The Rhetorical Presidency Today: How Does It Stand Up?

The Rhetorical Presidency by Jeffrey Tulis has had a good run. Since its publication in 1987, the book has achieved landmark status in the field of presidential studies. It has also influenced scholarship in American political development, constitutional theory, and communication studies. The allure of The Rhetorical Presidency derives from the compelling story it tells about pre-twentieth-century presidents. According to Tulis, these presidents operated under a different constitutional understanding than do modern presidents. Because the original Constitution was based on a preference for careful policy deliberation and a fear of demagoguery, premodern presidents understood that they should not communicate with the public on policy matters. Instead, these presidents knew that they should direct their policy ideas to Congress, in writing. Tulis says that all pre-twentieth-century presidents except Andrew Johnson conformed to this "constitutional norm." The decision by Congress to impeach and almost remove Johnson from office after he went on a tempestuous speaking tour in 1867 illustrates the power of the norm (Tulis 1987, 4-6, 46-47, 59, 87-93). (1) In The Rhetorical Presidency, Tulis bases his conclusions about the public communication behavior of premodern presidents on two sets of data. The first set is the speeches these presidents made. The second set is a sampling of their written communications. From his review of both kinds of presidential communication, Tulis finds that presidents in their public rhetoric generally avoided addressing policy specifics, and instead couched their communications in broad themes of patriotism and national principle. He claims that this consistent communication behavior by presidents for so long after the republic's founding proves the existence of a widely understood--but now superseded--norm against presidents communicating with the public on controversial policy matters. Because it fit so well with his reported research findings, Tulis's account of the role that presidents were originally intended to play in the constitutional order has been widely accepted. Tulis performed an important service by directing scholarly attention to the public communication activities of premodern presidents. However, the empirical foundation of The Rhetorical Presidency is becoming increasingly weakened, thereby calling into question the overarching theory of the book. Subsequent scholarship has found that the world of premodern presidential communication practices was not nearly as cleanly ordered as Tulis portrays. This article reviews those research findings and offers an alternative explanation for the variability in presidential communication behavior uncovered by the new research. This alternative explanation is based not on a now-superseded constitutional norm, but rather on the conflicting attitudes toward the presidency that have always been a characteristic of the office. (2) There are two reasons for the differences in research findings. First, research into the public speeches and writings of premodern presidents has revealed many more instances of presidents engaging in policy-oriented rhetoric than Tulis found. This research shows that at least eight presidents, not just the one identified by Tulis, communicated openly with the American people on policy matters at various times during their administrations. Even according to his own limited analytic criteria, Tulis missed many historical incidents of public policy communication by early presidents. Second, Tulis in his research employed an analytical framework that excluded from consideration the administration-sponsored newspapers that were used by at least 10 presidents to communicate extensively with the public on policy matters. Tulis thus neglected an institution of fundamental political importance through which many early presidents did just what he said they abstained from doing. In terms of their public communication approaches, premodern presidents can be classified according to four types: Open Communicator, Veiled Communicator, Patriotic Cheerleader, and Silent Head. …