Issue framing is the way that people, especially politicians, get other people to view a particular problem or issue. By framing the issue in a particular way, the goal is to get people to think about the issue, to believe that an action is required and, most importantly, to believe that a particular action (the one being proposed by the framer) is the right one. The use of language and imagery is an essential part of issue framing and has been an integral part of the presidency since our nation’s founding, but it has become particularly important since Theodore Roosevelt began to take his message directly to the people. This work examines a selected speech delivered by every president from Roosevelt through Barack Obama to show how language has been instrumental in directing policy. Each chapter will examine the situation or background for the problem, include a transcript of the speech the president delivered, and conclude with an analysis of the speech in terms of the particular frame that the speech utilized and the eventual outcome, or policy direction, inspired by the speech.

Theodore Roosevelt began explicitly using public address as what he termed a "bully pulpit" during his presidency. Public address provided him the opportunity to talk to the people--and thereby put pressure on reluctant public figures to effect policy. In doing so, Roosevelt significantly enlarged the rhetorical impact of the presidency. After Roosevelt, presidents have used this "bully pulpit" to different degrees, but the idea of speaking directly to the people on a regular basis--as well as to Congress--has inarguably affected the presidency and the nation's politics. The Bully Pulpit contains words of every president from Theodore Roosevelt onward. The opening chapter introduces readers to various ways of studying presidential rhetoric. Selections include inaugural addresses, foreign policy pronouncements, State of the Union addresses, political campaign and convention speeches, farewell addresses and eulogies, press conferences, and written texts and tweets. The book includes famous speeches as well as relatively unknown gems, such as Wilson speaking on woman's suffrage, Harding on civil rights, and Truman rallying the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Brief biographical sketches, head notes, and discussion questions provide readers with background, context, and opportunities for reflection. The Bully Pulpit is the ideal anthology for courses in presidential rhetoric, American public address, and political communication. It also serves as a valuable supplementary text for courses in political science.

Pulitzer Prize–winning author and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s dynamic history of Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. Winner of the Carnegie Medal. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s The Bully Pulpit is a dynamic history of the first decade of the Progressive era, that tumultuous time when the nation was coming unseamed and reform was in the air. The story is told through the intense friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft—a close relationship that strengthens both men before it ruptures in 1912, when they engage in a brutal fight for the presidential nomination that divides their wives, their children, and their closest friends, while crippling the progressive wing of the Republican Party, causing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected, and changing the country’s history. The Bully Pulpit is also the story of the muckraking press, which arouses the spirit of reform that helps Roosevelt push the government to shed its laissez-faire attitude toward robber barons, corrupt politicians, and corporate exploiters of our natural resources. The muckrakers are portrayed through the greatest group of journalists ever assembled at one magazine—Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—teamed under the mercurial genius of publisher S.S. McClure. Goodwin’s narrative is founded upon a wealth of primary materials. The correspondence of more than four hundred letters between Roosevelt and Taft begins in their early thirties and ends only months before Roosevelt’s death. Edith Roosevelt and Nellie Taft kept diaries. The muckrakers wrote hundreds of letters to one another, kept journals, and wrote their memoirs. The letters of Captain Archie Butt, who served as a personal aide to both Roosevelt and Taft, provide an intimate view of both men. The Bully Pulpit, like Goodwin’s brilliant chronicles of the Civil War and World War II, exquisitely demonstrates her distinctive ability to combine scholarly rigor with accessibility. It is a major work of history—an examination of leadership in a rare moment of activism and reform that brought the country closer to its founding ideals.

This book traces the evolution of the speechwriting process for presidents in the White House from the administration of Franklin Roosevelt to the present. While institutionalization of the speechwriting process has often been blamed for bland presidential rhetoric, this book draws out the many varied consequences of institutionalization on the speechwriting process. Ultimately, it concludes that the institutionalization of the process has actually served the presidency well by helping presidents avoid the adverse effects of poorly chosen words.

The book explores how weak presidents directly or indirectly elected can still play a crucial role in the political arena. Weak presidents have been distinguished from strong ones by relying on the evaluation of the powers they display according to the constitution. Six Western European countries are analysed: Germany and Italy which present a consistent constitutional design (as weak presidents are elected indirectly), and Austria, Ireland, Finland and Portugal that present inconsistent constitutional design (as weak presidents are elected directly). In contrast to much of the existing comparative works on presidential powers and activism, the book emphasises the role and the use of informal powers beyond that of formal ones. In particular, a definition and a typology of informal powers are provided as well as an empirical investigation on informal presidential activism. The positive outcome of presidential informal interventions are studied by relying on an interactionist approach which combines presidency-centred as well as president centred-explanations. The book argues that when dealing with informal presidential activism the opportunity structure matters but presidential public support matters even more.

This book analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by the four Democratic presidents, Truman, Johnson, Clinton and Obama, who tried to expand access to and affordability of healthcare in the United States. It considers how they made such arguments, the ethics they advanced, and the vision of America they espoused. The author combines rhetoric analysis, policy analysis, and policy history to illuminate the dynamic nature of the way American presidents have imagined the moral and social bonds of the American people and their exhortations for governance and policy to reflect and honor these bonds and obligations. Schimmel illustrates how Democratic presidents invoke positive liberty and communitarian values in direct challenge to opposing conservative ideologies of limited government and prioritization of negative liberty and their increasing prominence in the post-Reagan era. He also draws attention to the ethical and policy compromises entailed by the usage of specific rhetorical strategies and their resulting discursive effects.

This two-volume set explores the various ways social media are profoundly changing politics in America. The last decade has seen dramatic changes in the U.S. political process. The advent of social media and other new forms of expression have enabled an unprecedented number of citizens to enter the political arena by expressing their opinions about issues and candidates in ways that can influence untold numbers of voters and officials. But the vast majority of politicians have not fully grasped how social media has fundamentally changed the process of communication or adjusted to the dramatic shift in political power that is taking place. Written by experts on the intersections of politics, public opinion, and popular culture, this book examines how new media have brought political "power to the people" like never before, provided new channels through which politicians communicate and attempt to influence public opinion, and caused a game-changing shift in political power. Volume one focuses on how savvy politicians are learning to communicate in new ways via new media in order to enhance their political appeal. The second volume examines the various ways in which individuals or groups who use new/social media are affecting voters' decisions, applying pressure to elected or appointed officials, and influencing the direction of the country.