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4 REMOVED VOLUNTEERS
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4 removed volunteers Presidents reflect their times. As much as any given president may frame or even change the course of American history, he is equally, if not more, constrained by the societal norms that helped him rise to power. The American people have often flirted with political outliers, but they have always eventually settled on a president who more clearly reflects their view of the world. So when a president speaks, he uses language and delivers arguments with the premise that the majority of the people understand. When one finds two presidents speaking in different terms, one can therefore presume that the country, not just the speaker, is different. Here, then, are two different presidential responses to similar national events. On January 6, 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his annual message to Congress. Unlike most other State of the Union addresses, with their laundry lists of national issues and policy recommendations, Roosevelt’s speech focused primarily on only one topic—the United States’ response to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the larger threat of the Axis powers. In making the case for the shift from supplying “weapons of war to Britain, Russia, and China” to active American military engagement, Roosevelt noted that “modern methods of warfare make it a task not only of shooting and fighting , but an even more urgent one of working and producing.” This working and producing were that “which collectively we call labor.” Such labor required that the American “workers stand ready to work long hours; to turn out more in a day’s work; to keep the wheels turning and the fires burning 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.” In addition to more work, Roosevelt told the American people that they should expect to sacrifice their easy access to raw materials (e.g., rubber, copper, and tin) and help support the war financially through higher taxes and purchasing government bonds. Ultimately, Roosevelt noted that the call to war “means cutting luxuries and other nonessentials . In a word, it means an ‘all-out’ war by individual effort and family effort in a united country.” Childers_04.indd 85 22/06/12 3:41 PM Sixty years later, George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress just nine days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While there were differences between this attack and that at Pearl Harbor, Bush’s speech, like Roosevelt’s before him, was an explicit call to war. However, despite their similar purpose, a great deal had changed in the intervening six decades. In explaining how the War on Terror was to be waged, for instance, Bush could not help but paint a very different picture of modern warfare: “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.” Bush also described a much more limited group of people who would be actively involved in the new war—“from FBI agents to intelligence operatives to the reservists we have called to active duty.” As for the American people, Bush spoke directly to them but did not ask them to make sacrifices or work long hours. Instead he told the people “to live your lives, and hug your children.” He also asked them “to continue to support the victims of this tragedy with your contributions. Those who want to give can go to a central source of information, libertyunites.org.” And, finally, Bush requested the people’s patience and their “continued participation and confidence in the American economy.” In making the case for war, both presidents understood the American people needed to feel included in the national response to the attacks. Such unifying appeals, communication scholars Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson tell us, are standard fare in presidential war rhetoric.1 In constituting their audiences, both men, moreover, offered suggestions for how the people should understand themselves. Roosevelt told the American people they were needed in the factories; Bush told them they were needed at the mall. Roosevelt asked them to work hard; Bush asked them to consume avidly. Roosevelt called for sacrifice; Bush called for patience and money. Roosevelt portrayed the American people as humble, hardworking citizens; Bush portrayed them as caring but impatient consumers. The American people to whom Bush spoke in 2001 were not, it seems, the same American people Roosevelt...