Editor's Note

Volume 4:4 was originally intended to be a special issue on the rhetoric of the 2000 presidential election campaign. A call for papers was made and 15 people responded to it. Unfortunately, out of those 15 submissions only two--the essays in this issue by Christine Harold and Theodore Prosise and Craig R. Smith--could pass the scrutiny of the editorial board. Several others were invited to revise and resubmit but have not, to date, done so. If those essays do materialize we will, of course, run them in a later issue. But the larger concern from an editorial point of view is why so few scholars appear to be studying the 2000 campaign. If ever there was an election that merits rhetorical analysis, then surely the 2000 campaign and its aftermath must rank among the more important. Although we will not be running a special issue on the topic, I once again invite my colleagues to study the 2000 campaign and to submit the results of those studies to Rhetoric & Public Affairs. In the meantime, we will continue to publish works that speak to the role and influence of rhetoric in public life. In this issue alone, we explore questions of environmentalism (DeLuca), military policy (Dauber), and religion (Zagacki). The realm of public affairs has always been broader than elective politics, campaigns, and governance, important as those activities are. And we will continue to publish as broad a range of articles as possible.

Volume 4:4 brings to a close our fourth year of publication. The journal is in good shape, but we are not yet operating on a break-even basis. The reason is simple: we need more subscribers. While the library and institutional subscriptions continue to increase, our individual subscriber base has remained more or less static. Please help us to keep Rhetoric & Public Affairs as the independent, interdisciplinary voice of rhetorical studies. You can do that in three ways: (1) make sure that your own subscription is renewed annually, (2) request that your university or college library and your department library subscribe to the journal, and (3) tell your friends about Rhetoric & Public Affairs. A subscription form appears at the back of each issue. I continue to believe that Rhetoric & Public Affairs fills an important gap in the intellectual landscape. With your help and support, we will continue to explore "the nexus of rhetoric, politics, and ethics--the worlds of persuasion, power, and social values as they meet in the crucible of public debate and deliberation."