Persuading the Public

The Evolution of Popular Presidential Communication from Washington to Trump

Anne C. Pluta

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780700634347, 9780700635368
• eBook ISBN: 9780700634354
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Persuading the Public, Anne Pluta rethinks the established narrative of presidential communication and offers a bold new way of thinking about how presidents have reached the American public.

Most presidential scholars claim that the “rhetorical presidency” in which presidents seek to engage directly with the public and appeal to the nation as the basis for governance emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, shifting away from the constitutional norms of the nineteenth century when presidential communication was purely ceremonial and exceedingly rare. Pluta challenges this head-on by arguing that even the earliest presidents understood their unique relationship with the public and sought to leverage this connection through popular communication.

Pluta offers up this alternative theory of opportunistic communication in this comprehensive assessment of the popular communication practices of American presidents from 1789 to 2021. Her new argument of opportunistic communication explains the relationship between the president and the people in terms of a framework of opportunities structured by technology, the media environment, enfranchisement, and party politics—not constitutional norms.

This fresh reassessment is based on Pluta’s unique dataset of thousands of presidential public speeches, including more than 3,000 instances of pre-1929 presidential rhetoric. While the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have often been overlooked by political scientists, the author argues that it is an essential period to understanding presidential communication. Using a massive original dataset with a multimethod analysis, Pluta offers a new theoretical approach to understanding how and why presidential communication has evolved.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Going Elite: George Washington to John Q. Adams, 1789–1828
• 2. Going Partisan: Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln, 1829–1865
• 3. Going Regional: Andrew Johnson to Benjamin Harrison, 1866–1893
• 4. Going Almost National: Grover Cleveland to Woodrow Wilson, 1894–1921
• 5. Going National: Warren G. Harding to George H. W. Bush, 1922–1992
• 6. Going Targeted: William Clinton to Donald J. Trump, 1993–2021
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Data for Inaugural Addresses and Annual Messages
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover