Public Discourse in America: Conversation and Community in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Judith Rodin and Stephen P. Steinberg (review)

In December 1996, Judith Rodin, President of the University of Pennsylvania, convened the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture, and Community. Over the next three years, members of the Commission gathered at plenary meetings in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles to discuss “the declining quality and effectiveness of public discourse, the increasing coarseness of public culture, and the growing separation and isolation of groups and individuals in the United States and abroad” (xi). Public Discourse in America is a product of these discussions. To be sure, much has happened in American public culture since the volume’s publication in 2003, and even more has happened since the Penn National Commission first convened in 1999. But most, if not all, of the hazards and horizons of American public discourse considered in the book remain, and many of them continue to inspire and intersect with the work of contemporary rhetorical scholars. For this reason, and for several others mentioned later in this review, Public Discourse in America is worth the read.

But readers beware. With two-dozen separate entries and well over twice as many contributors, the volume has a tendency to meander, shifting form and focus every ten pages or so. Some chapters center on issues of race and ethnicity. Christopher Edley Jr., argues that public discourse on race should be about justice, not civility, and that achieving racial justice involves “missionary practice,” not “choir practice”—hazardous interactions with difference, not harmonious conversations with the like-minded. Robert Rodriguez goes on to consider the usefulness of embarrassment, undecidability, and loss of words in interethnic public life, suggesting that the most productive discourses on race and ethnicity are occurring “at some Frontage Road franchise where the red-headed waitress has to communicate with the Mexican fry-cook, and she doesn’t have all the right words, and neither does he. And their cooperation—entirely pragmatic—ends up sounding something like this: ‘Dos huevos, over easy, side of salchiche!’”; Robert Lapchick then widens the gyre to include the racial politics of media representations of professional athletes, insisting that a closer, less contentious relationship between pro teams and mass media would allow more positive images of athletes to reach the American public.

Other chapters focus on issues of public leadership. The measure of successful democratic leadership, Michael Schudson writes, is not only good policy decisions but also good policy discussions. Leaders should consider all relevant views on an issue; citizens should perceive the decision-making process as fair; and public understanding of the issue should increase as a result. Derek Bok zeros-in on a specific policy debate, suggesting that public discussion of health care reform in the Clinton era is an extraordinary example of what routinely happens when complicated legislative issues enter into mass-mediated public culture: dramatic political maneuvers overshadow detailed policy discussions, generating little more than public confusion. Jay Rosen sharpens this discussion even further. American journalists are active agents, not passive observers, of contemporary public life, he observes. They have professional responsibilities to each other and pedagogical responsibilities to the public. If these responsibilities are not always met, then it is partly because, as Neal Gabler points out in the following chapter, citizens and journalists often see plot, not policy, as the driving force of news coverage. Heroes and villains, conflicts and resolutions, dramatic arcs and endings—all are thought to drive in public affairs, much as they drive summer blockbusters.

Other chapters still focus on discourses of reconciliation. Alex Boraine uses his experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to spur a discussion with Martin Seligman, Lawrence Lessig, Amy Gutmann, and Judith Rodin on the role of public testimony and its basic political effects—remembrance and accountability—in divided communities. Graham G. Dodds then delves into a specific technique of reconciliation—the political apology...