Topics.

Following are digested versions of course lecture/discussion material:

Systemic Considerations:

Homo PoliticU.S.: An Introduction to Political Communication.

Dr. Jekyll and Henry Hyde: The "Chemistry" of Being Political.

One if by Land; Two if Bicameral: The Federal Government as Narration.

I Want My EmptyV(ote): Media as Narrators.

The Buck Starts Here: The Various "Currencies" of Political Influence.

The Imbecile's Guide to World Domination: The Effective Limits of Power.

The Symbolist-In-Chief: The President as Focal Point.

 

Strategic Considerations:

Prop Goes the Weasel: Politics as Spectacle.

Wee the people: Political Diminution of the Public.

Term Warfare: The Strategic Use of "Umbrellas."

"Tax&Spend-Bourgoisie-Baby-Killers" Beware!: Third Party Politics.

The Eschews of the Fisherman: The Invocation of Religion in Political Rhetoric.

 

Homo PoliticU.S.: An Introduction to American Political Communication.

We anthropomorphize various animal kingdoms by referring to them as "communities." We assign to them divisions of labor, management tables and other "human" attributes. These animal kingdoms are not likely however to become"political" in any more than a metaphorical sense because (as far as we know) they lack certain attributes that render humankind what Aristotle called "Homo Politicus."

The Attributes That Make Us Political:

  1. Consciousness--The awareness of and capacity to reflect on our surroundings.
  2. Self-Cosnciousness--The ability to "externalize our perceptions of ourselves . . .to consider our actions . . . To refer to ourselves in the abstract.
  3. Historicality--The capacity to deliberately pattern behavior and to modify that pattern based on consideration of the past behavior of ourselves and others.
  4. Symbolicity--The ability to represent reality with a structure of relatively arbitrary abstractions. The ability to learn through metaphor.

We define Individual interests, but very little reflection is necessary to see that some of our interests are maximized by cooperation. Cooperation in turn creates interests of its own.

Interests become "prioritized" as we learn that:

In short, we become Agents of Interest and engage in actions that promote those that we believe benefit us and/or institutions to which we feel allegiance.

In the abstract the above considerations make sense; they explain our motivations to political action. In reality, though, it has been thousands of years since any "human" has actually perceived what could accurately call an "individual" interest. As soon as people became social animals, we began to "socialize" our offspring to accept as givens the interests and allegiances that we had come to accept before them. By now all humans are so enculturated that they can very likely no longer perceive of any individual interest that has not been instantiated and reinforced by some group or institution.

While we will discuss socialization as a relevant issue, it is far too cumbersome to incorporate it into every day discussion, so we will continue to speak freely of "individual" and "personal" interests.

We are being Political when the interests we promote relate to our roles as "public" (as opposed to private or interpersonal) beings or "citizens."

These interests generally take the form of what John Locke referred to as "inconveniences"--the inevitable conflicts that arise from too many people having to much self-determination in too limited a space.

"I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of Nature, which must certainly be great where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to be imagined that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it."

Basically it comes down to the ration of one's right to exercise his or her freedoms against one's responsibility to limit such expression in order to safeguard the freedom of others.

Individual Liberty : Social Order

Hence, Political Communication need not be about politics. I can have a personal conversation with you with the strategic goal of influencing your or enhancing my public station, and that conversation can be viewed as political. Likewise, the President of the United States can schedule a meeting with . . . oh let's say one of the interns of his executive staff in the Oval Office of the White House, and that meeting may not be "political" at all.

Remember, as always, categorizations are for the purpose of illumination. Whether something is or is not "political communication" is less important than what we learn about the content and/or ourselves by viewing it as political communication.

Dr. Jekyll and Henry Hyde: The "Chemistry" of Being Political.

In order to understand the political talk of a given collectivity one must comprehend:

  1. The institutional structure of that collectivity.
  2. The forces that shape and regulate the interests of individuals within the collectivity.
  3. The mechanisms through which conflicts of interest are ameliorated.

The most facile grammar with which to discuss the chemistry of politics (and probably the most accurate, though that is not a philosophical issue that needs to be broached at present) is that of economics.

Despite the implications of Ayn Rand and other strict determinists, Economics is a human invention; it is not a law of nature. Economies arise from circumstances of need. As stated previously, an individual needs to enhance his or her interests . . . which almost inevitably results in cooperative action . . .which at any relevant level of complexity (combinations larger than small groups) inevitably results in divisions of labor and the necessity for some form of contract (since the agreement by which we cooperate in the enhancement of one another's interests will have to be enforced). The physical and emotional proximity of the bearers of these contracts results in a community--which creates communal artifacts (e.g. narrations--history, art and religion--communal identity and role-development). The collection of individual contracts will be contextualized into a broad form generally called a compact--a social contract in which individuals "voluntarily" agree to limit their natural freedoms in exchange for the benefits of communal living.

When communities become sufficiently developed and complex (which doesn't take long. See Hobbes, Leviathan ), they evolve societies--more rigid structures of social organizations, cognizant of but not dependent on the individuals who comprise the community. Societies also generate artifacts (e.g. extra-personal abstractions--justice as opposed to fairness, systems of authority, role-instantiations--memberships, initiations, elites) all of which comprise what comes to be known as the public domain).

To simplify:

Community = Collectivity of Need.

Society = Collectivity of Authority.

From this discussion we can assemble our "periodic table" of political elements:

 

On the left side, we have "fields" of action (note that the term "society" has been replaced by the less all-inclusive term "institution." To better comprehend why, think of institution as a verb instead of as a noun.). On the right, we have means of creating political artifacts within the contexts of those stations. The ratios of field : means provide examples of political action .

Institution : Amelioration Tort Law.

Authority : Economy Import Tariffs.

Community : Narration George Washington and the Cherry Tree.

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One if by Land; Two if Bicameral: The Federal Government as Narration.

Constitution as Narrative.

I.R. MacNeil uses the somewhat ponderous term "non-promissory exchange projector" to refer to any contextual information that informs the individual's perception of a contract into which he or she has entered (e.g. status, habit, self-esteem). His point is that no simple agreement for the exchange of goods and services can exist without a social context wherein certain realities can be assumed pre-existing it.

Most of these exchange projectors are what we would commonly refer to as beliefs and values. Those beliefs and values propagate and spread through cultures not as empirically tested concepts or as logical axia, but as stories--themes tested in human action.

The U.S. Constitution contains very few specific rules and proscriptions. What it contains is a compact--a system of authority that demonstrates through its organization (see above) the values and beliefs that its adherents consider important and the means for allowing communities to work the particulars out for themselves.

In other words, The Constitution is made up of instituted themes--contexts for testing human action (specifically in the form of government action)--story forms. It is in this sense that the Constitution can be considered a narrative. Like the rules of a game (e.g. chess, basketball, Animal Twister), it provides the specific material requirements for a type of interaction--republican society--using which a virtually limitless set of specific events can be constructed. It provides information about what constitutes relevant "action", the set of "roles" that can be embodied by "actors" in the form and flexible rules for judging what constitutes heroic, villainous and other types of behavior. It even contains a device so that when history finds its structures insufficiently flexible--as in the case of what constitutes a "citizen"--it can be "amended" to make its structures more specific.

Reference to the Constitution by the public almost always employs it in this way (as a warrant for action) as opposed to in its strictly legal sense.

Authority : Narration

The Constitution of the United States of America

The "Founding Fathers" (note to revisionists: Sorry, they were fathers.) recognized that "democracy" was a form of amelioration best left to communities, while they had been given the task of building an institution. The rather brilliant plan they devised provided for a system of authority that could allow the democratic ethic to assert itself in daily/local action without the system falling victim to democracy's less enticing tendencies.

Specifically:

The philosophical problem was where in the system to invest authority.

Their answer to the problem was to create a compact to which the populations of the various colonies could commit themselves. Authority would reside in the Compact itself. In essence, the promise the people made to themselves would supercede the people in matters of social comportment. That compact was the Constitution.

Hacker, Parenti and others argue that the Founding Fathers actually intended to form a nation that could be run by and for an economic aristocracy.

Constitutional Authority.

The Constitution calls for a three headed system of government:

The system is weighted in favor of the majority in that they get to populate it. The Congress and the President would be chosen through devices that prioritize the will of the majority of the people in the state that the winners would represent. Hence the two bodies would have to answer to those people. In addition, the system weighted itself toward the majority by guaranteeing that many daily decisions would be free of governmental interference (e.g. church membership, speech, assembly, etc) allowing for the machinations of public pressure (the marketplace, community standards, etc) to prevail.

At the same time, the rights of the minority are protected. To this end, two kinds of minority were recognized--individuals and minor segments (smaller states and protectorates). The President could veto Congressional action that threatened individual rights (although that was by no means the original purpose of the veto power), the court could vacate any action by the other two bodies that infringed on individual liberties, and the document iterated a specific "Bill of Rights" out of which precedents of personal freedom could be crafted.

Smaller populations of the federation would be protected by the "bicameral" to two-sided organization of the Congress. The House of Representatives, was populated according to the relative sizes of the states, so that states containing larger numbers of people would have greater influence. The Senate gave each state the same number of representatives--two. For the most part, Congressional action must be considered by both groups, so that each type of influence can be visited on the decision-making process.

In addition, the President would be chosen by an Electoral College. A group of people who would represent the mandates of the people in ratio to the size of their states.

The American Constitution has been called "the best bad idea in human history." It does as much as can reasonably be expected to manage the majority-minority conundrum, but practice, as usual, falls short of theory. As we have seen:

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I Want My EmptyV(ote): Media as Narrators.

Historical narratives neither disseminate nor sustain themselves. No matter how well instantiated in the American public psyche our political traditions may be, influence must still be exerted to:

 

To better understand what I mean by “update the specific markers and symbols,” consider in greater depth the previous discussion of how the Constitution “constitutes” a national moral narration. I said there that stories are themes tested in human action and that the roles embodied by actors (people who perform actions, not people who play characters) constitute types of behaviors. People in the audience—movie-goers, newspaper readers, or in this case potential voters—value the stories and the actors who inhabit them to the extent that those stories and actors seem plausible to them—that they resonate with the audience members as real; that they not only defend the proper morals but that they do so in a way consistent with the prevailing public mood.  The public (more often small components of the public) finds itself in one mood or another owing to its participation in social contexts. A context is a stable category of experiences which provides a set of guidelines for how to act in and respond to those experiences. When an audience member engages action in a context in which he or she is comfortable and with which he or she is familiar, the normal actions of that context will seem plausible, whether they conform to what we would generally refer to as logic or reason or not.

 

Consider Tom Osborne. For twenty six years, Osborne was the football coach at the University of Nebraska. During his tenure there, Nebraska was one of the most consistently successful programs in America.  In just his final four years, Nebraska won the National Championship three times. But also in his final few years, his teams were as notorious for their off-the-field behavior as for their success on it. The most infamous was running back Lawrence Phillips, who was charged with beating his ex-girlfriend and dragging her down a flight of steps by her hair.  Phillips was suspended from the team, but he was reinstated in time for Nebraska’s appearance in the Fiesta Bowl, which with the help of Phillips’ 152 yards rushing and two touchdowns, Nebraska won 62-24. Osborne defended his decision to allow Phillips to play by recalling how tough the young man’s childhood had been and by claiming that being allowed to play football would keep Phillips centered.

 

In the fall of 2000, Osborne is running for the Congressional seat of Nebraska’s third district.  His platform is, as one would expect from a Midwestern Republican, pro-death penalty and tough on juvenile offenders. One doubts that Osborne’s prescription for dealing with kids accused of violent crimes would be to provide them with organized sports-related diversions. Nor is it likely that either he or his constituents would take much stock in the “troubled childhood” defense. Yet on the campaign trial, not only has Osborne’s support not been eroded at all by that inconsistency, the vast majority of Nebraskans who are asked praise his Christian charity and even-handed approach and vilify members of the media and activists who pose the issue. Not even Osborne’s opponent has a problem with the issue.

This apparent schizophrenia is not really difficult to comprehend when one looks at it as an example of context-based narrative thinking. The relationship of  high school and college athletes whose transgressions are overlooked by recruiters, coaches, boosters and sponsors as well as fans to “disciplinarian” coaches whose behavior is defended by people who would never behave that way themselves has been and systematically produced and distributed by American mass media for years.

But, one might say, it is the media who cast the harshest light on these behaviors. Without  sportscasters and pundits, the national audience would not even know the Lawrence Phillips’ of the world exist.

Remember that the second of the two influences discussed here is that of enforcing at least a degree of uniformity in our individual interpretations.  Media by at once defining controversy and then exploiting that controversy for ratings [Purdue University’s Men’s basketball team has won three conference championships in the past few years, while Indiana University has won none. Purdue is also the only Big Ten team with a career winning record over Indiana. Quick, name Purdue’s basketball coach. One will assume that you know the name of Indiana’s.] tend to dichotomize issues—that is, they provide two starkly defined diametrically opposed positions and promote the rallying by supporters and detractors around them.

If sports is given to dichotomy, politics is even more so. The general public perception of politics centers on elections, which are almost always races between two primary candidates. To narrativize those races, media need to provide only four basic interpretations: a hero and villain persona for each participant. When we think in those terms, it is not only not surprising that the political conversation ha devolved into one of sarcastic back-stabbing; it would be amazing if it had evolved into anything else.

The plausibility of a given story line is not, however, dependent simply on the portrayal of  “realistic” characters doing realistic things. It also depends—possibly even more so—on the definition by media of the perspective from which the auditor pays attention.

Mediated "Reality"

Complimentary Interests.

The first and most consistently promoted theme is that the media and the people who consume their products share interests. Witness the Presidential debates in which the public is “represented” by an anchor or a pundit. Witness how often media provide “real Americans” (as opposed to the android replicas less responsible media could have provided) to participate in these exchanges.  Ted Koppel holds Town Hall Meetings on Nightline, and other networks stage their own variations of the theme. The practice of culling the native wisdom has become so instantiated in the narrative that it has been reduced to parody in continuing spots by Tonight Show host Jay Leno, whose “Jaywalking” segments purport to demonstrate the gross stupidity of the average American by recording the uninformed answers to simple questions posed. Emblematic of the conditioning influence of media on the people who watch them is the irony that we at once amuse ourselves at the expense of average Americans and neglect to remember that “they” are us. The Tonight Show viewer who self-satisfyingly laughs at the participants on Jaywalking is not fundamentally different than the participant in an “Osborne for Congress” rally who pities poor Lawrence Phillips.

The myth of the unfettered view.

Implicit in all of these media manifestations is the myth of the unfettered view. The myth of the unfettered view is the portrayal of the technology of mass media as invisible. When we watch someone talk “with Jay,” we are often asked to forget that the participant has become entangled in a completely alien situation. David Letterman has for years been criticized for ridiculing people on the street in his remote segments. In fact, the Letterman approach imposes the technology on participants. His camera crews crowd into too small spaces. He allows one camera to show another. Letterman’s style is to explode the myth of the unfettered view, which is a far more honest and respectful position than that to which it is contrasted.

The myth dominates though in Town Hall meetings and most other “covered” events. The term cover screams where students of media only hear a whisper. To cover is traditionally to envelope in something else—to insulate or hide. The insistence of media and willing acceptance by audiences that “coverage” illuminates and bares is the foundational myth of media influence.

We do not watch events; we perceive a phenomenon cloaked in a pliant shell. The shell waffles like translucent Saran Wrap over that which it distorts. But no matter how realistic and porous the plastic appears to be, all we ever see is the wrap. To bastardize Korzybksi, “The Wrap is not the Territory.”

Access.

The most vital social currency provided by media is the illusion of access. Through the “coverage” of events by journalists and the portrayal of human issues by popular art, we are led to believe that we witness, and in so doing help steer the engine of American political and economic power. One of the most deeply rooted themes in the American mythology is the equation of access with success. In all of its various guises—“It ain’t what ya know; it’s who ya know.” “insider trading” “The Prince and the Pauper”—the idea that being properly positioned is to be capable of greatness is among our most enduring delusions. Witness the phenomenon of online stock trading. Commercial after commercial touts the availability of “the same real time information” the professionals get. The illusion that access equals success is barely dented by the reality that seventy percent of online “day traders” lose money.

The tragic reality is that the illusion of access actually does little more than bar from access those who are actually there. Once media decide (with, let’s be honest, the complicity of the politicians themselves) to give the viewing public “access” the individuals who for whatever reason are actually in attendance, become little more than visual aids—political “seat warmers” like the people at the Oscars who occupy the celebrities’ spots while they toddle off to the restroom. The clearest example of this phenomenon is political nominating conventions. Once the instrument through which candidates and their running mates were actually chosen, political conventions have become little more than week long infomercials. The votes are foregone conclusions. Floor fights over planks in the party platform are forbidden. “Extras” are provided to fill in the aisles during “spontaneous” demonstrations of partisan glee. “Hand made” signs are massed produced and distributed hen they are allowed at all. And the only actual displays of participation are the ludicrous costumes donned by delegates and the tiresome, self-serving annotations by state big shots as they announce their delegations pre-ordained votes. All of which seem designed for little else than—that’s right—increasing their chances of getting on TV!

Pressure Toward a Uniform View.

To have access is to be “in on” the action. To be “in on” is to be granted membership in an elite—that it can be an elite of forty or fifty million people does not alter the reality that elites demand loyalty. When one becomes a member one becomes entrusted with the responsibility to tend to the well being of the club. To take that responsibility lightly is to risk one’s access, and access being the insignia of success who would want to stray too far from the fold? Having vacated our critical function, we become adept at what can be called Socialized Readings. Before, after, and now--with the advent of the internet and CNN’s “real time spin”—during a political event, mediators provide us with the story form (e.g. tragedy, fable, jeremiad) into which the action should be put and the context of which should provide our measures of plausibility. We are then “free” to decide for ourselves what the meaning and value of the content is. But as we have already discussed, most simple story forms provided by media dichotomize, and in so doing, severely limit that apparent freedom.

Consumer rewards for compliance.

On the upside, membership confers some fairly impressive perqs.  First, once can be “politically active” and by implication a “responsible citizen” merely by watching a little TV. Second, one can rest assured that by attending to the richly woven, though thoroughly uniform narrative provided, one will be more than able to assert one’s social sophistication through the display of awareness of and proper positions on “the issues.” Third, one can receive the comforting, if ironic, affirmation of knowing that he or she has asserted his or her unique political perspective in a form and content sufficient to communicate to others that one is immersed in the common wisdom. The simultaneous affirmation of one’s absolute uniqueness and one’s total conformity is the real genius of American popular media, because it resonates precisely with the broader social and political purpose of ameliorating the tension between individual rights and social order on which our whole society is based.

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The Buck Starts Here: The Various "Currencies" of Political Influence.

"Nothing is demanded more absolutely by the political game than this fundamental adherence to the game itself."

--Pierre Bourdieu

Bourdieu is saying in essence that political participation, despite the intentions of the founders, is not a game for amateurs. A player in politics must be able to navigate what Hedrick Smith calls "the Power Float." The key to any game is to know how to score. The "currency" of Soccer and Hockey is goals. The currency of Baseball is runs. The currencies of competitive Diving and Ice Skating are somewhat more complicated, featuring technical merits and display.

The "Currencies" of the Political Game are:

  1. Access.
  2. Information.
  3. Money.

 

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The Imbecile's Guide to World Domination: The Effective Limits of Power.

Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good.

--John Locke

Memo to Superman:

If Luther wants to rule the world so badly. Give it to him. In a month he'll be sick of it and leave you alone forever.

A great deal of the character of American political communication rests on the foundation of our existence as a "super-power." We seldom refer to the President without calling him "the most powerful man in the world", and while we seldom make explicit reference to the "first" and "second" worlds, our constant reference to the "third world" strongly implies their existence. In fact, probably nothing in American popular and/or political life is so taken-for-granted yet so misunderstood as the nature of political "power."

 

Power defined:

The common definition of power as represented by S.P. Huntington, suits our discussion well:

"power is the ability of one person or group to change the behavior of another person or group . . . . The power of a state or group is hence normally estimated by measuring the resources it has at its disposal against those of the other states or groups it is trying to influence."

 

The categories of resource correspond to the kinds of power one can exert:

Coercion

the capacity to force others to behave as you wish or be visited by extremely negative outcomes.

Persuasion

the capacity to provide for others a compelling argument that "voluntary" capitulation to your wishes benefits them.

Seduction

the capacity to influence others' perceptions of their interests to the degree that they do what you want without even having to be asked.

 

By the simple calculus of this measurement, America would be the undisputed king-of-the-global-hill.

 

Coercion

Our military might is second to none. Depending on who one asks, the U.S. military has the wherewithal to mount from 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 full-scale wartime theaters of conventional weapons. And even taking into account the ratcheting down of nuclear arms since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we have the capability of destroying the entire planet at least three time. The Gulf War clearly established that the United States military can travel halfway around the world quickly and efficiently and decimate an established armed force with relative ease.

Persuasion

There are many ways to audit persuasability, but the simplest is to consider the ready availability to the tools of rhetoric. We have mastered stylistic presentation in virtually every medium. We have the economic means to mount and sustain first class campaigns. We have a wealth of goods and services to put up for trade. We have a culture rich in the tradition of negotiation and competition. And of course underlying every negotiation is the veiled threat of consequences posed by the military power discussed above.

Seduction

Few cultures on Earth can portray the ultimate rewards of their value systems as overtly as can we. Our apparent combination of political freedom and material well-being provide compelling testimony regarding our way of life for many people who suffer in less "advanced" conditions.

So we do indeeed seem to be in an enviable position.

But then, as Huntington is well aware (see Resources), this calculus is not as simple as it seems.

Coercion

Our military staged a significant tactical defeat of the Iraqi forces in the Gulf War, but what if any lasting effect did that exercise of military might have on the balance of power in the region? American forces won almost every sustained military campaign in the Vietnam war, and people can now go to Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) to see what influence those victories had. We forcibly removed Noreiga from Panama, but the drug trade from that part of the world has increased dramatically. Almost every time we have invested ourselves militarily in the affairs of Africans, Eastern Europeans, Central Americans, and Asians, our efforts have been inconclusive where they have not been outright failures.

Persuasion

We have done a significant job of getting other countries to agree to do things our way, but our capacity to enforce that compliance has been less impressive. We stand virtually alone in our embargo of Cuba, Mexico routinely violates the environmental accords expressed in NAFTA, independent "watchdog" groups report that or diplomatic attempts to manage work conditions, treatment of dissidents, trade practices and other internal behaviors of our international neighbors have met with limited if any success.

 

Seduction

You could put Mike Ditka in a mini-skirt and stiletto heels in front of your filling station, and people would stop if they needed gas, but would that constitute seduction on his part? While it is true that many people in need covet our material abundance, there is no evidence that they have any affection for our "way of life." The world is well aware that we have the greatest disparity between rich and poor on the planet, our ratio of earnings between managers and workers is an international scandal (In 1975 it was 40 : 1. In 1995, although the real standard of living had been relatively static it was 190 : 1.) , and our levels of debt, infant mortality, poverty and crime put us more in common with nations that we call "under-developed" than with the supposedly envious populations of Sweden, Denmark, Japan, and Australia.

 

Four as yet unproven presumptions about western standards:

  1. The real economic growth on which our affluence depends is sustainable.
  2. Our long term problems can be mediated or alleviated by technology.
  3. Personal freedom is a universal ideal.
  4. Tolerance of others is a universal ideal.

Three generally ignored dynamics of power:

  1. Power, especially force, is primarily defensive. Our military might has made the United States and its close allies unlikely targets of invasion, but is useful in the long term-the occasional rescue mission aside--for little else.
  2. Power is a productive cycle and as such creates "waste." The collateral effects to the impression of influence often put one in a worse agregate position than before the power was expended.
    • Labor unions.
    • Saudi tourist industry.
    • Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
  3. Power is expressive; it use and interpretation as culturally bound.

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The Symbolist-in-Chief: The President as Focal Point.

Narrations are stories, and all stories need heroes. Managers aren't heroes; management is insufficiently interesting . . . volitional. Managers after all orchestrate the collective will of others. Heroes impose their own. So it only stands to reason that the farther into the realm of mediated reality the narrative strayed the less bureacratic the President of the United States would be allowed to stay.

So now, though the founders never intended for it to be so, the President has come to embody the federal government. Certainly, the President has incredible powers and measures of authority, but more important to our daily lives and views of politics is that the image he (so far) portrays becomes the dominant personification of the nation.

We have had Intellectuals like Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, Commoners like Andrew Jackson and Jimmy Carter. We have had Imperialists like Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and Aristocrats like John Adams* and John Kennedy. Each brought to the executive a certain style of presentation. Presidents whose presentation was appropriate for the social and historical context in which his narrative played are remembered as successful executives. Others whose did not are remembered as less so. Such judgments are, of course, available to hindsight. Some (e.g. Truman and Nixon) fare well. On others (e.g. Kennedy and Carter) the jury is still out.

The point is that the entire social drama of politics is played out in reference to the President as protagonist--that is as symbolic embodiment of ideals. Kenneth Burke said in reference to the Nazis' scapegoating of the Jews that

"the so-called 'desire to kill' a certain person is much more properly analyzable as a desire to transform the principle which that person represents [emphases his]."

The sentiment applies to all motivations to act in relation to a symbolic presence. To enocunter the individual is to place oneself in apposition to that person within the narrative that surrounds him.

Hence, our evaluations of individual Presidents have less to do with the application of a specific set of values than with:

 

 

A Quick Overview of Presidential Power.

The President Abroad:

The President has the Constitutional power to represent the nation in the following international venues:

Military

The President as "Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy" has at least temporary control over the entire American military machine. The President is also the Chief Executive the intelligence gathering mechanisms of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Security Council and the FBI, among others.

Diplomatic

The President has the Constitutional authority to recognize sovereign powers and the individuals who represent those powers as ambassadors and statespersons.

The Presidency At Home

The President is also the Executive Officer of the Federal Government, the largest economic entity on the planet. As such he or she has the power to operate somewhat autonomously in areas similar to those above.

Military

While the military apparatus is not allowed to operate as an enforcer of "domestic authority" in standard police and peace-keeping operations, the President does have some latitude with which to engage in domestic military operation. Hor she can deploy military troops into one or more of the fifty states under the following general circumstances:

  1. such presence is requested by the governor or state legislature.
  2. such presence is needed to protect either federal property (e.g. military institutions, post offices, landmarks, etc.) or "national interests" (e.g. interstate transportation, "vital" industries, etc.).
  3. doing so enforces federal judicial orders or federal civil rights.

The federal government--as agent of Presidential authority--can also deploy its national "police forces," The Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and others to assist or commandeer local authorities in the investigation of certain "interstate" offenses (e.g. interstate kidnapping, treason, postal fraud, drug trafficking, etc.).

Judicial

The President has broad--though legally limited--powers to act on "Executive Order" and to grant pardons, leniency, amnesties and other judicial amenities.

The Presidency At Core.

The most significant power of the Presidency though--that which provides the capacity to exist in all of the above described roles--is the power to persuade. The president is not only the most recognizable message source in the country (and arguably in the world); he or she also maintains the highest communication status--the powers of which include:

Theodore Roosevelt called it "The Bully Pulpit." Using this status, the President can command attention, frame discussion, limit dissent and otherwise configure the public dialogue. As such, within the realm of Communication Studies, it is most accurate to refer to the President as . . .

Symbolist-in-Chief.

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Wee . . . The People: Political Diminution of the Public.

Segmentation of the constituent population.

Hot buttons.

 

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