Slipping the Surly Bonds: Reagan's Challenger Address

Conclusion

Conclusion A rich and complicated text, the Challenger address offers windows into a variety of intellectual traditions. Through a close examination of its references to them, we see how the remarks illuminate them and what they tell us about the possibilities for future research. As part of the long tradition of presidential space policy, the Challenger speech illustrates the importance of space symbolism to the contemporary presidency in general and Reagan’s administration in particular. As president, Reagan was more clearly connected to space than any chief executive since Kennedy. Where many chief executives werereluctantsupportersof spaceexploration,Reaganwasenthusiastic. Where many of them had doubts about the importance of manned space flight, Reagan considered space an extension of the American frontier, a locus for the expression of a uniquely American spirit. Where many presidents worried that the costs of the space program exceeded its benefits, Reagan advocated increased budgets. Following the Challenger explosion, the White House speechwriters called upon that history and Reagan’s place in it to craft remarks that addressed the immediate needs of finding context for the tragedy, allowing the nation to absorb the shock of the astronauts’ deaths, and ensuring the continuation of the space program. As part of the history of presidential involvement with space,therefore , Challenger is an interesting example, for it was a rare moment of choice: Reagan could have decided to shift policy positions as a result of [105] conclusion the disaster,and Congress could have terminated the program.In some measure because of the Challenger address, Congress and the public were mobilized in support of the shuttle program, and the decision to continue it was made long before the Rogers Report was issued.1 In this case at least, presidential speech contributed to the decision-making environment. Interestingly enough, that contribution was not made in any deliberative forum but was a product of epideictic address. The Challenger talk reminds us of the deliberative possibilities of epideictic rhetoric and underlines the fact that all presidential speech is inherently political and thus persuasive. It is a mistake to discount any presidential utterance as “mere rhetoric,” trivial, or undeserving of serious attention. Even the most formulaic speech by a chief executive can be revealing. Such remarks can contribute to the interpretive context of more deliberative expression.Their potency can be enhanced,in fact,by the fact that they are so often overlooked, demeaned, and treated as irrelevant. If the study of rhetoric is the study of how speakers avail themselves of all available means of persuasion,then the use of apparently insignificant speech merits considerably more attention than it has received. This approach opens up other options as well. By treating all presidential address as significant, it is possible to restore the potential for presidential eloquence, even in this most electronic of ages. If the problem with presidential speech is that it is too associative and too loosely connected to deliberation to be “really” eloquent,2 then the likelihood that ceremonial address can have important deliberative capacities means that eloquence may not be impossible in the contemporary institution. Assuming that Cicero’s definition of eloquence as speech that charms, persuades, and moves an audience is still viable, then presidential eloquence is also still viable—and worthy of scholarly attention. Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, like Kathleen Hall Jamieson, finds eloquence in the modern presidency to be sorely lacking.3 Unlike Jamieson, however, Noonan locates the problem within the White House itself, not within the political culture as a whole. She seems to believe that the public would be receptive to presidential eloquence but [106] conclusion that the institutional practices of the presidency preclude its production . For Noonan, rhetoric, like art, is a uniquely individual act—it cannot be produced by teams or staffs or groups of people, however they are constituted.4 This is, of course, only one possible definition of artistic as well as rhetorical processes and is by no means definitive. The fact that so much political speech is ghostwritten is clearly a problem for rhetoricians if (and only if) the aim of the analysis is to disinter something of an individual character from the text. If the goal is to understand ethos or the speaker’s public character, then uncovering the speechwriting process is all the more valuable since it can illuminate the institutional, corporate nature of the presidency. No president is simply an individual, and...