John M. Murphy

A Time of Shame and Sorrow: Robert F. Kennedy and the American Jeremiad.

Robert F. Kennedys response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. offers the opportunity to examine the rhetorical function of the modern American jeremiad. This essay argues that, while the jeremiad works well in the epideictic task of restoring social harmony in a time of crisis, it also operates as a rhetoric of social control. It precludes a close examination of the system that may well have created the crisis. Kennedys rhetoric was a skillful reaction to his immediate rhetorical and political obstacles, but it illustrates the generic limitations of the American jeremiad as a vehicle for social criticism.

The language of the liberal consensus: John F. Kennedy, technical reason, and the “new economics” at Yale University

On June 11, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed the economy at Yale University. This essay explains the symbolic charge of his economic rhetoric, a persuasive campaign that enjoyed considerable success and marked the first time that a president took explicit responsibility for the nations economic performance. I argue that the president crafted the authority to take command of the economy through construction of a liberal ethos, the use of dissociation, and a definition of the times. His arguments, in turn, were invented from the liberal matrix that dominated politics in the mid‐twentieth‐century United States and represent the ways in which that mode of discourse develops a historically contingent and politically powerful form of technical reason. President Kennedys speech illustrates a set of strategies that can raise the status of one political language above its competitors in the process of public argument.

Barack Obama, the Exodus Tradition, and the Joshua Generation.

This essay explores Barack Obamas invocation of the Exodus during his 2008 presidential campaign. It argues Obamas turn to Exodus, his rare embodiment of Joshua, and his renewal of the American covenant nicely addressed major rhetorical problems that he faced. Of equal importance, his campaign oratory opens an important line of inquiry into the relationship between social order and critique in this idiom. Obamas discourse induces us to examine anew the possibilities for social and political change suggested by the Exodus.

Decision 2012: Presidential Election Analysis from the CM Café

The Communication Monographs Café opened its doors for the fifth time on November 6, 2012. In the previous openings of the café (social justice and public scholarship in Volume 78, Issue 2; communication and materiality in Volume 78, Issue 4; theory and research in the age of new media in Volume 79, Issue 2; communication and mental health in Volume 79, Issue 4) the exact timing of the Café opening didn’t matter too much. I just needed to find a time when a group of scholars was willing and able to hang out for a couple of weeks and talk about an issue of interest to the discipline. But for the fifth Café event, timing mattered, for we were going to talk about the 2012 presidential campaign and I wanted that discussion to be as fresh as possible. So as soon as the election in which Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney was called, I sat down at my computer and opened the CM Café. I was quickly joined by six communication scholars with expertise in political communication and rhetoric. As luck would have it, three were from the crucial swing state of Ohio: Bill Benoit (Ohio University), Lance Holbert (Ohio State University), and Denise Bostdorff (College of Wooster). There was also a scholar from a clearly blue state John Murphy (University of Illinois) and two from red states Diana Carlin (Saint Louis University) and Kevin Coe (University of Arizona). As before, the CM Café was facilitated through a private group on Facebook, and the setting of the Café allowed participants to drop in and out of the conversation, post their own questions as desired, and take each other down new paths as ideas diverged and converged. As so much of the media coverage in the final weeks of the election revolved around activities in Ohio, it seems only fitting to begin with the initial thoughts of our three participants from that state and all three dropped by the Café within hours of its opening. Bill: This campaign has certainly been interesting. I have never had the impulse to try to boil a long campaign into one ‘‘decisive’’ event. Still some things caught my attention. [First,] Obama was ahead until the first debate and then the race really tightened. [Second,] the terrible storm gave Obama a chance to be seen as presidential (I don’t know how much this helped but he had a chance to affect perceptions that Romney just did not have). Governor Christie reinforced the

Crafting the Kennedy Legacy

This essay explores the rhetorical dynamics of the debate between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy over the Kennedy legacy in Vietnam. It situates President Kennedys rhetoric as a linguistic context that ultimately framed the dispute between President Johnson and Senator Robert Kennedy over the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Each sought to provide the American people with the most authoritative reading of the past; the winner of that contest won the right to speak with authority on Vietnam. This critique, then, highlights the significance of the Kennedy legacy as a rhetorical resource during this time and, in a broader sense, points to the ways in which rhetors look to the past as a potent source of rhetorical invention and political authority.

To Form a More Perfect Union: Bill Clinton and the Art of Deliberation

This essay examines former president Bill Clintons speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It argues that Clinton crafted a collective agency for his audience. He did so through his emphasis on the choices offered to the audience; the symbolic charge of this speech, in turn, rests in Clintons ability to weave those choices into a coherent model of deliberation, one presented and enacted by the speaker. His address constitutes the people as the key actor in U.S. history, evaluating the nominees in light of communal wisdom. Such strategies, I argue, offer one path toward a more vibrant political culture.

Between Structure and Struggle: The Intellectual Legacy of James Arnt Aune

In conversation and publication, Jim Aune often justifıed the practices of public advocacy and rhetorical criticism through the words of John Dewey: “The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion, and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.” Both parts of that task meant much to Aune. Like him, many of us have spent our careers teaching and studying the available means of persuasion, but he also focused his formidable intelligence on those conditions. What enables and constrains public discussion? What happens when we substitute culture for society, measurement for judgment, science for rhetoric? Who, in fact, is this “we” of which I speak? Jim pursued such questions with relentless energy. His answers comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. It is this intellectual legacy I wish to pursue in this short essay. I begin with rhetoric’s rhetorical problem. I use that language with some care because it infused Aune’s work. He began with the assumption that all was not right with the world. The “depredations wrought by the latest incarnation of the free market—that is, globalized laissez-faire capitalism” were objects of scorn in his last book, and his goal, also expressed in that book, was to overcome “the recent fragmentation of left-leaning coalitions” so that theymight join tomake of this nation a just society. To that end, he dove into contemporary social theories because he thought they offered a useful way to frame and address those issues. If ink expended is any clue, he

Barack Obama and Rhetorical History

In this essay, I examine the definition and invocation of rhetorical history, a concept central to the work done in this journal. The essay briefly discusses the uses of history by rhetorical critics, turns to President Barack Obamas theory of (rhetorical) history and social change, examines his deployment of argument from history as a means to manage varied rhetorical problems, and concludes with some thoughts on his rhetorical history and ours.