Copyright by Colene Jean Lind 2013
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Copyright by Colene Jean Lind 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Colene Jean Lind Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE COMMON STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF ORDINARY, EXCEPTIONAL LEADERSHIP Committee: Roderick P. Hart, Supervisor Barry Brummett Sharon J. Hardesty Patricia Roberts-Miller Natalie J. Stroud THE COMMON STYLE IN AMERICAN POLITICS: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF ORDINARY, EXCEPTIONAL LEADERSHIP by Colene Jean Lind, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2013 Acknowledgements In acknowledging the people who have helped me execute and complete this dissertation, I necessarily take the risk of leaving someone out. In fact, so many individuals have aided me that it is impossible to list them all. But to mention no one would be a greater failure. For the record, I can only provide here a partial list of those whom I should acknowledge. That said, my deepest thanks and gratitude go to Dean Roderick P. Hart, the best adviser and mentor any student might have. Generous with his time but incisive and careful with his criticisms, Dean Hart convinced me that I, too, could be creative and bold in my thinking, and that one’s writing is only as good as the last sentence one composes. I hope to never write again without his editing in my head, and I aspire to become half the educator that he is. Whether or not I achieve either, I look forward to trying. The communication studies faculty the University of Texas at Austin also inspires me, and I am especially thankful to have experienced the respective classrooms of Drs. Sharon Jarvis and Talia Stroud, researchers and teachers of the highest caliber. Their mentorship, too, has benefited me handsomely. All of my fellow UT graduate students challenged and sustained me as well. In particular my thanks go to Josh Scacco, Maegan Stephens, Cynthia Peacock, Mary Anne Taylor, and Connie Johnson for their willingness to think out loud with me about my research. Now-professors Soo-Hye Han and Emily Hanks gave me advice that kept me on sound footing, and for that I am deeply appreciative. At least half of my UT education happened at the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life. Strauss mainstays Melissa Huebsch, Debbie Wise, and Chuck Courtney make the State of Texas proud, and I am grateful to have worked with them and many others at iv the institute. To my great fortune, I also found a second professional home, the Dean’s office, while studying at UT. It would have been a loss if I had left Texas without knowing Anne Reed and Kat Yerger as well as I now do, and I am glad that they made me one of their own on the fifth floor of Belo. On a personal level, this research was possible only because of the love and sacrifice of my parents, Lyle and Lois Lind. A Nebraska farm might seem very far away from the study of political rhetoric in Austin, Texas, but I always feel my parents are with me nonetheless. I owe them everything. I also have a cheering section in Lindsborg, Kansas, and I especially thank John and Judy Murphy, Mark McDonald, and Lee and Susie Ruggels for encouraging me to pursue a doctorate in spite of the hardships, which frankly have been very few. Why have the rainy days been so rare? As anyone who knows him will attest, Rex Fowles, the love of my life, keeps gray skies away. His enthusiasm, fun nature, openness to new experiences, and never-ending curiosity encourage me in all things. I might have completed a doctoral degree without him, but it is very hard for me to imagine doing so. I dedicate this dissertation to him. v The Common Style in American Politics: A Rhetorical Analysis of Ordinary, Exceptional Leadership Colene Jean Lind, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Roderick P. Hart U.S. political leaders must be meritorious to warrant elected office but they also should be average so that they may demonstrate empathy and win the trust of citizens. Rhetoric makes this contradiction work, but no scholarship yet describes it satisfactorily. Worse yet, public opinion now holds politicians in historically low regard. But without a systematic understanding of how elected officials discursively bind themselves to the people, it is impossible to say if or why the rhetorical model of exceptional-ordinary leadership is failing. In this study I describe this rhetoric, which I identify as the Common Style. By listening to politicians’ language choices across four speaking situations, I discovered that the Common Styles consists of distinct registers, each appealing to a conventional value, thereby indicating that politicians share something in common with everyday Americans. When speaking to a national audience under expectations of relative formality, as did presidents when delivering a weekly address, chief executives mostly appealed to the American work ethic through a language of production, and in this way presented themselves as honorable laborers. When answering a special-interest group’s invitation vi to speak at one their meetings, governors and mayors relied on a language of progress to show themselves to be concerned with improvement, as were the citizens who joined these voluntary associations. On the nationally broadcast television talk show, leaders shared stories of their uncommon experiences and thereby satisfied the universal need to know what others go through and subtly implied that they, like everyone else, were mortal. When leaders were expected to think on their feet in the presence of local constituents—as they must at town-hall meetings—they turned to a conventional language of deference to indicate their esteem for voters and a mutual desire for respect. I conclude that U.S. politicians seek to build relations with citizens based on the presumption of shared values, but the resonance of these ideals in a fractured society remains uncertain. Future studies must therefore investigate the effectiveness of the Common Style with different swaths of ever-changing Americans. vii Table of Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xi List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xii Chapter One: The Dilemma of U.S. Political Leadership .......................................1 The Paradox of Meritorious Leadership .........................................................6 The Promise of Merit .............................................................................7 The Problem of Merit...........................................................................10 The Cultural Paradox of Merit .............................................................13 Rhetorical Leadership, American Style ........................................................14 The Crisis of U.S. Leadership: Evidence of a Failing Model? .....................17 The Common Style: Evidence of an Unclear Construct? .............................19 Leadership Theories of Charisma ........................................................22 Conclusion ....................................................................................................25 Chapter Two: Studying the Common Style ...........................................................27 Operationalizing the Common Style .............................................................27 Language and Social Relations ............................................................30 Texts for Analysis .........................................................................................32 Audience Reach: Distance, Difference, and Influence ........................32 Speaker Spontaneity: Authenticity vs. Authority ................................35 The Interaction of Audience Reach and Speaker Spontaneity .............37 Critical Probes ...............................................................................................40 Conclusion ....................................................................................................44 Chapter Three: The Language of Production and the Weekend Address ..............45 An American Work Ethic: Shared Duty and Dignity in Production ............47 The Early American Work Ethic .........................................................48 The Changing American Work Ethic ..................................................52 Common Calling to Work: The Language of Production .............................56 Political Production and the Labor of Governance ..............................56 viii Citizen Workers and Their Private Duty to Produce ...........................60 Leaders and Citizens: Same Role, Different Responsibilities .............64 Questions Raised ...........................................................................................67 Whose job? For what purpose? ............................................................67 Take this job and shove it?...................................................................68 Conclusion ....................................................................................................72 Chapter Four: The Language of Progress and State-Based Politics ......................74 Doing Better: the American Ethos of Improvement .....................................77 Melding the Moral and Material ..........................................................79