All the President's Words

All Presidents’

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The U.S. Capitol is reflected in glass before U.S. President Barack Obama is to deliver the State of the Union address in the Capitol in Washington, January 2010. ©Scanpix

by Magne Dybedahl, Høgskolen i Østfold

The Words American presidents have always made speeches and appeared in public, but much has changed about the delivery of messages and the planning of public appearances. Today it is commonly recognized that rhetoric has become an important tool for governing, and this has inspired political scientists to coin the term “the rhetorical presidency”. When giving speeches and appearing in public, presidents are very much aware of the fact that they are not only addressing the people present, whether they are politicians in Congress or a group of university students. Presidents The rhetorical presidency It was political scientist Jeffrey K. Tulis and three co-authors who introduced the term “the rhetorical presidency“ in a seminal essay in 1981, followed by a book written by Tulis alone called The Rhetorical Presidency (1987). Tulis describes a change in the office of the presidency which occurred in the early 20th century. He observes that presidents prior to the 20th century rarely spoke directly to the people. The dominant thought was that an overreliance on popular rhetoric could weaken the presidency. In the 20th century this changed. For instance, the success of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945) in mobilizing the nation in the 1930s and 1940s would not have been possible without a focus on presidential rhetoric.

Today one of the institutional dilemmas of the presidency is that presidents are expected to appeal to the American people and work on their popularity on all occasions. Instead of appealing directly to Congress, as they used to do, presidents try to appeal to the American people, who then put pressure on Congress. Tulis even goes so far as to claim that the use of popular speech addressed to mass audiences has become a second constitution.

As always, scholars engage in heated debates about when such a trend began or how important the trend is. Firstly, the

will also try to appeal to the American people over the heads of Congress or through the camera lenses and microphones of the media. It is a fact that presidents make more speeches and public appearances than ever before, with the help of a large writing staff.

Finding the right words for the right occasion is not left to chance however small the event might be. For President Barack Obama the exact choice of words is so important that he is ridiculed for going absolutely nowhere without a teleprompter device from which he can read his manuscript.

presidency has never been non-rhetorical.

The use of language to persuade is nothing new. Secondly, a term such as “the rhetorical presidency” seems to downplay the belief that there are other aspects of the presidency which are equally important. Furthermore, rhetoric is not an exact science. There is no way speakers can predict exactly how audiences are going to react.

Decision making cannot be based on popular appeal alone. However, there is no doubt about the rhetorical potency of the presidency. Words can be important, and it can be important how they are delivered.

Contradictory expectations What each American president faces is the challenge of being both the chief of his or her government and the unifying leader of the country.

The tension between those two roles is also manifested in the speeches presidents give. Presidents who face strong opposition from the other party in Congress may deliver speeches which clearly reflect their role as chief of government. The same applies to some of the speeches delivered by presidents who are seeking reelection. Inaugural addresses, on the other hand, typically reflect the president’s unifying role as chief of state. The most challenging speeches, however, are those which are intended to show the presidents’ effectiveness as chief of government at

the same time as they aim to be unifying.

The prime example of this type of speech is the annual State of the Union Address, usually delivered in late January or early February.

State of the Union Address According to the Constitution, the president hardly needs to open his or her mouth at all, but there is one exception: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” (Article II, Section 3). This became known as “the Annual Message”. The first two presidents, George Washington (1789-1797) and John Adams (1797-1801) gave speeches to Congress in person.

However, the third president, Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), did not like the idea of appearing in person because it made him feel like an imperial king.

Instead he sent a written message which was read to Congress. This tradition continued for more than a 100 years. Then President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) re-introduced the practice of addressing Congress in person. Twenty years later Franklin D. Roosevelt started to use the phrase “State of the Union Address”, which is now the official name. It was also Roosevelt who, in 1941, gave one of the most influential State of the Union Addresses ever. He then introduced the so-called Four Freedoms, which later

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became an inspiration for the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights: Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

facts

As mentioned, nowadays the State of the Union Address is delivered with the dual goal of gaining both congressional and public support. The second goal was probably what made Lyndon B. Johnson introduce the tradition of delivering the speech in the evening, more specifically at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. Then it is possible to reach a wide television audience. A more recent tradition, which also underscores the aspect of common appeal, was introduced by President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989). That is the custom of inviting ordinary citizens as special guests and honoring one or more of them in the speech. In the 2011 State of the Union Address President Barack Obama honored 38-year-old Brandon Fisher and told his story as an illustration of the American dream.

Fisher started a successful drilling company in Pennsylvania when he was just 26. In 2010 Fisher volunteered to use his drilling expertise and his company’s equipment to help rescuing the 33 miners who were trapped in a mine in Chile for more than two months.

Curious facts about the “State of the Union Address”

• The shortest address on record belongs to President George Washington in 1790, at 1,089 words.

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• President William H. Taft delivered the longest address in 1910, at over 27,000 words.

• President Calvin Coolidge’s 1923 Annual Message was the first to be broadcast nationally on radio.

• President Harry Truman’s 1947 State of the Union was the first to be broadcast on television.

• President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union was the first to be broadcast live on the Internet.

Source: http://www.whitehouse. gov/state-of-the-union-2011

President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011. ©Scanpix

The State of the Union Address is held in the House of Representatives’ chamber in the US Capitol. In addition to the members of the House of Representatives, spectators include the members of the Senate, the justices of the Supreme Court, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the members of the Cabinet. However, customarily one member of the Cabinet and a few members of Congress will be at some secret locations during the State of the Union Address. The reason is that they are designated to lead the country temporarily in the event of a catastrophe on Capitol Hill, such as a terrorist attack.

In January or February President Obama will again give a State of the Union Address. Obviously, very little is known about that speech, but we can be fairly certain it will last for about an hour, much due to the many rounds of applause.

Probably Obama will honor some common citizen present in the chamber, or at least refer to somebody who has sent him a letter or the like. We can also predict that it will be a fragile political moment for the President. The economic recovery is painfully slow and many people are skeptical about Obama’s leadership. He will have to address a number of problems and try to convince people that he can handle them better than his Republican adversaries. This will have to be a campaign speech in the 2012 presidential campaign, which by nature is a very partisan affair. However, Obama will surely choose to campaign by appealing to the core values of the American people and taking on his hat as the unifying leader of the country. If Obama should win the 2012 election, the 2012 State of the Union Address might be remembered as a historic one. If he should not win, the speech might be

remembered as just another example of lofty rhetoric.

Speechwriters Generally, presidents are heavily involved in the process of planning and finalizing important speeches, but most of the writing is done by others.

This is not the way things were done in the beginning, but with the rise of the rhetorical presidency in the beginning of the 20th century professional speechwriters became ever more important. The first president to employ a professional speechwriter was Warren G. Harding (1921-1923). Since the famous journalist H. L. Mencken had compared Harding’s inaugural speech, before he employed his so-called Literary Clerk, to “dogs barking idiotically through endless nights”, it was probably not a bad idea to get some help.

Later speechwriters became more than literary clerks. Speechwriters in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt through to John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) were mostly close political advisors with backgrounds as lawyers and scholars.

The prime example of this was Theodore Sorenson (1928-2010), who helped draft many of John F. Kennedy’s most famous speeches. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969) initially relied on close advisors as well, but the number of addresses delivered kept increasing. For that reason it became more common to hire a number of speechwriting specialists and separate them from the policy development process. All later presidents have depended on specialized speechwriters.

One of the challenges of the speechwriters, of course, is to use words and sentence constructions which are natural to their President. Good speechwriters write in the same manner their President

would speak. Lyndon B. Johnson’s speechwriters once discovered that they had used a word in a speech which their President could not pronounce correctly. As Theodore Sorenson writes in his book Counselor (2008, p. 140), Johnson preferred four-letter words, four-word sentences, and four sentence paragraphs. President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) had no problems with long words, but he was known for resenting using someone else’s words. Supposedly, there was little contact between Carter and his speechwriters. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, saw the value of working closely together with the people who wrote his speeches. Regardless of who wrote the speeches, it sounded like Reagan.

No POTUS without TOTUS One important aspect of delivering speeches is the use of the manuscript, which now often involves the use of a teleprompter. The word “teleprompter” comes from the trade mark TelePrompTer. The TelePrompTer Company developed the first teleprompter device for television actors in the 1950s. The manuscript was printed on a paper scroll which was placed near the camera and scrolled mechanically by a technician as the actors read the text. Allegedly, the first politician to use a teleprompter was former President Hoover (1929-1933) when he addressed the Republican National Convention in 1952.

In the 1980s the teleprompters became computer-based. Instead of the traditional teleprompter placed near a camera, presidents often use a speech prompter, which is a mirror image system,

usually with two monitors or panes of glass bearing the text, placed discreetly on either side of the podium. This allows the president to turn to the left and right when speaking. However, in the East Room in the White House, which is used for many important occasions, President Barack Obama uses a large flat-screen monitor at the back which allows him to move his head even more naturally as he speaks.

Since its invention, the teleprompter has been used by politicians in order to ensure precision and accuracy in their speeches. This does not mean presidents cannot speak without the teleprompter.

President Bill Clinon (1992-2001) was famous for adding and cutting material on the fly, which could have its advantages.

One such episode is mentioned in George Stephanopoulos’s book All Too Human: A Political Education (1999, pp. 199-203).

When Clinton gave an important healthcare speech to Congress, the wrong speech was initially loaded into the machine.

Nevertheless, Clinton spoke flawlessly from memory for several minutes before the right speech appeared on the screens, without anyone ever noticing.

However, no president has used the teleprompter as consistently and at so many minor events as Barack Obama.

Obama’s frequent use of the teleprompter has even sparked a parody web site, “Barack Obama’s Teleprompter’s Blog: Because There Is No POTUS Without TOTUS” (http://baracksteleprompter. blogspot.com/). Both POTUS (President of the United States) and FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) are well-known acronyms, but TOTUS (Teleprompter of the

United States) was coined as a result of Obama’s frequent use of the teleprompter.

Not surprisingly, Republican presidential candidates are now trying to hold President Obama’s reliance on teleprompters against him. If he cannot say even a few words without a screen in front of him, the critique goes, he probably does not know what he is talking about. Others claim that Obama has ruined the teleprompter for all other politicians. If you use it, you are compared to Obama. Obviously, the implication is that your advisors are telling you what to say, which is exactly what President Ronald Reagan was accused of. It may be just as unwise to underestimate the political skills of Obama as it was to underestimate Reagan’s. Nevertheless, this year the Republican hopefuls are generally avoiding the use of teleprompters, with the exception of major speeches.

Winging it is not without risk, however, as another Democrat has proved, namely Vice President Joe Biden. He is well known for his off the cuff humor and gaffes. As he said in Virginia in 2009, speaking to a group of Democrats: “If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30% chance we’re going to get it wrong.” He may have been luckier when he cracked a joke at the expense of President Obama while addressing about 1,000 graduates of the Air Force Academy in Colorado that same year. When his teleprompter was knocked over by a gust of wind, he said: “What am I going to tell the president when I tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?”

Challenges Many political observers claim that the distinction between campaigning and governing has practically been erased. In light of increasing partisanship this could become problematic. The eagerness of political handlers to make the president look good and popular can result in less exposure to opposition.

During the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2009), a more recent tendency became very obvious. As presidents tour the country, they tend to address only carefully screened audiences of supporters. Potentially, this way of isolating the president can become a challenge to the constitutional democracy of the United States. On the other hand, the presidency is still so much more than presidential rhetoric.

United States President George W. Bush prepares for the State of the Union Address in the Family Theater of the White House, February 1, 2005, in Washington, DC. ©Scanpix

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