The President's War Agenda: A Rhetorical View

Mr. President, if I can only go out of office, at the end of my term, with the knowledge that I have done what lay in my power to avert this terrible calamity, with the success that has crowned your patience and persistence, I shall be the happiest man in the world. --William McKinley to Grover Cleveland, March 3, 1897, the day before McKinley's inauguration We won't do Iraq now, we're putting Iraq off. But eventually we'll have to return to that question. --George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, September 16, 2001 George W. Bush and William McKinley began their tenures with very different positions on the wars that would define their presidencies. Why was Bush able to set the agenda that successfully took the country to war in Iraq, and McKinley unable to control the agenda to avert war with Spain? What role did presidential rhetoric play in these outcomes? Did the use of presidential rhetoric harm the deliberation process and produce poor policy decisions for war? The present inquiry attempts to answer these questions by combining scholarship on presidential agenda setting with Jeffrey Tulis's (1987 "rhetorical presidency" model. To do so, I conduct two case studies: William McKinley's influence on the agenda for the Spanish-American War and George W. Bush's influence on the agenda for the Iraq War. These cases are useful for several reasons. First, they allow an examination of whether Tulis is correct to divide presidents into pre-rhetorical and rhetorical presidents. The methods by which McKinley attempted to avert war provide an avenue to reflect again on whether he clearly fits the nineteenth-century mold of a pre-rhetorical president, or whether he is better placed as a transitional figure or even a full-fledged rhetorical president. Studying presidents prior to war is useful because if a president ever breaches rhetorical norms, a likely time to do so is when he is asked to step into the role of commander in chief, as outlined in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. In this role, the president likely will need to persuade Congress to appropriate funds and the populace to sacrifice, among other rhetorical acts. At the time of the Spanish- American War and the Iraq War, the United States was entering a phase of expanded control outside its borders, adding further need for rhetorical leadership. In such a situation, the president must not only attempt to persuade citizens and representatives at home, but also engage rhetorically through diplomacy with other countries. Second, these cases allow for a look at the relationship between presidential leadership and public opinion. The fact that McKinley was working against public opinion in his attempt to avert war shows the limits of a president working against the grain of public sentiment. The selection of Bush offers an interesting contrast to show the force with which a president can act when he is able to shape policy in line with public opinion. (1) Finally, we can compare the effect that presidential rhetoric had on deliberation and policy outcomes in each case, an important component of Tulis's argument that has received little scholarly attention. (2) This study yields important conclusions not only about the utility of Tulis's model for scholarship on agenda setting, but also about the significant institutional changes, particularly those of the media and the executive department, that contribute to the modern presidents' domination of the war agenda. Whereas McKinley's war agenda reflects the pre-rhetorical presidency and the rhetorical and institutional restraints that flow from it, Bush's war agenda is best understood as exemplifying the powers of the rhetorical presidency. Moreover, in the case of Bush, we can see the danger that presidential rhetoric introduces to the deliberation process prior to war. Previous Scholarship on Agenda Setting and Presidential Rhetoric Political scientists have long studied the president's role in agenda setting (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Edwards 2003; Kernell 1993; Kingdon 2003; Light 1999). …