The Rhetorical Presidency of George H.W. Bush (review)

As scholars busy themselves making sense of George W. Bush's rhetorical presidency, they could easily lose sight of the current president's father and his own rhetorical legacy. Fortunately, Martin J. Medhurst will not let this happen. His latest edited book, The Rhetorical Presidency of George H. W. Bush, represents a thorough, engaging rhetorical analysis of almost every aspect of the elder Bush's rhetorical activity as president of the United States. Each chapter combines standard rhetorical methods with careful archival research to provide fresh and insightful looks into the first Bush presidency. The thesis that runs throughout is that, rhetorically speaking, the Bush presidency failed largely because Bush himself not only showed "no appreciation of the role of rhetoric in the actual formulation of policy, he did not appreciate the inventional and judgmental aspects of the art" (4). When Bush entered office in January 1989, he believed that "he was no Ronald Reagan and could not hope to duplicate Reagan's role as the 'Great Communicator'" (3); and he separated politics from government, the former of which he associated with rhetoric and the latter with the more principled art of creating "broad, consensus-building activities undertaken for the common good" (10). These factors, combined with several other rhetorical "blunders" (98), made for a Bush White House incapable of effecting "prudential action in ways that were both recognized and appreciated by the public at large" (4).

What were the blunders? Each succeeding chapter supplies answers to this question. Catherine L. Langford examines Bush's struggle with the "Vision Thing," at which he was rhetorically "inept" (20). The underlying difficulty was that Bush did not "create a public narrative that was simple, repetitive, familiar, and artistic" (21). Bush's narrative shortcomings revolved around his inability to identify clear enemies responsible for America's ills and an empowering "agency" that "commissioned presidential action" (32). The result was that Bush, unlike Reagan, failed "to fashion a narrative that captured the nation's attention or moved its people to action" (32).

Roy Joseph investigates the "eloquent symbols and metaphors" (83) in Bush's "New World Order" speeches, arguing that although the president articulated the goals of his vision, he consistently failed to demonstrate how to achieve them or what, precisely, his "vision" was. This omission left others to define a vision for Bush, thus transposing "what could have been a unifying rhetorical idiom . . . into a free-for-all interpretative utterance" (96–97).

Holly G. McIntush explores Bush's stance as "the education president" and finds his rhetoric on the subject wanting. Indeed, although the president sent two major education initiatives to Congress, "his actions lacked focus and were not adequately linked to the goals set forth in 1990 or to the reasons the public was urging reform" (107). Using archival material well, McIntush examines these initiatives and the rhetorical failures associated with them—namely, that Bush did not connect his specific education proposals and their goals to improvements in the American economy.

Bush's rather uneven relationship with the religious right is the subject of Amy Tilton Jones's chapter. She shows how Bush's speeches to religiously conservative audiences tried to firm up this relationship. Based on archival material of speech drafts, she analyzes problems associated with humor in religious addresses and closely examines how Bush supplied moral-religious justifications for the first Gulf War. The most informative part of this chapter deals with the 1992 Republican National Convention and the assortment of "harsh, embattled" (163) speeches delivered by the likes of Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, and Marilyn Quayle, which, juxtaposed with Mary Fisher's oration about treating HIV victims humanely, made for an overall rhetoric "that lauded family values, morals, and inclusions but in reality . . . combined contradictions and exclusion" (165).

Wynton C. Hall performs an important service by challenging political scientists who downplay or overlook the important role of rhetoric, especially when chief executives frame issues like economics. Analyzing...