Republican Orators from Eisenhower to Trump

The introduction explains the rationale for examining the role of oratory in Republican Party politics. This necessitates an examination of the academic literature, which will also point towards the relative absence of the approach adopted by this volume. Having established this, the introduction will then introduce how the chapters have evaluated the oratory and rhetoric of each figure in three significant political arenas. First, ethos (character/credibility); second, pathos (emotions); and third, logos (logical arguments). The introduction then provides a structural overview of each of the following chapters, thereby introducing the methodological approach of each subsequent chapter.

This chapter opens the collection with an examination of Dwight D. Eisenhower and his success at becoming the 34th President of the United States with a landslide victory, ending a string of Democratic wins that stretched back to 1932.

Eisenhower’s oratorical prowess and universal popularity among both Republican and Democratic voters was the key element of his electoral success. He inspired confidence with his plain talk, reassuring smiles and heroic image. He kept a demanding schedule, travelling 45 states and speaking to large crowds from the caboose of this campaign train. The slogan ‘I like Ike’ quickly became part of the political language of America. He also got his message to the American people through 30-second television advertisements, the first-time TV commercials played a major role in a presidential election.

Ike’s personal charm was combined with a very clever campaign strategy. He presented himself as the perfect antidote to the corrupt and soft-on-communism Truman administration. Voters saw him as the man who could clean up the mess in Washington and get the country out of the stalemated Korean War, and the GOP saw him as the man who could bring the party back into the White House. Even more impressive than Eisenhower’s landslide victory was his ability to protect and maintain his popularity among the American people throughout the eight years of his presidency. When he left the White House in January 1961, his approval rating was 78 per cent.

Through the use of key speeches and public appearances from the 1952 convention to his farewell address of 1961, the aim of this chapter is to explore how he succeeded in preserving and projecting his image as one of the United States’ most loved presidents. The study will focus especially on three issues: (1) his skilful performance as an orator, (2) his canning use of media and new technologies and (3) his relationship with the party and Congress.

This chapter discusses the reasons why Barry Goldwater is often remembered for the drubbing he sustained in the 1964 presidential election at the hands of Lyndon Johnson. Notwithstanding this, however, many of his ideas came to dominate the Republican Party and American politics. Goldwater’s rhetoric is significant for two reasons: first, it was an explicit critique of Modern Republicanism associated with the Eisenhower years and was also a frontal assault on what might be termed the post-1932 New Deal settlement in domestic politics and the containment of the Soviet threat.

Second, Goldwater saw his rhetoric as an exercise in political education. Winning the 1964 presidential election was a secondary consideration and far, far more important was convincing the American people of the peril they faced from the New Deal state and international communism.

Goldwater made few, if any, concessions to the conventional wisdoms of electoral politics because his purpose, along with growing groups such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the new conservative forces in the Southwest and California, and the disengagement of the Solid South from the Democratic Party, was to capture and convert the Republican Party into an instrument for radical political change. His electoral failure in 1964 opened the way for the Age of Reagan, which suggests Goldwater’s rhetoric had a transformatory effect on politics.

This chapter will argue that dismissing Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal, his comprehensive defeats in the televised presidential debates against JFK and his perhaps less than glamorous demeanour would be a mistake. Indeed, Nixon was a quietly competent communicator who combined a number of classical rhetorical devices, ethos and pathos in particular, with clever management of the television and radio. Thus, his abilities as an orator must not be overlooked.

President Nixon’s greatest strength was, perhaps ironically, his use of ethos, an appeal to his good character when under attack. His ‘I am not a crook’ speech, however problematic its contents were later to prove, used the television to appeal directly to Americans over the heads of the political elite, to defend his character and elicit an emotional response from his audience. Ethos and pathos were thus combined using modern technology to reach the ordinary voter.

Nixon had form in this from his pre-presidential career. His ‘Checkers’ speech in 1952 piled on the ethos and pathos whilst he was under attack for his use of a political fund for expenses. In this speech he appealed over the head of the GOP organisation to voters on television, defining himself as a humble honest man who had risen up the system on merit. His use of the dog Checkers, a gift who had been named by his children was pure pathos. The object of this speech, to ask members of the public to appeal to the GOP to keep Nixon on the presidential ticket was achieved.

This chapter will analyse Nixon’s use of ethos and pathos, coupled with a reassuring media presence that allowed him to self-define as a political outsider different from the rest of the political elite.

In the aftermath of Watergate and the ‘malaise’ that characterised the Carter administration, Ronald Reagan defined the 1980s and the larger conservative movement by crafting a narrative that called for what he delineated as the rediscovery of American greatness. This narrative astutely combined the traditional conservative theme of preservation of the past with an optimistic view of the future more commonly associated with liberalism. In order to understand the power of Reagan’s narrative, this chapter examines key moments in his presidency that exemplify three themes: morality, strength, and patriotism. He communicated those themes, we argue, through deft use of narrative and metaphor. Starting with his acceptance speech in 1980, we look to his State of the Union speeches, the Challenger address, his speech at Brandenburg Gate, and his farewell address in 1989. These speeches cover the scope of Reagan’s presidency and encapsulate the main components of his vision for American national identity. This chapter proceeds in four parts. First, we examine the historical context of the election and presidency of Ronald Reagan. Second, we detail Reagan’s domestic agenda, which focused on rediscovering American values at home. Next, we turn to Reagan’s rhetoric as it centred on reasserting American values and spreading American democracy. We conclude with a discussion of the ways in which Reagan’s rhetoric crafted contemporary conservative political discourse and culture.

This chapter examines Bob Dole’s reliance on personal faith, the ‘American Dream’, and belief that the best days of America are ahead. In 1996, he reflected that ‘my life is proof that America is a land without limits. And with my feet on the ground and my heart filled with hope, I put my faith in you and in the God who loves us all. For I am convinced that America’s best days are yet to come’. This was Dole’s nomination acceptance speech delivered on 15 August 1996, at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California. Republican Presidential nominee Bob Dole and his running mate, Jack Kemp, would eventually lose the campaign to President Bill Clinton, with Clinton and Dole earning 379 and 159 Electoral College votes, respectively.

While Senator Dole’s faith never wavered, this campaign would mark the end of his 35 ½-year career in American politics, a career that earns him the record as the nation’s longest-serving Republican leader. Dole had resigned his senate seat to run for the Republican nomination and the US Presidency, and the position he was, by many accounts, best suited for, majority leader. Senator Dole’s oratorical prowess is one of pragmatism, drawn from a childhood in rural Kansas during the Great Depression and his service in the US Army in World War II which subjected him to grave injuries and rendered his right arm and hand paralysed.

Although Senator Dole’s dream to become President of the United States never came to fruition, his leadership and legacy as a US politician deem his oratorical skills in diplomacy and campaigning worthy of attention.

This chapter argues that the oratory of George Herbert Walker Bush mirrors the political context of American politics, situated between the confident and certain Conservatisms of Reagan Republicanism, and the self-proclaimed ‘Republican Revolutionaries’ of 1994 under Newt Gingrich. Accepting his party’s nomination for president in 1988, President Bush promised a ‘kinder, gentler nation’, employing ethos so as to temper the hubristic pathos of the Reagan years. Indeed, he utilised pathos when invoking the spirit of pre-New Deal voluntarism with his ‘thousand points of light’, but this was an ostensibly inclusive Republican language, quite distinct too from the moralising of the Reagan years.

However, as the Republican Party was dragged to the Right during the Bush years by the Reaganite Praetorian Guard, his language and oratory became less deliberative and judicial and more emotional and performative. Indeed, the oratorical changes of the Bush Sr. years marks the decisive Rightward shift from Reagan Republicanism to post-Reagan Republicanism, laying the oratorical and political foundations for Bush 43.

This chapter reflects on the oratorical style of Dan Quayle, who served as Vice President to President George H.W. Bush between 1989 and 1993. Prior to his surprise selection on the Republican ticket in 1988, he had been an undistinguished and low profile Representative (1977–81) and Senator (1981–89 ). His lack of experience in dealing with the national media and insufficient advance preparation by the Bush campaign team left Quayle exposed in the summer of 1988. A media ‘feeding frenzy’ surrounding allegations of draft dodging to avoid the Vietnam War and unfounded rumours of extra-marital relations engulfed him. His performances in interviews, press conferences and the vice-presidential debates, as well as his address to the Republican National Convention (between August and October 1988), were lamentable, making him a case study of failure in terms of rhetoric and oratory. The fact that the gaffes kept coming—for example, ‘I made a misstatement and I stand by all my misstatements’ or ‘we don’t want to go back to tomorrow, we want to move forward’—reinforced an impression of him as an intellectual lightweight, and when he incorrectly spelt potato with an added e on the end, he was subjected to a humiliating level of ridicule. Quayle thereby demonstrated the importance of ethos in terms of elite level political rhetoric and oratory. He simply lacked credibility as a political communicator. This meant that any attempt that he made to set the political agenda—such as his comments on family values in his infamous ‘Murphy Brown’ speech in 1992—was invalidated by his reputation. He may have been able to make a connection to and shore up the Republican base via pathos-driven oratory, but he was simply unable to reach out beyond known supporters, and attempts by him to use statistical evidence to back up his positions (i.e. logos) failed to gain traction. So chronic was Quayle’s reputation as a political communicator, the fact that he got through his 1992 Republican National Convention address, and later the vice-presidential debates, without making any gaffes, seemed to be a surprise as expectations were so low.

This chapter argues that Newt Gingrich has been a transformative figure in American politics. From 1979 to 1995, Gingrich’s rise to Speaker of the House brought a new rhetorical style to American politics. He helped define a new form of Republican rhetoric to emphasise the ideological distinctions between his own party and the Democrats. To do this, Gingrich encouraged his fellow Republicans to highlight policy differences between the parties and to characterise Congressional Democrats as fundamentally corrupt after decades in the majority power. Such was his ambition that he sought to portray the Republicans as the sole arbiters of honest politics in the United States.

This chapter explains the role of rhetoric in Gingrich’s rise to power, his fall, and his strong campaign for president in 2012. It uncovers which styles and methods of communication he used to reaffirm Republican politics, particularly in an era of ideological uncertainty following apparent domination of Democratic Party politics.

This chapter argues that the presidency of George W. Bush poses an interesting question for scholars of oratory. How did a President with such a poor reputation for rhetoric and oratory come to be understood as a good communicator?

Bush’s presidency poses fundamental questions around our understanding of oratory and its power. Starting with David Crockett’s explanation of how Bush found himself bound by the constraints of the rhetorical presidency, as understood by Tulis’s and Lim’s works on the simplification of presidential speech, the chapter will highlight the apparent ‘flaws’ of Bush’s style. It will then consider what strengths in his approach to persuasion have been unappreciated.

The aim is to provide a chapter that does not focus purely on Bush’s foreign policy rhetoric, which has dominated the study of his speeches so far.

This chapter will focus, through the Aristotelian lens, on speeches that Rice made at key moments in her career. It will examine how her calm, informed, academic delivery style brought some credibility to an administration that was struggling with the political consequences of its foreign policy decisions. Her unswerving support for the President and his decisions brought its own set of consequences. However, her 2012 Republican National Convention speech offers a measure of the respect that the GOP maintained for her. She may have been clear in her insistence that she had no desire to run for the presidency herself, but there is no doubt that she possessed the necessary oratorical skills for the role.

During the challenging years of the Iraq war, Dr Rice was often considered the respected, if not always agreed with, mouthpiece for the administration’s controversial foreign policy decisions. A gracious, charming but no-nonsense realist, Rice created a clear distance between herself and her neo-conservative colleagues. Considering her speeches through the prism of the Aristotelian traditions, her impulse veered towards logos (logic) and ethos (persuasion) based on her personal credibility. Clearly her academic background served her well here, as her ability to collate and comprehend complex information for her speeches was evident. Her character did not lend itself to rely on the emotional option of pathos, and yet some of her finest speeches made reference to her childhood in segregated Alabama. By inserting only the briefest of mentions to her hugely appealing personal story, she succeeded in repeatedly delivering a powerful message.

This chapter posits that John McCain provides an interesting case for the study of oratory and rhetoric. Having served in the US Senate since 1987 and twice running for President, he is one of the most recognisable figures in modern American politics. McCain and his chief speechwriter Mark Salter have written six books together, and McCain is said to be one of the most quotable people in politics today. McCain’s appeal to voters and the media is in part due to his compelling biographical story. McCain’s military experience and the military experience of his family have frequently led him to adopt a rhetorical strategy that emphasises personal character, such as honour, integrity, and sacrifice.

This chapter also posits that this strategy provides a rhetorical advantage only under certain political contexts and only with certain audiences. Moreover, this strategy lends itself to the mode of persuasion based on the person’s character and credibility (ethos), but often at the expense of other modes of persuasive appeals (i.e., pathos and logos). Furthermore, McCain’s persona as a ‘maverick’ willing to go against his own party also ties into a rhetorical strategy that emphasises character and credibility, rather than on emotional appeals (pathos) or logical appeals (logos). In the pre-9/11 context of the 2000 GOP presidential primary, McCain’s persona as war hero was less valuable in garnering ethos. In addition, the Republican base was less sympathetic to a candidate who boasted about his record of crossing party lines.

By 2008, the Republican Party was more receptive to McCain and rhetoric, in part because of the credibility his military experience provided, and in part because of McCain’s support for the Bush administration and the Iraq war. However, this chapter posits that declining public support for the Iraq war and the severe economic downturn in 2008 made the war hero and maverick rhetorical strategies less effective in persuading a wider audience in a general election.

This chapter considers the most prominent Republican figure in 2016—Donald Trump. When announcing his candidature to be the nominee for the Republican candidate for President of the United States, Trump was seen as a ‘joke’. In the early months of the campaign, he was surrounded by elites of the Republican establishment—from Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio. Trump faced such a wide field that his chance of securing the nomination was—it was assumed—small. Yet on 20 July 2016 he secured the nomination to face Hillary Clinton (herself nominated 26 July) in the general election campaign.

In an extraordinary general election, the rhetorical performance of the Republican candidate will have long-lasting consequences not only for the Republican Party or the United States but also for the world.

The conclusion points towards the importance of the oratorical style of each Republican Party figure: Each had a distinctive style of communicating with their audiences which had a significant impact upon their political successes; the context, arenas, and political circumstances that each faced also affected the oratorical and rhetorical style. The conclusion will draw out these similarities and differences, asking whether a ‘Republican Party oratorical style’ is identifiable. It will also provide a summation of how the findings impact upon Democratic Party politics more broadly: For example, how changing expectations of the audience may necessitate a different style of oratory that may require clear lessons for the future.