The Rhetorical Presidency: Still Standing Tall

Jeffrey Tulis's book The Rhetorical Presidency has experienced a scholarly reception enjoyed by few other works in presidency studies. Ten years after its 1987 publication, it was the subject of at least two retrospective edited volumes (Ellis 1998; Medhurst 1996). Ten years later, Critical Review published a 20-year retrospective on the work, with another edited volume plumbing the nuances of the book's thesis following (Friedman 2007; Medhurst 2008). Of course, not all of the reactions to Tulis's work have been favorable, as any casual glance at these publications will demonstrate. Mel Laracey is one of the dissenting voices. He has done a singular service to presidency studies by highlighting how and to what extent early premodern presidents were engaged in public discourse (Laracey 2002). At the same time, he has attempted a root-and-branch consignment of Tulis's thesis to the dustbin of history. Laracey's argument here focuses primarily on evidence. Tulis is wrong, contends Laracey, because he missed many examples of presidents communicating openly with people, either through speeches (in direct contradiction to Tulis's model) or through published letters and administration-sponsored newspapers. Instead of the single constitutional norm articulated by Tulis, "the world of pre-twentieth-century presidential communications was more robust and complex than The Rhetorical Presidency depicts" (Laracey 2009, 911). Laracey concludes by suggesting a partisan philosophical basis for the differences seen in presidential communications in the nineteenth century. The result is a Kuhnian moment--a paradigm shift away from the Tulisian constitution-centered universe to a new partisan-centered cosmology that better fits the available data. While appreciating the richer detail Laracey has brought to our understanding of early presidential communications, I find his indictment of Tulis to be wanting in at least three ways. First, on a small scale, some of Laracey's evidence countering Tulis's thesis is unconvincing and open to question. Second, on a larger scale, there is a strong sense in which Laracey's dispute with Tulis is a question of defining terms, and what may be a comparison of apples and oranges fails to address the deeper and more enduring insights of Tulis's work. Finally, the central attempt to construct a paradigm shift fails, as much of Tulis's diagnosis of the problems of presidential power in republican government remains valid. I take up these observations in turn. Details, Details Some of the evidence that Laracey marshals against Tulis is ambiguous at best. For example, Laracey argues that seven other pre-twentieth-century presidents, in addition to Andrew Johnson, were "open communicators." Tulis has acknowledged getting William McKinley at least partly wrong, but McKinley's close chronological proximity to the key Progressive presidents who helped usher in the era of the rhetorical presidency limits his usefulness as a counterexample. Abraham Lincoln is another problematic example, for he took office during a time of crisis politics--the greatest crisis the nation has ever faced. Tulis never argues that the framers were unalterably opposed to popular leadership--they simply distrusted it, especially when it took the form of demagoguery, and they wanted to ensure that it did not become routine. But popular leadership may be required in extraordinary circumstances, and that is certainly where Lincoln found himself in 1861. One of Tulis's main arguments is that the rhetorical presidency makes routine the use of public appeals to the people over the heads of Congress--that it transforms crisis politics into normal politics. Lincoln, however, inherited the real deal. Zachary Taylor is a more interesting case, and his example is especially ambiguous, for as a Whig he should have avoided policy communications. Perhaps his background as an apolitical career military officer and war hero caused him to lack understanding of his proper public role. …