Abstract

Rhetorical analyses of foreign policy tend to focus on the president as chief executive and commander in chief. Yet the U.S. Constitution structures a struggle for power between the president and Congress. In this study of a 1994 federal debate, three discourse trajectories are assembled to show how President Clinton's actions in Haiti unsettled traditions of advocacy, opened questions of obligation within collective memory, and launched presidential supporters and opponents to create and debate public memories of war and race. Thus we offer a shared powers inquiry, as a complement to the rhetorical presidency, in the interpretation and critique of foreign policy discourse.

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