The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency

Chapter 1. Barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations

cHaPTER 1 barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations jennifer r. mercieca justin s. vaughn “As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us,” President Barack Obama observed in his February 24, 2009, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress. He believed that the world was“watching to see what we do with this moment,waiting for us to lead.Those of us gathered here tonight have been called to govern in extraordinary times. It is a tremendous burden, but it is also a great privilege, one that has been entrusted to few generations of Americans. For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world for good or for ill.”1 That President Obama overtly recognized the“crossroads of history,”the “moment,” the “extraordinary times,” indeed, the “tremendous burden” of his presidency, only one month into office is a comment both on the awesome responsibility of the presidency in general and upon Barack Obama’s presidency specifically.Does the“moment”within which a president assumes office really affect their presidency,as Obama suggested?We believe that the answer is unequivocally yes; the moment within which a president takes office can matter and it can matter a great deal. In President Obama’s case, after nearly two years of promising “hope” and “change” on the campaign trail many Americans listening to his address that night, only a month after his inauguration, might well have believed that Obama’s presidency really could reshape the world for good. Other Americans listening that night might have worried that the Obama presidency would reshape the world for ill. Still others might have wonderedif the“extraordinarytimes”—thestartlingeconomiccollapseof 2008 while America fought two wars abroad, coupled with increased political partisanship at home, America’s diminished international reputation, a 2 : mERciEca and vaugHn media environment that thrived upon division, and his historic role as the nation’s first African American president—would hinder Obama’s ability to lead and reshape the world at all. As Obama noted, leading in extraordinary times is both a“tremendous burden”and a“great privilege,” for such moments of profound change demand heroic leadership in the face of insurmountable obstacles. Along with President Obama in his February 24, 2009, Address, this volume asks:With the eyes of all the world watching,would Barack Obama be able to meet the high expectations of his office;would he be able to lead? In this chapter, we engage with two under-theorized notions of the presidency .So doing enables us to rethink how we judge presidential leadership: first, the expectations gap; and second the burden of the presidency. We argue that there is a rhetoric of presidential expectations,which has grown more heroic since the Progressive Era, and that these heroic expectations set up three kinds of presidential burdens: institutional burdens (the“glorious burdens” specific to the office of the presidency itself); contextual burdens (burdens specific to the historic moment within which the president assumes office); and, personal burdens (burdens specific to the man or woman who becomes president). We judge all presidents based upon both our heroic expectations and how they handle their various burdens, both shared and unique. Although many presidents have acknowledged the overwhelming expectations of the office,scholarly work on how those expectations are rhetorically constructed and how a president’s burden affects his or her ability to lead remains largely undone. This is a regrettable lacuna because the president’s burden forms an important element of the rhetorical context within which he or she operates, and thus ought to be understood. The Rhetoric of Presidential Expectations That Americans have what we can think of as “heroic expectations” for the president cannot be denied. We expect that the president will act at a minimum as the chief administrator, chief diplomat, chief legislator, chief magistrate, commander in chief, chief executive, ceremonial head of state, manager of the economy, party leader, and national leader—much more than the US Constitution prescribes. Yet Dennis M. Simon argues that “there is no corpus of work that constitutes the normal science on public expectations.”2 Hearguesfurtherthatwecouldusefullydistinguishbetween barack Obama and the Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations : 3 “image-based expectations”that“refer to both the desirable personal traits of presidents and how presidents should conduct themselves in office” and “performance-based expectations” that “focus upon what presidents should accomplish in office.” Ray...