Evolution of the Modern Rhetorical Presidency: Presidential Presentation and Development of the State of the Union Address

He [the president] 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. --U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section III More than the founders ever envisioned, the presidency is at the center of policy debates. From "going public" (1) to achieve his plans and goals as described by Samuel Kernell (1997) to bargaining with the public and Congress as observed by Richard Neustadt (1960), the modern president uses his rhetorical opportunities for many different purposes. After all, "a president who wishes to lead a nation rather than only the executive branch must be a loquacious president.... Speeches are the core of the modern presidency" (Gelderman 1997, 8-9). But as seen in Jeffrey Tulis's The Rhetorical Presidency (1987), this was not always the case. In the past, speech making, as well as public appeal in the content of speeches, was not only infrequent but discouraged due to precedent and technology. Other scholars, such as Halford Ryan (1993), Smith and Smith (1994, 1985), Colin Seymore-Ure (1982), Richard Ellis (1998), Ellis and Kirk (1998), Greenstein (2000), Laracey (2002), and Lim (2002) have further examined the rhetorical past of the presidency to discover clues about how it began, when it changed, and the implications of this institutional shift for our political process. Indeed, The presidency over time has become larger and more complex than any one of its players, having acquired a portion of its identity from each who has won the part. No one person ever fully fulfills the role; the office includes all its occupants in its encompassing nature. (Fields 1996, 12) Drawing evidence from presidential rhetoric, scholars attempt to trace this complex and intertwined evolution of the modern president. This effort involves identifying not only trends in the presidency but also which presidents were responsible for these changes. These numerous studies have merits, but they suffer at times, not only from inability to obtain consistent documents across time but also from generalizations made from small samples and limited comparisons. This article builds from prior presidential rhetorical studies and hopes to provide insight into possible explanations for the modern rhetorical presidency as well as an analysis of the development of modern presidential rhetoric. I have selected, as a medium, a sample of state of the union addresses from George Washington to Bill Clinton to examine public address and identification, presidential policy pushing, and even "going public." My findings attempt neither to disprove suggestions that the modern rhetorical presidency began with Theodore Roosevelt as suggested by some (Gamm and Smith 1998; Milkis 1998; Kernell 1997 (2)) nor to displace studies claiming that the modern rhetorical presidency originates with the watershed presidency and rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson as suggested by Tulis (1998). This study instead finds an evolution of length and rhetorical verbiage within state of the union addresses that helps to shed light on the differences between and refine the definition of the modern and the traditional presidency distinction. I find that Wilson not only set precedents with his state of the union address that were followed by subsequent presidents but also that the rhetoric he employed provided a divergence from previous presidential speech-making patterns. The study here suggests that Wilson indeed exhibits patterns of speech and communication original in their kind and unrealized by previous presidents. However, it is unclear whether this is due to Wilson himself or the result of the rhetorical shift necessary in the change to public presentation of the state of the union address. This study does not attempt to supplant scholarly interpretations of the traditional versus the modern presidencies (Greenstein 2000; Bimes and Skowronek 1998) or presidential development of policy and agenda (Hill 1998; Cohen 1995; Ragsdale 1987; Brace and Hinckley 1991; Parry-Giles and Parry-Giles 2001). …