Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency

Forum on the Future of the Presidency Rhetorical Challenges to the Presidency Robert E. Denton, Jr. In their recent and comprehensive review of scholarship on the "rhetorical presidency ," Mary Stuckey and Frederick Antczak argue that the transformation of the office has resulted in an increase in presidential speech, a change in the nature and meaning of that speech, an erosion of the traditional means of governance, and an increase in the president's ceremonial rather than substantive role.1 For Richard Ellis, the rise of the rhetorical presidency reflects the democratization of the presidency . But he questions the very viability of the rhetorical presidency in the twentyfirst century.2 Can the presidency be a truly democratic institution? Can a unitary president embody the interests of a diverse nation? Can a president, no matter how eloquent or loquacious, forge meaningful links with the public? As we approach the next millennium, there are four challenges facing future presidents that will impact the nature of the "rhetorical presidency" in the twentyfirst century. First is the nature of audience. Of course, all effective communication is audience centered. However, the dilemma for presidents is "who is the audience?" Congress? Opinion elites? Citizens? Party regulars? The bureaucracy? The world or international community? The difficulty is that specific messages, depending upon the audience, can appear contradictory or may alienate some listeners. An aggressive legislative agenda may well be received very differently by citizens at large, the established bureaucracy, or party regulars. As an example, think of Clinton's "don't ask/don't tell" policy for gays in the military. It mobilized the opposition, cut short his honeymoon, alienated the military establishment, initially thrilled a core constituent group, but puzzled the general public. The same complications were true of the health care debate of 1994 and will be true for pending future discussions on social security and Medicare funding. Robert E. Denton, Jr. is the W. Thomas Rice Chair and Director of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets Center for leader Development at Virginia Polytechnic State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. © Rhetoric & Public Affairs Vol. 3, No. 3, 2000, pp. 445-51 ISSN 1094-8392 446 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Traditionally, communication is thought to be the primary means through which a nation forges a common identity, a common purpose, and a common resolve. However, it is becoming more difficult to provide a unified message to many different audiences simultaneously. Today, the rhetorical strategies of identification , transcendence, level of abstraction or inclusion are less effective. An irony of the explosion of communication technologies is the shift by mass media toward smaller and smaller target audiences. "Narrowcasting" instead of "broadcasting" is the norm. Narrowcasting directs media channels to specific segments of the audience. One downside of the new information society is social fragmentation . Social groups communicate among members and become better able to customize culture for their own interests to the exclusion of others. Joseph Straubhaar and Robert LaRose caution, "with less and less shared information, culture fragments and nation-states could dissolve in chaos. At some point, we would no longer be a nation of Americans, or even of Anglo, African, Asian, or Hispanic Americans, but a disjointed collection of cults and splinter groups."3 From a political perspective, special interest groups utilize the latest communication strategies and techniques to activate their constituencies. As the public becomes more fragmented, it loses its social coherence. For Peter Dahlgren, the public "becomes reduced to a group of spectators whose acclaim is to be periodically mobilized , but whose intrusion in fundamental political questions is to be minimized."4 In terms of the rhetorical presidency, audiences have become too numerous, too diverse, and too political. Indeed, according to Bruce Gronbeck, the modern electronic media and our pursuit of the democratic ideal have produced a fragmented and splintered society.5 As citizens, we are separated from each other by many demographic, psychographic , ideological, and thematic variables that allow presidents and politicians to appeal to us around specific clusters of beliefs, attitudes, and values. The more we divide audiences, the less potential there is for unity and appeal to commonplaces. The second challenge, globalization, is related to that of audience, but magnifies the dilemma. Globalization...