American Elections And The Rhetoric Of Political Change: Hyperbole, Anger, And Hope In U.S. Politics

Whatever else can be said about Donald Trump and the 2016 election¹—and many things are being and will continue to be said—he is widely understood as a harbinger of change.² He is also widely understood as creating the potential for change in ways that are well outside the norm for U.S. national politics, whether it is because he is bringing populism to national government,³ threatening the nation with a form of fascism,⁴ or merely creating change through a chaotic and disorganized administrative style.⁵ Whatever one thinks of his politics, there is widespread agreement that the Trump administration brings something new and different to the American political scene.⁶

Trump is also evidence for the uncertainty with which we face major political change. It is generally true, of course, that political observers, academics, and pundits constantly look for signs of political change. Comfortable with the routines of politics, they search for the things that stand out—the new, the different, that which is potentially game changing. Members of the mass media are especially prone to this tendency, as journalists seem to have an increasingly short attention span and perpetually look for the scandalous and the exceptional.⁷ But unlike journalists and pundits, many citizens find political change unsettling. They may not spend a lot of time thinking about politics, don't feel like they understand its nuances, and can be pretty easily overwhelmed by claims of newness.⁸ Other citizens may also find in politics a dreary kind of repetition; occupied with other things, they don't have a lot of information about institutions, processes, and individuals; they can have a hard time drawing distinctions; and any piece of negative news can serve as an indictment of the entire system.⁹ To put this another way, change can be both threatening and enticing. Dramatic political change will always take place in a certain kind of affective environment—anger and fear, hope and trepidation, are not unique to the Donald Trump presidency but always color the rhetoric of such moments.

The 2016 election, then, can be understood in a variety of ways: as the end point of a political trajectory;¹⁰ as an anomaly;¹¹ as evidence for the system's inherent misogyny and racism;¹² or as a study in the importance of personality in contemporary politics.¹³ The election may also be understood as a moment in which already weak political norms shattered, existing institutions faltered, and routinized patterns of political behavior became apparently outmoded.¹⁴ We have seen such moments before. This election, therefore, gives us the opportunity to understand larger patterns of political change. At the same time, those larger patterns allow us to contextualize and understand the present moment.

In a separate project, I tease out the rhetorical underpinnings of our partisan political imaginaries, arguing that our political worlds are made up of different and contesting views of the best locus of political authority and competing depictions of the polity, which are grounded in the political realities we witness and in which we participate. These depictions lead to and reinforce different political hierarchies, which are justified though differing understandings of our political myths. Thus, I argue, Americans all may participate in one national imaginary based on shared core values, but their partisan imaginaries are very different and are the substance of our political disagreements.¹⁵ As the issues driving one set of partisan conflict dissolve and re-form, as in a political realignment, the rhetoric that underpins partisan imaginaries also shifts. Political realignment is not a matter of material political shifts alone but is also a matter of how material politics are shaped and understood through rhetoric. That project seeks to untangle the rhetorical elements that underlie the formation and understanding of political change.

This essay seeks to contribute to this understanding by focusing on the elements that signal the imminence of such change. In making this case, I focus first on the institutional aspects of political change. I then examine what I...