NEGOTIATING THE PARADOXES OF POVERTY: PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC ON WELFARE FROM JOHNSON TO CLINTON A Dissertation by MARTIN CARCASSON Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2004 Major Subject: Speech Communication NEGOTIATING THE PARADOXES OF POVERTY: PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC ON WELFARE FROM JOHNSON TO CLINTON A Dissertation by MARTIN CARCASSON Submitted to Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved as to style and content by: _____________________________ _____________________________ Martin J. Medhurst James A. Aune (Co-Chair of Committtee) (Co-Chair of Committtee) _____________________________ _____________________________ Charles Conrad Kenneth Meier (Member) (Member) _____________________________ Richard Street (Head of Department) December 2004 Major Subject: Speech Communication iii ABSTRACT Negotiating the Paradoxes of Poverty: Presidential Rhetoric on Welfare from Johnson to Clinton. (December 2004) Martin Carcasson, B.A. Texas A&M University; M.A., Texas A&M University Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Martin Medhurst Dr. Jim Aune This project examines how Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton discussed issues of poverty and welfare from Johnson’s declaration of War on Poverty in 1964 to Clinton’s signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996. I argue that there are four critical tensions relevant to the debate concerning contemporary poverty in the United States—politics vs. policy, deserving vs. undeserving, help vs. hinder, and equality vs. freedom—and the key to improving the manner in which the nation confronts the problem of poverty requires understanding and negotiating these tensions. The analysis reveals that the five presidents had a mixed but overall rather poor record in confronting the four paradoxes. In general they tended either to avoid the tensions altogether, or fall to one or the other extreme. That being said, the analysis also reveals that there is considerable common ground concerning some critical issues between all the presidents, whether they were Democrats or Republicans, ideologically moderate or more partisan. Foremost among these are the beliefs that equal opportunity should be the overarching ideal, work should be rewarded well, and those that cannot help themselves should be supported as generously as possible by the government. I conclude that the 1996 law, while based in part on questionable assumptions concerning the condition of the poor, could lead to a significant re-framing of the debate away from the generally unpopular focus on welfare and welfare recipients and toward the working poor and the conditions and difficulties under which they labor, which could potentially lead to other positive transformations beneficial to the American poor. iv DEDICATION To Tracee, Gabriela, and Cameron v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Marty Medhurst and Jim Aune for eight long years of support and encouragement, and for providing two different yet remarkably exceptional models for me to follow as a teacher and scholar. Thanks to Rick Rigsby for his guidance, and for first inspiring me to become an academic. Thanks to Charles Conrad and Ken Meier for agreeing to read this monster, and for teaching me that humor does have a place in academia. Thanks to Vanessa Beasley for our wonderful conversations about American politics and for helping to prepare me for balancing my work and my family. Thanks to my fellow graduate students at Texas A&M for helping me work out my ideas in our classes and contributing to an excellent academic culture at a new Ph.D. program. Thanks to my new colleagues at Colorado State University for their belief in me and for helping to make all this work well worth it. Thanks to the Rocky Mountains, for inspiring me to finish so I can start exploring. Thanks to my parents, Norman and Cristina, for making the sacrifices necessary to bring me to the United States and attain a world-class education, and for always encouraging me to become whatever I wanted to become. Thanks to my in-laws, Robert and Becky Castillo, for raising a wonderful daughter, and for their unselfish support, financial and otherwise, as I patiently made my way through my graduate studies. Thanks to Gabriela and Cameron, my little girl and baby boy, for their smiles and laughs, and for giving me two extraordinary reasons to work so hard and two respectable excuses for taking so long. Most of all, thanks to Tracee, my wonderful wife, for her undying support and for not letting us put our lives on hold until I finished. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page I INTRODUCTION: …………………………………………………………… 1 The Paradoxes of Poverty…………………………………………… 4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………... 26 II LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE WAR ON POVERTY……………………. 33 Johnson’s Record……………………………………………………. 33 Johnson’s Justification for His Anti-Poverty Program………………. 35 Johnson’s Framing of Poverty and the Poor………………………… 41 President Johnson’s Rhetorical Construction of His Anti-Poverty Programs……………………………………………… 52 President Johnson and the Four Paradoxes of Poverty……………… 56 III RICHARD NIXON AND THE EMERGENT WAR ON WELFARE……….. 68 Nixon’s Record ……………….……………….……………………. 68 Nixon and the Role of Government……………….………………… 70 Nixon’s Categorization of the Poor……………….………………… 73 Nixon’s Anti-Welfare Rhetoric……………….…………………….. 78 Nixon’s Alternative: The Family Assistance Plan……………….…. 84 Nixon and the Dilemmas of Poverty……………….……………….. 87 IV JIMMY CARTER AND THE LIMITS OF GOVERNMENT……….………. 101 Carter’s Record……………….……………….……………….……. 102 Carter and the Role of Government……………….………………… 104 Carter’s Depiction of the Poor……………….……………….……… 107 Carter’s Anti-Welfare Rhetoric……………….……………………... 112 Carter and the Program for Better Jobs and Income………………… 113 Jimmy Carter and the Dilemmas of Poverty………………………… 115 V RONALD REAGAN AND THE DANGERS OF GOVERNMENT…..…….. 125 Reagan’s Record……………….……………….…………………… 127 Reagan’s Rhetoric on the Role of Government…………………...... 130 Reagan’s Depiction of the Poor……………….……………………. 132 Reagan’s Attack on Government and Welfare……………………… 138 Reagan’s Welfare Policy Rhetoric……………….…………………. 146 Ronald Reagan and the Dilemmas of Poverty………………………. 155 Conclusion………………………………………………………...... 159 vii CHAPTER Page VI BILL CLINTON AND THE END OF WELFARE AS WE KNEW IT.….. 173 Clinton’s Record……………….……………….………………… 174 Clinton’s Philosophy: The New Covenant……………………….. 177 Clinton’s Depictions of Poverty……………….…………………. 180 Clinton Anti-Welfare Rhetoric……………….……………….….. 190 Clinton’s Welfare Reform Rhetoric……………….……………… 195 1996 PRWORA: The Rhetoric of Transformation……………….. 202 Bill Clinton and the Dilemmas of Poverty……………………….. 207 VII CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………. 224 Equality and Freedom: The Universal Ideal of Equal Opportunity. 225 Help vs. Hinder: The War on Welfare……………….…………… 227 Deserving versus Undeserving……………….……………….….. 236 Policy versus Politics: The Transformation……………….……… 247 Moving Forward……………….……………….……………….… 257 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………… 264 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………... 275 viii LIST OF TABLES TABLE Page 1 Importance of Major Anti-welfare Arguments by President……………………….228 2 Importance of Primary Characters in Presidential Poverty/Welfare Rhetoric……...236 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Poverty is one of the most controversial and complicated social issues in the United States. Both the existence of poverty as well as the efforts to combat it challenge the nation’s ideals of freedom, equality, compassion, family, work, individualism, and justice, and often putting them into conflict. Poverty represents the intersection of many of America’s most highly charged areas of political dispute, including inequalities of race, gender, and class; education, labor, housing, tax, and immigration policy; globalization and the impact of economic transformations; the benefits and flaws of capitalism; the “breakdown” of the traditional family; the separation of religion and government; the deterioration of the urban center; and the disputed role of the state in addressing these various difficulties. Due to its inherent complexity and broad scope, the study of poverty transcends institutional divisions within academia. Poverty is an economic issue, a sociological issue, a psychological issue, a political issue, and a philosophical issue. Moreover, poverty is a rhetorical issue. It is rhetorical in the sense that despite the proliferation of “poverty knowledge” during the last thirty years,1 many questions concerning poverty can never be answered with scientific certainty. While good scientific information is certainly critical to the poverty debate, the public debate over poverty will nonetheless always revolve around difficult philosophical questions and be shrouded by numerous uncertainties. Poverty is also rhetorical in the sense that beliefs regarding poverty, as well as those concerning its various treatments, are influenced by different value hierarchies and are highly dependent on perceptions and frames based more or less on substantive knowledge. Different ideological perspectives concerning the role of government, the “deserving” and “undeserving” status of the poor, the responsibilities of citizenship, the extent of true opportunity, and the intended and unintended consequences of government action dominate public debate concerning