Five Greatest Presidential Speeches

it is today i'm taking their presents their top five presidential speeches of all time i'm kate mcintyre their remarks presidents day and every year the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas house it's popular presidential lecture series this year's series kicked off with five grade presidential speeches featuring dr mary stuckey of penn state university dr david zaretsky of northwestern university and dr robert rowen of the university of kansas the three specialize in rhetoric and communication especially political rhetoric this event was held february six twenty twenty co sponsored by case department of communication studies department of history and the department of political science it was moderated by aubrey coleman she's the associate director of the dole institute of politics she started out by asking professor mary stuckey what makes a presidential speech great i think two things make it very well

a certain level of eloquent as always ninth an eloquent is this wonderful thing that super hard to define and depends upon the wage rate so an eloquent speech is one i can't speak to its own times in the language of its time we wouldn't necessarily sit still for daniel webster speech now although if we're going to talk about and tweeting presidency maybe from a bustier for analysts are released a paragraph so good presidential speech would have their start their on and i also think you have to have some kind of in fact the speeches that i chose for tonight were speeches the two that i have and we're both given to congress and both of them set out both aspirational aims and followed it up with an actual policy incentives or programs and so i want to say that there's something about follow through that matters is what i

like to pick up on that comment about delegates and say that a great speech does really two things factor david zaretsky from northwestern university the first is that it speaks to the exigencies of its time as mary said the second is that outlasts the exigencies of its time so that it can be rather heard or seen with profit once the specific context of its time has been changed and a new generation or a new audience comes to the fore and unsurprisingly i agree with my colleague said but let me it sounds like the rubber role and teaches communications studies at the university of kansas i think great speeches speeches they continue to live are almost always about ideas about what the american experiment with democracy means and ronald reagan paraphrasing and james madison talked about we're a nation of it an empire of ideals and i think one thing is that it reflects on those kinds of ideals that all the

speeches were talking about when i do that and i think great speeches also tend to talk about what it means to be an american and we're not there yet but over time that definition of what it means to be an american has gradually become more and more inclusive as we've recognized our shared humanity i understand it a little he may seem difficult to believe that a night but i still think those two things a lot of their of course right about eloquence and living beyond our time exactly right for a while the task isn't hammond's chart into it vibrate presidential speeches professor zaretsky years is one of the earliest an older speeches that will be discussing this evening and you have called this speech and interesting and imaginative response to a historical situation what was the situation what was the speech and what makes a great while before i answer those questions since i'm in the unusual position of going first

rather than in alphabetical order i wanted to quit observations one as you'll notice that most of the speeches that we have chosen are relatively recent vintage in fact we don't go back farther than what i'm going to talk about yemen at lincoln's second inaugural that's not because we have no historical interest i assure you it's because the custom of presidents frequently and routinely giving speeches is of the last hundred and twenty five years by and large abraham lincoln gave under one hundred speeches during the entire time he was president and most of those were welcoming addresses the visiting delegations even as relatively undistinguished rhetorically recent presidents gerald ford and you will know as bob dole's running mate would sometimes give a hundred speeches in a month so the practice of presidential speech making is in large part of recent origin second you'll notice that a number of the

speeches that we picked our inaugural addresses including this one and that i think is partly because the inaugural as a somewhat distinct sean rowe or category of speeches with few exceptions incoming presidents and follow thomas jefferson's example in his first inaugural in a given speeches that are lofty intone unifying in purpose broadly suggestive of directions to be pursued during the administration without being too specific asking for help and support from the american people and asking define a blessing as well like lincoln's second inaugural because it's given in a very delicate moment the civil war is not yet over it's clear that the south will not win militarily it's not clear that the south will surrender as opposed to going to the hills and taking up gorilla warfare lincoln

needs to speak to and yet once contacts he also needs to give some idea what's going to follow the war what are his ideas for reconstruction and indeed he was criticized after giving a speech for not being specific enough about reconstruction but he sets out all out by putting the whole experience of the war in a larger and unifying context as divine punishment visited on both the north and the south and he walks a very delicate line between blaming the south for the war and universal icing blame for the war you can read the speech as do either of those things and it continues to speak to us because of this this context shifting nature of the speech air in its very short the entire speech is four paragraphs

long seven hundred and one words it's the shortest inaugural in history with the exception of george washington's second it is the most you're twining of politics and religion i think of any presidential inaugural address and yet its appeals to religion are due to flying and not have this we stopped there but those those are the reasons that i would nominate that if that's an artful use of religion grammys arts with the old testament and you know very harsh kind of this has been visited upon us and ends with such a lovely grace know they're sort of new testament understanding of forgiveness and so it's just a lot of things i think this is the first big event of the lincoln memorial and you read it i'm everyday i've only been a few times but i cried every single time because it's an

expression of the larger sense that we're all americans and i think the final words when he talks about with malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right what i strive to finish the work we are in the wind up the nation's wounds they care for him to show up more in the battle and he goes on he's not going into north and south he's talking to this idea of the americans who will go on and began that was professor robin rohan of the university of kansas speaking at the dole institute of politics this was the first in their annual presidential lecture series moderated by associate director audrey coleman says last century very different area era and the nation contemplating war instead of reconciliation have stuck you're stuck in which you tell us yeah roosevelt's four freedoms speech and he says as men do not live by bread alone they do not fight by arguments along those two men are defenses that those behind them

to build our defenses must have the stamina and the courage which come from and shaker will believe in the manner of life which they are defending the city says about that unshakable beliefs there's nothing mysterious about the foundations of the healthy and strong democracy the basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple they're equality of opportunity for use and for others jobs for those who can work security for those who need it the ending of the special privilege for the few the preservation of civil liberty for all the enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living and he then says that there are four freedoms associated with it the first as the freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world the second is freedom of every person to worship god in his own way

everywhere in the world the third is freedom from want which translated in the world turns means economic understanding social security every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants everywhere in the world the fourth is freedom from fear which translated into world turns me to worldwide reduction and armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor anywhere in the world so what he does there is he takes the american ideal and tries to make the best of that available to everyone in the world and it is clear earlier fall on woodrow wilson's you known commodity in the war that will make the world safe for democracy but it hasn't with that likes very specific goals as to what that world would sell at that and

people know what they're fighting for and at the end of course of this his dream is in education as a way to make that happen this is that the candidates addressing congress he's addressing congress is actually on an annual message to the state of the union it's january sixth nineteen forty one but in that moment and so and what is his policy so he sets out his vision for america and in the world and when he says well how does that relate to the policy that he's asking but what use is envisioning right like they're there is a world war already happening it's not quite embroil the united states europe and his goal is that if there's going to be more as he clearly thinks better but it's going to be long it's going to be difficult that the whole first part of the speech he's a direct address saying the attacks of keizer as an isolationist and he is still making arguments for the necessity of war and he's promising at the end of it that the

american ideal will be doubt which dominates the western world one remarkable things about that speech is it's given at a time when public opinion is still somewhat divided mean it's moving in the direction of supporting our involvement in the war but it's around that area and those early references to isolationist and appease years are not straw man arguments he says we can we are soft hearted but we cannot afford to be thought that it was a remarkable things about a busy he clearly anticipate what's going to happen in the speeches designed it i think in part to move the american public in the direction that he sees it going to go in the end i'm struck by kind of the short term message about the nie the rearmament that he's does discussing their and the longer message about the evolving nature of democracy in the short term in a week we've heard about how there

is opposition to american involvement in the war but he has one thing that really struck by is how he says we should not demand immediate repayment from at this point this is this is nineteen forty and we're gonna be rearming we're going to be helping the brits in particular this is ten months roughly before pearl harbor and you think about that as opposed to a time today we're all we want is instant replay matter what we do he was going to end destiny international institutions to keep the p to make the piece and then keep the pigs but it also strikes me that this is a speech about is evolving understanding of what a truly a successful democratic society would provide and how it will take care of its citizens this nation began in opposition here and we had experienced the british crown etc and so much of the early definition of democracy was negative

of what we would not allow in order to protect our free i think it's worth mentioning about the speeches that fits together with one that he gave just a week earlier threats to the american people when he called on the us to become the great arsenal that democracy and proposed the lend lease program and it's it's as if this speech takes the specifics from that one and sets them into a broader and more idealistic companies and he says this is no vision of a distant millennium it is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our time and our generation the kind of world is the very antithesis of the so called new order of tyranny which the dictator seek to create with the crash of a bomb factory mary stuckey specializes in political and presidential rhetoric at penn state university that's the order we oppose a greater confession a moral order a good society is able to face schemes of world domination and for a revolution to live without fear

sounds pretty contemporary thousands you're listening to the first in their twenty twenty presidential lecture series at the dole institute of politics this year's lectures are focusing on presidential speech making and rhetoric this event featured professors mary stuckey of penn state robin roland of k u and david's a recipe of northwestern university and was moderated by dole institute associate director aubrey coleman our next pick is twenty years or more into the future and instead of army you're facing world war two were in the midst of the cold war david would you tell us more about her second choice years in nineteen ninety nine a group of about a hundred and fifty scholars of public discourse right the top one hundred speeches of the twentieth century americans only one hour only one state in the union made and it was and the four freedoms than the number two ranking was kennedy's inaugural

address it was behind only martin luther king's i have a dream speech i did not take kennedy's inaugural address for the reason that i don't think it means the task of speaking beyond its time to the degree that one would expect of the great speeches of wonderful representative example of american rhetoric in the middle of the cold war and under the pressures of the cold war instead the speech that i chose was the commencement address that kennedy gave at american university in june of nineteen sixty three which is the first example that i can fine of an american president from the mid twentieth century beginning to look beyond the cold war and the speech emphasizes peace as the most significant car where previous rhetoric that tended to emphasize freedom as the most significant car and the argument that the speech makes is that in the world after the cuban missile crisis we can't

afford to continue with an arms race we can't afford to assume we will not miscalculate and get into war and we need to begin to focus on peace as our ultimate objective and so he's rethinking the assumptions of the cold war he's asking americans to begin to rethink their assumptions about the soviet union and he distinguishes russia as a world power the ussr as a world power from communism as an ideological system and says we have to get beyond the ideological difference annie paraphrase woodrow wilson say if we cannot now and our differences we can at least make the world safe for diversity and then goes on to say we need to think about what all human beings have in common we all breathe the same air we all cherish our children's future and we are all mortal kennedy is not making a conversion in a speech in

fact two weeks later he goes to berlin and facing the wall he says there's some who say we can get along with the communist let them come to berlin and in september he would say he believes in the domino theory and we have to stand firm in vietnam but this speech opens a window and it gets be young where public opinion ears and urges the american public to at least open their their eyes to the possibility of thinking in a new direction and changing course and it's a very courageous act to give that kind of a speech without public backing before it and asked the public to begin to rethink and that's the reason i picked us and it's it's an interesting funny thing david the kurds roosevelt once that it's such a terrible thing to start reading and look behind you and why nobody there and so that the issue of how does the president

lead public opinion but not read it so much that he believes public opinion behind in the sails right so roosevelt gives a famous speech called the quarantine speech right right and he looks behind him and there's nobody there and so he's like ok well so maybe the whole global leadership today is not happening and he waits you know quite a long time before he tries them again and goes at a very slow rate and as he tries to get any worse and that's helped write so if the nazis had done fewer terrible think it would have been harder for roosevelt to make the argument but in this case what kennedy is really trying to do is use that open that window and so giving people the chance to see a thing but that kind of persuasion requires an enormous amount of time and commitment and it builds on itself and presidents don't have that kind of time for senators like bob dole can be around for a long time and that's not it best case presidents have eight

years which is not a whole lot of time to make a complicated case and hope the public opinion will fall at so at that that's an enormously courageous lincoln had us does statement somewhat like this in which he encouraged people to begin thinking about the emancipation even while he was saying he supported colonization but it was a written message to congress not a speech so i couldn't pick i think the speeches contemporary because it points to the importance of having an ally is based on our ideals and their ideals and not just on self interest and let me add that eight years is the best case for the worst case depending on the circumstances public opinion and making sure that people are behind you what differences did the media environments in those three you know can you talk about that and how people learn about what the president said an end and get

access to that information and is that significant well the media environment that lincoln face was highly polarized the notion of objectivity even as an ideal didn't yet exist so the press was highly parts now by the time he gets the second inaugural press is divided into little bit different way there's supportive press and then there's more radical press saying he's not that he's not going far enough but the speech between the speeches were walking disseminated the press really begins to play a very important role in leaking fifties when the combination of the railroad in the telegraph begin really close knit the country together in a way that it had not been before and roosevelt have the genius to understand that he has a medium that gets into every american home for every american now again dr staci of penn state university right

answer you would see these pictures of people leaning forward and one of my students when i took him to the fdr library was like oh look they're like listening intently and i think they have to the receptionist and so literally the radio the cons part of the family circle on for the first time on a routine basis and partly because roosevelt around for so long the president's voice it's literally in your call on in a way that had not be and it had happened before but not with a regularity that roosevelt did and he was very careful about when he spoke how often he spoke of what he spoke about when he was on the radio so that his words would have a certain kind of authority for ten sisters and weight so he would he was very strategic about using that medium and then when we get to some of these later president they

don't have that kind of choice to be strategic you know you mention how often gerald ford spoke and partly that's because he gets catapulted into a campaign but it's also because the expectation that if anything happens the president will be there to tell us what it means that but that it's not true and less the president he has a speaking voice and now that's gone right there's so many competing kinds of information that the presidential voice doesn't have the same ability to cut through the noise carefully cultivated the press and as a result he generally got a pretty favorable press coverage of the press was deferential to him and we now know that there are many things that the press do about and chose not to cover and report out but any kind of speech that he gave was seen as a major address that got a lot of press and so even that at a university in he would've had plenty of press coverage

so we haven't suffered and you know this most commencement addresses are full of platitudes directed to the graduates but sometimes when a public figure delivers the address it becomes a venue for a major policy proposals most notably george marshall at harvard proposing what became known as the marshall plan and kennedy's commencement address at american university was was in that category ok with witches in three out of the five would have the last tsunami professor stuckey old now are under lyndon johnson so in nineteen sixty five bunches civil rights marchers trying to march from selma to montgomery in alabama they were stopped by police and sheriffs and bystanders brutally beaten and the president it gives a major a special message to congress a few days later and he opens that a draft way saying i speak tonight for

the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy so you ever in hispanics and what johnson does in this speech is he is the first american president to put the weight of the presidency behind the cause of civil rights and at the end of this speech when he says you know we're going into this and we don't we what we shall overcome he puts the civil rights movement in the heart of the presidency and so he unites the significance of it's happening with civil rights with the power of the presidency in a way that had not been done before and ended its remarkable so he says in this speech and he asked the american people to join him in this cause at times history and fake meat at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom so it was at lexington and concord

so it was a century ago a mathematics so it was last week in selma alabama so he literally put because the civil rights people are fighting for land as they cross that bridge in selma on the same moral plane with automatic and lexington and concord which is an enormous thing and in nineteen sixty five and he says rarely are we met with a challenge not more growth or abundance are well for our security but to the values and purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation the issue of equal rights for america negroes is such an issue and should we defeat every enemy should we double our wealth and conquer the stars and still be an equal to this issue we will have failed as a people and as a nation there is no negro problem there is no southern problem there is no northern problem there is only an american problem

and this is and this is an enormously important moment in the history of civil rights i would argue in the history of the presidency and in the history of our country it seems to me this speech speaks to that point i made much earlier that great speeches talk about american identity and hear this speech makes the white that american identity transcends race and and let me air that there's an echo of this speech in obama's second inaugural when he references the dots about how badly american journey that goes from seneca falls the selma to stonewall is broadening on the message that lbj said with great eloquence and that's a journey that is not yet complete but is that perhaps hopefully still at the core of the american experience the other thing he does hear there is i think an enormously important is he says it's not just negroes but it's all of us who have

to overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice and we shall overcome as a man whose roots go deeply into southern soil i know how agonizing racial feelings are right and then he does his beautiful riff on his identity american identity and the need for inclusiveness and that that is it's a remarkable speed in obama's two thousand and four keynote at one when he talks about that if there is someone on the south side of chicago or grandparent who does not have to do it matters to candidates not use grandparent obama is echoing what lbj said at this time and that again is a point that these are not black or white or whatever these are american it as this is an unbelievable speech and i want this one last week and he wants to be done than just mobilize american ideology but he also

mobilize is what at that moment is the great respect the american people have for the institution of the presidency and he says at one point your president makes this request of every american and want me to join in so he's really mobilizing the faith that the m that americans have in nineteen sixty five in their political institutions really stop and remember we once had faith in our political institutions and we couldn't mobile life that fate and deeply significant life there's a line in the speech that is sometimes misunderstood when johnson says there is no moral issue this sounds like a contrast to kennedy's civil rights message that he gave the day after the american university speech we said we're confronted primarily with a moral issue the rays and johnson says there's no moral issue is not that he's a moral it's that the issue had already been decided there's no need for more

argument about and so the speech becomes not a justification for action on voting rights but an attempt at mobilization for an argument that has already been concluded so he's good at rolling again and he gets echoed later so there is this sense that the presidency is this importantly self self reverential institution write that it has this centrale it on within the american and a man to nation that he can say for instance god will not favor everything we do this right which has a clear echo of when and it is our duty to divine its will but i cannot help believing that he truly understands and that he really favors the undertaking that week that we begin here tonight right and he's clearly apple when lincoln there in the same way that obama is going to pick up on this and so there is this notion of the president cn and history being so deeply embedded and one

another that it's part of what makes a speech you're listening to the first in their twenty twenty presidential lecture series at the dole institute of politics this event featured professors mary stuckey of penn state robin roland ok you and david's a risky of northwestern university and was moderated by dole institute associate director aubrey coleman president reagan is known as a great orator professor roland how could you pick just one speech of his for your number five will it i could never pick just one speech but i had to but before i talk about the speech at the house of one semester on june eighth of nineteen eighty two let me tell you know i first started studying president reagan almost forty years ago and i bought into all the stereotypes of the time that he was an extremist and just a movie actor and i came to discover that all the stereotypes were wrong but he was actually a gifted speechwriter at his own best or is the dryer much more pragmatic and have been realised and had a

genuine sense of what it means to be an american and that that and that stood for something the democratic ideal the speech he gave at westminster was at the very height of the cold war people are afraid of reagan and there are massive marches going on in both the united states and europe people fear that he is just a cowboy movie actor either domino a radical enough to get us into war and what he does at westminster is give us a rhetorical theory of the cold war now i drop on in and my analysis professors arrest these work on definition and i argued that definition is powerful because it gives us a worldview in reagan's case he gets as an ideology and that ideology is that democracy is an idea that actually works but he ties that idea to america and he begins that married man a

passage that he wrote himself he doubts about beginning with the exodus of that's a while back and he talks about it as an idea that moves toward the idea that personal freedom is relevant for all human beings any ties that was at a rally and he says that that's why the democracy is not only the most moral system of government he says democracy is not a fragile flour still it needs nurturing and he and the speech he lays out his theory of the cold war which was but to call the cell you what was a brutal parenting and point out that it was a brutal tyranny that could feed its own people that irritated the soviet a great deal which was his goal it also whisper and people in the soviet union and especially in the warsaw pact in eastern europe knew what he had a buildup oh weapons and that was largely rhetorical a major because reagan was

very averse actually using weapons it was sending a message that you cannot keep up with our economy but he also offered real arms control when he said that in the eighties conservatives thought he was getting and hope he was getting and liberals were terrified that he didn't merit mean when he actually dig mean it it surprised both groups that the great joy of liberals and to the great and happiness of the neoconservatives of the air but then most of all he defended the idea of democracy and he argued that in the whole arc of human history that no one wants to live in a society in which you don't have some say no one wants to live in a society when you can trust the free press said souter and it turned out that combination of it as a consistent narrative a consistent set of it is a consistent argument nine years later the soviet union is no i'm not saying reagan did that

that the most important people in that would be for him and actress on and marshal and gorbachev but reagan's idea that our system works better than your system and why don't you join us in that that idea was really powerful and there's one more thing i wanna say about this speech and i want to quote just one for us because when you go through this speech the first draft is terrible anthony nolan writes a radical drafted the contract but it's worth having it needs major cuts and then you look at reagan's cuts and he edits or re writes more than half of the speech and i want and when you read that you can not to think that reagan is just an actor did i want a review just one line that i think gives you a sense of reagan's argument in his narrative and it also shows you what a great writer reagan was he said today

on the meadow wind our military forces faced east to prevent possible invasion on the other side of the line the soviet forces also faced east to prevent their people from leaving and of course just seven years later that actually happened as their forces let people leave from east germany from czechoslovakia and so on and so forth it's it's a speech that made a real difference and i see it in kind of a line with candidate and then the four freedoms before at that the prod the most important aspect of american foreign policy views are ideas even and our ideas are most powerful weapons or you know you don't trick up their sleeve you're on you've picked another another be seated he cheated with their mothers these are the campus connection when i'm directly i'm an older better it struck me that going last was also that idea that i i i've said we

have a bonus speech the six speech but it's it's not really quite in the same category as the other speeches it's the greatest speech last hundred years by president in the state of kansas now i also kind of cheated because that's not the largest group of importance because by presidents in this data can visit you'll ever find but the other advantage of this is at that i get to talk about president obama and president obama went to ottawa to me a hundred and one years after teddy roosevelt presented the new nationalism in ottawa to me every hundred and one years ocelot and he becomes the center of a presidential rather slowly we've got ninety some years ago he was in a very difficult line the economy had not come back and more importantly than that he found himself in a rhetorical box i think it's that to some extent of his own making you remember when he promised he said our politics are not as divided as they would have

year and he promised to bring us hope and change and then he became president and discover at least in washington our politics are every bit as divided as they would appear i don't think that's true of average citizens but in washington it was true let me just give you one example of that at the republicans in congress favor of the stimulus program in the spring of two thousand and eight because the economy was in bed sick by the time obama becomes president and economy has collapsed they become fervent supporters of cutting the national debt and only three republicans in congress was then became a democrat support any kind of stimulus let me remind you after seven years of growth that we then had a tax cut in the first year of the trump presidency so the point i'm making is it's a highly partisan i think about what happened when republicans would oppose obama they would say he

promised to bring us together locke i'm voting against him so he hasn't brought us together now this was a difficult time obama realized that he needed to change the narrative and of all places he went off a lot of meat because that's where dr sproul and what he said was but the real problem we face in this country was that we did not get the opportunity to all our fellow citizens the signature line is he said we need to get everybody need to do their fair share and we needed to get everybody a fair shot and so income inequality and the rats and others who wouldn't do their fair share for the rest of us i'm a k u faculty member i'm not in the rich obviously out of that that was the goal or thing and they married in their reelection now an ad in adelaide with that came running against somebody had

been an investment banker was kind of a rhetorical gifts as well but it seems to me that what obama then did what shift the narrative and by the way let me also say to those who argue that no one had talked about income inequality or senator sanders they should listen to what president obama said when he went to ask the wind eight and gave the greatest speech in a hundred years in kansas presidential speech at bill self given battersby specialized that really is one of the group on one of the themes that robin mentioned there which says that presidents are storytellers and they tell us the story of our country they tell us the story of our history they tell us the story of our time and to the ad to the extent that they do that while it resonates with us we consider them eloquent on and to the extent that they can tell small stories of our time and place them in larger narrative is then they're getting to that notion of timelessness i and the state the obvious the americans are

not given the president invents the merit and that it has to meet a certain level of reality testing but it's not automatic what the narrative will be or how the president will choose to deploy so this narrative of a war of obama's a master waterman is also threatening what's emerging is in the threading the needle of what's emerging as a split within the democratic party there's talk about today as the centrists and the progress and obama is signaling in a progressive direction getting ready for his reelection campaign that's professor david zaretsky of northwestern university before that professor mary stuckey of penn state university and professor robert rowen of the university of kansas the three specialize in political rhetoric and communication they spoke at the dole institute of politics presidential lecture series on february six twenty twenty will take questions from the audience

as kbr prisons continues right after this from the university of kansas this is kansas public radio we're ok and you nine he won five in warren it may be one of three mining kansas public radio dot org support for k pr percent of kansas public radio comes from the call center for the humanities presenting a modern navies strossen discussing her book paint why we should resist it with free speech not censorship thursday night seven thirty pm at the lawrence public library the public is welcomed am from lyric opera of kansas city presenting the psychological thriller shia dilemma more march seven eleven and thirteen and fifteen at the kauffman center information and ticket casey opera that oh archie i'm kate mcintyre for

the rest of this hour escape your presents q and a from the president a lecture series at the dole institute of politics featuring professors mary stuckey of penn state university robert rowen ok you and david zaretsky of northwestern university where the conditions under which we might expect unifying to show up again in presidential speeches were short answer the different president i am i mean that seriously and i don't think that this president and sees that as one of his goals and he speaks to a very particular audience and he speaks very clearly to that audience i was on a plane so i missed his speech this morning on the state of the union for example well it was not an after unification which in normal years yeah i mean normally that that's their job if the inaugural set principles by which an administration will govern itself i stayed in the

union applies those principles the policy and then the budget message and the money behind the policy right so there's a sort of logical sequence of those speeches and just at the union did not fall into that logical sequence so i would say that if you're gonna get unifying writer do it it's going to come from a different president there are three well our history of arab and moments when people have used rhetoric to create a sense of fear or a concert at our they've drawn on alienation korea sense of hatred for the losses but in the larger arc of american history the counter argument the argument that we're moving forward the american dream because of our shared identity if you think about all the speeches we talk about a nightmare all optimistic but as they play to our shared humanity and throughout history those that rhetoric has had much more resonance now

that's not where we are right now but you think of the other times we've come throw that the civil rights movement and the hate that seemed so silly and stupid now the time before the civil war are many many times the optimistic message that points to our shared identity has one enormous advantage which is we all are human beings who want basically the same things for our families and our country and and that's why president obama are putting backward and quoting theodore parker said the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice and bends toward justice because of our shared humanity and that is built for i think another precondition for the return of that kind of appeal is to restore the respect for fact because of what those what those shared principles

have typically been based upon as a set of facts that ultimately are archer my colleagues are better historians and i am so i am just showing people that i can quote john adams and it was disbanded and british soldiers in the boston matic massacre any said facts are stubborn buying cindy and i think that's still are stubborn plants if you think about the evolution of attitudes about global warming it's because facts are stubborn plants and i'd say the same thing on on accepting you know people of every possible gender ethnicity facts are stubborn things that i bet they seem a little less govern now and david davis as usual totally right questions at a question about getting away from being degraded state of our rhetoric or political rhetoric lately i wonder if it's possible that we will again have a flourishing of rhetoric with a less secular nation and this were struck

by the greatest beaches some of her speeches at from nineteenth century may draw very heavily on the bottle as dean martin luther king but i wonder if we've lost that element of our national consciousness that's a super good point on because presidents could fdr for instance could refer to a christian nation in a way that a president now just can't do any to fdr's credit he actually is one of the president's that adds to dale that and it was considered like oh my god radical end how do you talk about transcendent values without the deity is it's that it's a good trick arm and i think presidents can do it when they do it as obama did which is a reference to their personal faith and a reference to the unifying aspects of faith in general

on but it's a it's a much more difficult task than it used to be for sure for some reason it was an easier task in the past is that we were much more exclusive and not as inclusion eric about what religion and what fates were assumed of the american population so that the same time they were unify they also caused a lot of people feel less not mean there's one other faces them that is available to our us and that's the secular faces down of the american dream and the american experiment of president then senator obama tidal is the race speech a more perfect union and almost all of his rhetoric is based in the idea that democratic ideals and we gradually moved toward a union in which all are included in all although we have the four freedoms for all americans and it seems to me that i think that's why many of us when we walk my wife is here and he can tell you we were in

washington for a convention and we walk them all and i cried twice at the lincoln memorial and at the king memorial pretty much the whole way through fighting through the effort in iraq from cairo remarkable on that easy to see seasoned am thankful for her continued bad judgment but the plight is though secular saints matter if you're a stand for something larger if you can't stand the lincoln memorial and think thank god for abraham lincoln all of us do that that mythology should be available to all this one of things that threatens us is the decline of faith in the american dream and then we need to reap reefer reaffirmed that so somebody wrote to roosevelt island and mike and i was it's nineteen thirty four but i could of the day around and and there are rumors that the roosevelts were secretly jewish and somebody wrote a letter and said really like are you secretly duel

each hen bros another fairly unusual thing which is that he published the response in his public papers and he didn't say the guy for asking the question and he didn't say no sir you should be more tolerant he said no you know in the dim distant that they could have then no idea i hope they were good citizens and believers in god and so he modeled this kind of democratic notion of what it means to be a citizen in an inclusive are public eye which is it doesn't matter how they were good citizens and so i think that's the prominent and locating the promise that you find in actual presidential rhetoric and i add to that it's there's a moment in reagan's first inaugural where he takes

us on a tour of the mall that the us first inauguration on the west front of the capital a texas he talked about watching in a monumental monumental man and he takes us to the jefferson he says that the declaration of independence flames with his eloquence and the lincoln memorial is about that so every would understand the life of this nation will find it in the life of abraham lincoln but then he takes us across the river arlington national cemetery at the grave of martin prep and you find meetings a year because the meaning of this country is an ordinary americans who've been committed to that american ideal it's an incredible moment and and we can learn a lot from russia reagan and his faith both the anti religion but also is vague in the ideals this nation the world's oldest republic it up i know we're here to talk about elected president says wondered if i guess a question of presidential candidates who wish to be elected but the idea of that you know reading your op as a hyperbole anger and hope the idea of a

transitional era is of these of intense political instability there oh wow for rhetoric such as trump among others you know to succeed at what is needed for successful presidential candidate rhetoric from the democratic side it or succeeded as you think and then i'll stipulate it's good really good question because the problem that people faced is that when trump turns politics into a reality show right where people are grabbing attention mean one of the things that a low seeded rate by ripping the speech was she played by his rules now people are talking about me written a speech they're not talking about your speech right that's a very tricky and move strategically successful perhaps is that where we want our politics to grow but when we go when they go

low we go high that didn't turn out so well for the democrats either and so it's really a question of finding a space that doesn't necessarily a play by trump's rules but expects the fact of those rules and then devises something what we would call a rhetorical invention or it comes up with a response to that that changes the nature of the game now and the democratic candidates so far and none of the republican candidates who have in the past oppose trump have been able to solve the riddle there's another aspect of the problem that you're question raises which is one of the unintended consequences of the party selection reforms that took place beginning in the late sixties and early seventies when we went suddenly from fifteen primaries to primaries everywhere and multiple contenders of course is the dilemma is how do you

not tried your opponents so that the dominant impression of the challenging party is one of just infighting and bickering and not really standing for anything while at the same time making a case for yourself to be ultimately the nominee so that we produce hits seems i'm a year after year in the opposition party whichever party this a situation in which the person who emerges as the candidate as already been substantially weakened by the candidate selection process that the incumbent party we'll then publicize as a reason not to change parties who have to somehow or other figure that out yet so this next election and political scientists talk about this elections as being persuasion elections or mobilization elections and this is not a persuasion election right nobody at this space in our political life there you know if there's any one in this audience willing to be persuaded please

let us know where you are and to get there just don't seem to be many of those people are because of the mobilization alexa and so the strategic question is how to mobilize your people but the question that you're asking is really goes back on and there's this question of how to we unite people how to we come up with a vision of the country that both sides can buy into and i don't know that's professor mary stuckey at penn state university before that david zaretsky of northwestern university and robert role on of the university of kansas the three spoke at the first in this year's presidential lecture series at the dole institute of politics every six twenty twenty this event was moderated by aubrey coleman she's the associate director of the dole institute i'm j mcintyre k pr prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas