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A Evaluating the Rhetorical Presidency of George H. W. Bush  .  Insofar as presidents try to communicate their ideas to an audience, they are rhetorical presidents. Some clearly succeed in this endeavor better than others , but all are rhetorical, whether successful or not. The last quarter of the twentieth century was remarkable for featuring two of the best and two of the worst rhetorical presidents in American history. Unfortunately, George Bush was one of the worst. Even more unfortunate is the recognition that it need not have been so. Bush had the tools to be a perfectly acceptable, perhaps even good, public communicator. He simply refused to use those tools, or to allow others to develop them on his behalf. I assert this with a high degree of confidence, because I once had the pleasure of sharing a platform with George Bush after his presidency. In December , former president Bush delivered the annual fall lecture for the Program in Presidential Rhetoric atTexas A&M University. His audience that night was composed of  people, primarily undergraduates enrolled in communication courses. While the setting did not bode well, George Bush rose to the occasion magnificently, speaking for over an hour and holding his audience in rapt attention from beginning to end. As a speaker, he was funny, using a self-deprecating humor, as well as informative, insightful, slightly profane , clear, and persuasive. He successfully identified with those students and made one of the better speeches of his entire career. It was so successful that he adapted it for various audiences over the course of the next several months.1 Clearly, the problem was not that George Bush could not give a public speech. The problem was that neither he nor his lieutenants adopted a rhetorical stance toward governing. The chapters in this book underscore the point. From start to finish, George Bush’s problems were primarily rhetorical in nature. From the outset, he failed to realize that the presidency is an inherently dramatic office, an office that is charged with the care and maintenance of the American Dream. In re- fusing to articulate his version of that dream, refusing to share with the American people his vision of a better tomorrow, he effectively severed the most powerful part of any president’s rhetorical arsenal. Successful presidents are those who become so identified in the public mind with their dreams or visions that the person and the dream become forever fused in historical memory— FDR, Kennedy, Reagan, to name only a few. By surrendering this power to define and shape a vision, Bush squandered an opportune moment—what in rhetorical theory is called kairos—and instead allowed others to substitute their visions for his and, simultaneously, to criticize him for lacking one. Rhetorically speaking, Bush started from a one-down position. He exacerbated that position by certain choices he made during the opening days of his administration: refusing to allow any Reaganite to hold the same position in the Bush administration, allowing Sununu and Darman to dictate communications policy, downgrading (at least in terms of experience) the speechwriting office, and refusing to accept the kind of help that his press secretaries, communications officers, and speechwriters repeatedly tried to offer.2 Craig R. Smith got it exactly right when he noted that George Bush’s worst enemy was none other than George Bush. Without a rhetorical sensitivity at the top, there was no expectation of one further down the line. Bush was most effective rhetorically during the Gulf War conflict. That comes as no surprise, as that was the only period during which communications and policy were closely coordinated. As Demarest recalled, “one of the reasons that the Gulf situation was so successful was because we were all on the same page. And that, to me, was the most rewarding time. . . . it was the most fun for me, too, because I felt empowered to really drive a set of messages and I had all the tools to do it. Whereas, on the domestic side, it was all over the lot, and we did not have the unanimity of purpose around ‘what is the theme we’re trying to get across?’”3 During the Gulf War period Bush successfully merged his role as agent with the various agencies of communication. The two worked in tandem to achieve a single goal. But that was the only period during which policy and communications about that policy to various audiences worked smoothly. For most...

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