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The Bully Pulpit, Presidential Speeches, and the Shaping of Public Policy. Edited by Jeffrey S. Ashley and Marla J. Jarmer. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. 272 pp.
The rhetoric of U.S. presidents has become an important feature of contemporary politics, with modern presidents frequently using their platforms to address their legislative priorities. The Bully Pulpit, Presidential Speeches, and the Shaping of Public Policy tackles this political reality by exploring, in the words of editors Jeffrey S. Ashley and Marla J. Jarmer, "how presidents use the power of words to promote agendas and shape public policy" (ix). While there are features to commend about the book, The Bully Pulpit raises familiar questions about the effects of presidential rhetoric without adequately engaging them. Before turning to this critique, I will first describe the book's structure and strengths.
The book begins with an introduction outlining the rhetorical concepts that the subsequent 19 chapters will utilize. Those chapters are organized chronologically, addressing each of the presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Barack Obama. All chapters follow the same general structure: historical context of the chapter's policy issue; the president's speech text; and an analysis of the speech's rhetorical framing, definition of the problem, and its impact. The book's scope makes it an engaging read while the organizational consistency makes it manageable. The speech transcripts are a particularly valuable addition because they enable the reader to compare the author's analysis against the original text.
That the authors come from a variety of disciplines-political science, rhetorical studies, and history, to...