Elvin T. Lim is Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.In 2008 he named a five best list of books on presidential rhetoric for the Wall Street Journal. One title on the list:
The Sound of LeadershipRead about all five titles on Lim's list.
by Roderick P. Hart
Keen insights abound in Roderick P. Hart's study of presidential communications in this deceptively prosaic account of "who said what to whom, when, and where" between 1948 and1987. He describes the ways that words have now come to serve as substitutes for presidential action, and how the aura of leadership has come to take the place of the real thing. Our obsession with charisma obscures the truth that effective communication is not the be-all and end-all of leadership. Rhetoric is only the beginning, not the end, of leadership. Hart explains, in an energetic, artful style, how drastically our conception of statesmanship has changed because we now equate leading almost entirely with speaking. With the recently concluded presidential campaign behind us, it will be interesting to observe whether the historical conflation of words and deeds, promises and their delivery, persists in Barack Obama's administration.
The Page 99 Test: Elvin T. Lim's The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.
--Marshal Zeringue
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