presidential statement upon those who disagree.¹¹ George Reedy, former press secretary to President Johnson, concluded: The President’s ability to place his views before the public is important primarily because he can usually set the terms of the national debate—and anyone who can set the terms of debate can win it."¹²

Nowhere are the advantages of presidential rhetoric more dramatically seen than in foreign policy issues that may involve Americans in military conflict. When such events erupt, political definitions, the ethos of the office, and the president’s unique rhetorical arsenal converge to create a mighty force for action. A brief explanation may clarify what I mean.

The conventional view of the Constitution is that Congress declares war and presidents make war through their powers as commander in chief. The corollary is that presidents can commit American military to conflicts only after Congress declares war.¹³ However, the legal status of the presidential warmaking powers is not so simple.

Supreme Court decisions have greatly expanded the president’s powers in ways that impinge on rhetoric and also depend on rhetoric. The most significant of these decisions was the decision rendered in the Prize cases argued before the Court between February 10 and 25, 1863. The constitutional issue in this case that concerns us was President Lincoln’s authority to commit acts of war (the blockade of southern ports) for three months prior to Congress’s declaration of war on July 13, 1861. By a 5–4 decision, the Court proclaimed: If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special legislative authority.¹⁴ This landmark decision set a precedent for presidents to wage defensive wars without waiting for declarations from Congress.

Over the years presidential power in this area has greatly expanded. The authority claimed by President Truman to commit troops to Korea, where the United States had not been invaded by a foreign nation, was most important. The legal rationale for Truman’s actions were spelled out by the Department of State: The President, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, has full control over the use thereof. He also has authority to conduct the foreign relations of the United States. Since the beginning of United States history, he has, on numerous occasions, utilized these powers in sending armed forces abroad.¹⁵ These claims that form the basis of modern presidential authority to commit troops in support of foreign policy objectives were claimed on the basis of plenary presidential power and inherent powers independent of Congress. Rossiter concluded: The entry into Korea was an unalloyed act of independent power.¹⁶

During the 1960s presidents expanded this warmaking power through additional grants of authority or through claims of inherent power based on these precedents.¹⁷ In doing so, they made a prophet of James M. Carlisle, who argued against President Lincoln’s assertion of authority in the Prize cases. He stated that the argument for deciding that the president had acted legally was founded upon a figure of speech, which is repugnant to the genius of republican institutions and . . . to our written Constitution. In his prophetic mood, he concluded: "It makes the President . . . the impersonation of the country, and invokes for him the power and right to use all the forces he can command to ‘save the life of the nation.’ The principle of self-defense is asserted, and all power is claimed for the President. This is to assert that the Constitution contemplated and tacitly provided that the President should be dictator, and all constitutional government be at an end whenever he should think that ‘the life of the nation’ is in danger."¹⁸ Regardless of what one thinks about the decisions of the Supreme Court and subsequent presidents’ warmaking actions, one cannot escape recognizing the role definition plays in the assumption of authority and the need for a persuasive (rhetorical) justification for that definition. And since the Prize cases established the president’s authority to act defensively, presidents have found an irresistible justification in the argument that they are acting to protect American lives that are in danger.¹⁹ Buttressed by the immense prestige and mystique of the ethos of the office, such arguments are compelling. In foreign policy, especially during the 1960s, these propositions provided presidents with enormous latitude for action.

But even as we assert the importance of the discourse presidents use, we also have to confront questions about the authenticity of that discourse. Is it actually the president’s words or only the words of professional speechwriters put in the president’s mouth? Is the rhetoric intended to reflect accurately the ideas and