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ChAPTer 4 | Political Correctives It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. . . . In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. —George Washington, Farewell Address In previous chapters the exploration of invoked public opinion in modern presidential rhetoric has focused on appeals to public opinion. Both bandwagon and identity appeals situate public opinion as a positive voice. In using them, modern presidents support a democratic assumption in the United States that“the people”should be a, if not the, guiding force in democratic politics.Despite this strong preference for the delegate model of representative democracy, the Constitution does not require representatives in government to enact the public’s will. In fact, the US republic is designed to dilute the direct and dangerous power of public opinion. Moreover, the lack of a singular and monolithic public opinion in contemporary politics suggests that there always will be those who get their way and those who do not.These realities belie common myths regarding US government,but they provide an opening for the president to resist or circumscribe the force of public opinion rhetorically. President George Washington’s entreaty for “enlightened” public opinion in the epigraph recognized the balance between rule by the people and rule based on the virtue of an enlightened people.1 Hence, the uncertain and unstable role of public opinion within democratic institutions means that presidents sometimes might defy invoked public opinion. When modern presidents contravene invoked public opinion,they risk alienating their constituency.As noted in chapter 1, the common perception that it better to go along with rather than against public opinion may indicate that when the president challenges public opinion, he is not fulfilling his charge to respect the sovereignty of the people. Because people rarely like being told that they do not matter or are wrong, the president who challenges public opinion risks inviting skepticism or resentment 96 • Chapter 4 among his supporters and emboldening his opponents. Moreover, the opposition might exploit his lack of popular support (as the Congress did to Carter throughout his presidency), reducing his political efficacy. Presidents mitigate the risks of arguing against invoked public opinion by offering rhetorical justifications in the form of what I call contra populum arguments, or arguments “against the people.” As with the previous kinds of appeal,“the people”who believe invoked public opinion in contra populum arguments might range from one citizen to the entire“American” collective.The case studies in the two previous chapters,Nixon’s challenge to the legitimacy of Vietnam protesters’opinions and Carter’s reprimand of citizens whose wastefulness was not helping to solve the energy crisis, illustrate the range of these argumentative justifications. Both Nixon and Carter tried to convince certain members of the audience to abandon their opinions in favor of the president’s initiative—which just happened to align with more widespread invoked public opinions. Contra populum appeals seem to prioritize presidential leadership of public opinion because they argue against current public opinion in order to mold future opinion in favor of the president’s conclusion.These efforts at leadership usually include two main components: the president identifies a flaw in an invoked public opinion,and he replaces it with alternative decision-making criteria. It seems reasonable that modern presidents would provide an alternative when challenging an invoked public opinion because such challenges tend to refute the opinions of the very people to whom they are speaking.As such, contra populum arguments function as correctives to invoked public opinion. Scholars might classify the corrective efforts of modern presidents in numerous ways, but my approach classifies contra populum appeals as fitting one of three kinds: fact, value, or policy. These categories refer not to the type of invoked opinion that modern presidents refute but to the consideration toward which the presidents orient audience judgment. Although modern presidents do not categorize their correctives explicitly along these three lines, the typology, which dates back to Aristotle, recognizes that different arguments speak to different types of judgment in political discourse.Ultimately this rhetorical heuristic is valuable because it emphasizes how modern presidents frame their argumentative conclusions in relation to ideas seemingly more secure, agreeable, and logical than invoked public opinion. In the next section I summarize this typology and use it to illustrate the corrective function of modern presidential contra populum appeals.Then, [3.145.178.240] Project MUSE (2024-04-26...

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