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Amos Kiewe, (Ed.), THE MODERN PRESIDENCY AND CRISIS RHETORIC. Westport, CT; Praeger Publishers, 1994; pp. xxxvii + 246. $55.00 hard cover.
Collections of essays by diverse authors present serious challenges to project editors. How does the editor define the enterprise's goals and means in a fashion that will at once provide some sense of unity to the contributions, but not so constrain the contributors that each chapter constitutes a pale imitation of an "ideal model"? To whom does one turn for a range of critical voices, thus encouraging a "conversation about" rather than a "polemic for" the topic at hand? What editorial sleights of hand need be applied to ensure a semblance of even care in scholarly investigation, analysis, and argument across chapters? Whatever tack Amos Kiewe took in dealing with such questions, he is to be commended for the final result. While the chapters that comprise The Modern Presidency and Crisis Rhetoric are far from uniform, together they illuminate the diversity of presidential crisis rhetoric (in terms of what sorts of discursive events warrant analysis and what evaluative means lend themselves to the task).
In part the book's objective, as Kiewe puts it in a twenty page introduction, is to challenge "existing scholarship and assumptions regarding crisis rhetoric precisely because they have argued for a special classification of this rhetorical type" (xv). Kiewe surveys relevant scholarship on both the rhetorical presidency and crisis rhetoric, posits the concept of "crises as rhetorical constructs," defines "the modern presidency and crisis rhetoric" by way of an overview of the book's chapters, and suggests the project's significance in a brief "implications" section. Ten case studies in presidential crisis rhetoric follow: the "great debate of 1951" generated by Truman's declaration of a national emergency (by Robert L. Ivie), Eisenhower and the 1957 Little Rock crisis (Martin J. Medhurst), Kennedy's rhetorical construction of the Berlin controversy (Enrico Pucci, Jr.), Johnson in the aftermath of the JFK assassination (Kurt Ritter), Nixon's personalization of crisis (Carole Blair and Davis W. Houck), the impact of Ford's pardons of Nixon and Vietnam era draft resisters on his coalitional leadership strategy (Craig Allen Smith and Kathy B. Smith), narrative in Carter's reaction to the Iran hostage crisis (Charles J. G. Griffin),...