The Obama Model and Britain: A Doxological Inquiry into the Rhetoric and Reception of Strategic Identification in the 2008 American Presidential Election Thesis submitted by Robert Kyle Delp Jr. in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy at the Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies Department, Cardiff University. 1 Senate Regulations for PhD Submission 11.5.1.2 I, Robert Kyle Delp Jr., do hereby certify that the work submitted is the result of my own investigation. Signed:________________________________Date:__________________ 2 Senate Regulations for PhD Submission 11.5.1.3 I, Robert Kyle Delp Jr., do hereby certify that the work submitted has not been accepted in substance for any other degree or award, and is not being submitted concurrently in candidature for any degree or other award. Signed:________________________________Date:__________________ 3 Senate Regulations for PhD Submission 14.1.1 I, Robert Kyle Delp Jr., do hereby certify that the thesis should be available for inter- library loan or photocopying (subject to copyright law), and that the title and summary be made to outside organizations. Signed:________________________________Date:__________________ 4 Thesis Declarations 2 List of Non-Audience Response Technology Tables and Graphs 8 Abstract 9 I. Preface 10 II. Scope and Layout 12 III. Thesis Contributions 15 III. Methodology: A Close Textual Analysis of the Text Theoretical Origins of Close Textual Analysis 17 Criticisms of Close Textual Analysis 19 IV. An Exploration of Telos in American Presidential Campaign Speeches Overview 21 Identity to Identification 23 Kenneth Burke and His Theory of Identification 24 Identification as Purpose, Political Campaigns as Subject. 25 Barack Obama and Identification 27 Towards a Meta-language of Analysis 31 Conclusion 32 V. Rhetoric, Reception, Effect: Doxology, Identification, Ideology Overview 34 Rhetoric and Identification: Audiences and Doxa 34 Merging Identification, Rhetoric and the Active Audience Paradigm 39 Encoding/Decoding, Audiences and Identification 42 Identification, Doxology, Ideology 43 Conclusion 46 VI. Methodology: Qualitative Audience Methodology: Audience Response Technology and Focus Groups Overview 48 Audience Response Technology: Advantages, Limitations, Previous Academic and Professional Use 49 Audience Response Technology: Previous Use 50 Focus Groups: Purpose and History 52 Research Variables: Sampling and Recruitment Method 53 Overview of the Normative Focus Group and Dial Session 54 A Methodological Retrospective: Group Numbers, Composition, Location 5 and Field Adjustments 55 VII. UK Context Chapter Overview 59 Obama and the United Kingdom: Doxology and Identification 59 Internal Pressures on “Britishness”: The Breakup of Britain 60 External Pressures on “Britishness” 60 Sources of Political Identification: America, UK, EU 61 Shared Economic Interests: A Tension of Identification? 62 Euroscepticism and European Identification in Britain 62 The US and UK: Shared Economic, Political, and Cultural Substance 64 The US and the UK: Cultural Consubstantiality? 65 British Attitudes Towards the United States 66 Obamamania: Barack, the 2008 Presidential Election and British Reception 69 Conclusion 73 VIII. Focus Groups Findings: Obama, his Candidacy and his Presidency Overview 75 Remembering the Election 75 Feelings towards Obama 79 Barack Obama, British Prime Minister? 80 Conclusion 83 IX. Post-Racial America: Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” Introduction 84 Contextual Concerns: Reverend Jeremiah Wright 84 Public Reaction to Wright 85 Problems Posed to “Obama for America” 85 Something More: “A More Perfect Union” 87 Focus Group and Audience Response: Key Numbers and Scores 88 A Teleological Reading: Textual Justifications 91 The Text of “A More Perfect Union”: Internal Movement 92 Connecting the “Campaign” to “America” 92 Obama Addresses the Reverend Jeremiah Wright 114 6 Re-Constituting an “American Audience” 132 The Text: Conclusion 166 Audience Reception: Conclusion 166 X. Post-Partisan America: Obama’s “The American Promise” Outline 169 Context 169 The Text: Rhetoric of the Date of the Speech 176 The Text: Length & Structure 176 Audience Response: Key Figures 177 The Text: Internal Movement Defining an Audience; Defining a Candidacy 180 Defining the “Us” through “John McCain”: The New “Other” 203 The Text: Conclusion 257 Audience Response Summary 258 XI. Post-Nationalism and Global Citizenship: Obama in Berlin Outline 261 Contextual Concerns: Obama and Foreign Policy 261 Focus Group and Audience Response: Key Figures 267 Post-Cold War Global Citizenship through Identification, Division, Action Defining the Past, Connecting with the Present 270 Speaker, Audience Consubstantial through Common Challenges 289 as an “Other”: A Rhetorical Foundation for Global Citizenship? The Text: Conclusion 345 XII. The Obama Model: Domestic Identification, Global Audiences 349 XIII. Bibliography 357 Acknowledgments 373 Appendices 375 7 List of Non-Audience Response Technology Tables and Graphs Table 7.1: National Broadsheet Circulation Figure 7.1: UK Election Coverage of Barack Obama Figure 7.2: Comparative Coverage of Barack Obama During 2008 Election 8 Abstract This thesis measures the rhetoric and effect of political campaign discourse. It is a rhetorical analysis of three campaign speeches given by Senator Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election, "A More Perfect Union" delivered in March 2008, "The American Promise" delivered at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008 and "A World that Stands as One" delivered in Berlin in July 2008. Reading the speech teleologically by drawing on Kenneth Burke's theory of rhetorical identification and consubstantiality, this thesis argues the Obama Model of persuasion constructs audience identity and uses specific strands of an audience's history to emphasise common ground, shared values and shared interests in provisional coalitions against common challenges. This is accomplished through the strategic use of "we," through the praise of an audience's dominant symbols and values and through scapegoating, Othering and antithesis. As a multidisciplinary study, this thesis seeks to understand how these messages and strategies are received by audiences using focus groups and audience response technology. It convenes twelve focus groups of previously unaddressed audiences in the United Kingdom to understand the doxological equipment audiences bring to the rhetorical transaction of American political campaign discourse. As such, it seeks to understand moments of convergence and divergence, identification and division between demographically diverse audiences and Obama's campaign speeches. This thesis is an original contribution to rhetorical theory, identity and identification, studies on Kenneth Burke and Barack Obama, cultural studies and Joseph Nye's theory of soft power in international relations. 9 I. Preface This thesis began on a hot, rainy summer evening in Miami, Florida at the beginning of the 2008 American General Election. There were hundreds of us who had come to Florida from all over the country to organize volunteers and voters as part of the Obama Organizing Fellowship. Five other people and I, all under twenty-five, were charged as a team with organizing the strongly Republican and Cuban area of Miami known as Westchester. My fellow team members and I had just finished a grueling ten-hour training session on the fundamentals of community organizing. Most of it was a straightforward process of learning how to efficiently target sympathetic voters in different areas of the city, how to properly and legally register someone to vote and how to keep track of the stacks of canvassing data that were cumulating in make-shift offices across the nation. One exercise that took a large portion out of the day was breaking down into small groups and learning how to, in under two minutes, tell people our own story: who we were, why we left home to volunteer and what issues and policies motivated us. Then, we would critique each other and suggest how we could improve what we said and what we could say differently to make our stories more powerful. I then watched veteran community organizers with amazement as they role played canvassing situations with voters: the key, they said, wasn’t to have an army of policy statistics ready to unleash on voters who might disagree with you, it was to find something in your life story to make a connection with the voter. This was something new for me. That night it rained and while our newly formed community organizing team sipped a few beers under hula huts down by the beach, I reflected on that day’s training. “Why were we learning to tell our stories?” I asked. The process seemed to fly in the face of everything I had learned about rational politics. I was concerned. I had put my MA on hold and came to Miami because I thought the stakes were high, I wanted to make sure we got it right. Our team leader, a Brooklyn born veteran volunteer and Harvard graduate was now in his third state of the campaign, sipped his beer and smiled. “Bro,” he said, “you can talk to a voter about the facts as you see them, and they’ll come right back at you with the facts as they see them, and both of you can walk away unconvinced. But when you tell your story, no one can discount your truth. They can’t tell you that you aren’t passionate about the election, or that as a student you struggle with tuition. Americans are struggling. Tell them your story, and they might find out they have more in common with you than they thought.” 10 Over the next six weeks, we organized Miami, telling people our stories and asking them to tell theirs. I was amazed at how it disarmed potentially hostile voters, and when we exchanged stories, we always seemed to find something in common. It didn’t always work, and many Cuban-Americans were unreceptive, but the power of a personal narrative seemed to refresh people’s attitude toward politics. It seemed to be different than the vitriol they watched every night on television. As Obama had said in one of his speeches, we could truly “see ourselves in each other.” It didn’t stop there for Obama though.