The Hope and Promise of Political Communication in the 21st Century

Trevor Parry-GilesUniversity of Maryland

NCA Institute for Faculty Development“Hope” Institute, 2011

(Re)Assessing Political Communication

• American political discourse is often detailed and specific in its focus on policy.

• American political discourse is generally successful at producing high quality leaders and leadership.

• American political discourse is increasingly democratized.

• Rhetorical politics works to the benefit of the American political community.

The Clinton Model

• Clinton embodied and performed the policy emphasis of contemporary political communication in 2000.

• American judgments of Clinton manifested the sophistication of voters on issues of leadership.

• Clinton made full use of technology and alternative media to expand and democratize political communication.

The Clinton Model

“Well, you know, sometimes during this campaign, I hear people criticize the 1990's and that's fair, you know, it's a campaign and people can criticize each other, but I'm always wondering when I hear that criticism, well, what part of the 1990's didn't they like? The peace or the prosperity? Because I thought we were on the right track.”—Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2008

10 Years (or so) Later…

Do we still, in 2011, have a meaningfully rhetorical politics that works to the benefit of a democratic community? Did we ever have such a politics?

How best can we assess the overall quality of political communication for a community that generally dismisses or demeans such symbolic practice as a matter of course and custom?

Themes emergent from Hope that point the way in evaluation and assessment:

ContextEffectsEthicsVirtueCivilityProgress

Generational Elections

1908

Generational Elections

1928

Generational Elections

1948

Generational Elections

1968

Generational Elections

1988

Generational Elections

2008

Voter Turnout

1908 1928 1948 1968 1988 20080

10

20

30

40

50

60

70 65.4

56.953

60.84

50.15

57.48

Campaign Year

% o

f VA

P

(Re)Assessing Political Communication

• American political discourse is often detailed and specific in its focus on policy.

• American political discourse is generally successful at producing high quality leaders and leadership.

• American political discourse is increasingly democratized.

• Rhetorical politics works to the benefit of the American political community.

A “Rhetorical” Politics

• “…‘rhetorical’ refers to a general way of existing in the world—approaching the world as a rhetorical being who understands that few things in life are given or inalterably determined; one who understands that most things are amenable to choice and to selection from among several competing choices; one who understands that the power to use symbols carries with it the power to both build and to destroy; one that believes that all of life is the domain of the rhetorical, not merely those formal occasions that call for speech or discourse; and one who comprehends that the truly important questions in life seldom lend themselves to clear-cut answers that can be held with absolute certainty.”– Martin J. Medhurst, 1996

Themes of Hope for a Rhetorical Politics

• Emergent themes from this week’s proceedings are critical, it seems to me, in the articulation of a programmatic revisioning of critical and pedagogical approaches to political communication.

• They offer normative and prescriptive guidance toward the achievement of a “rhetorical” politics through our study and teaching about political communication.

Context

• A “rhetorical” politics demands a commitment to context and history—a recognition that political communication does not occur in a vacuum.

• Resistance to presentist exceptionalism that often characterizes political communication scholarship.

Important Presidents?

Bush II Reagan Nixon Clinton Lincoln JFK Obama LBJ FDR Carter0

10

20

30

40

50

60

7060

3529 28 26

23 2219

16 14

Number of Articles

Effects & Efficacy

• Careful attention to both the attribution of effect and the measurement of the effects of political communication.

• Voters vote the way they do (and citizens act the way they do) for many, many complicated reasons that often are not measurable or attributable to political communication.

• Political communication must be sensitive to the proclivities of populations and subjects—and citizens.

Ethics & Character

• Attention to character and ethics recognizes that a rhetorical politics is often and significantly about questions of leadership and personal capacity.

• Political communication falls prey to what McGee (1980) called a “treacherous piety” that ignores the personal for the policy, the image for the issues.

• Political theorist Ronald Beiner notes wisely that personal judgments are significantly relevant to political ones.

Civic Virtue

• The sublimation of personal gain and selfish satisfaction for a greater public good is a model of civic virtue.

• A construct that offers an ethical manifestation of political communication with an eye toward both social justice and public comportment.

• A way to ground and enhance instruction in issues of civic engagement and governance.

Progress

• A rhetorical politics is progressive in a small “p” sense of hoping for and embodying progress, development, enhancement, and improvement.

• Political communication scholarship engages with this progress through public intellectualism as well as via the progress of our scholarly and pedagogical endeavors.

Hope

• At the root of it all is hope—a powerful and palpable belief in a better tomorrow.

• Performing that hope as scholars, as teachers, and as citizens enhances our achievement of a “rhetorical” politics to the betterment of our collective enterprise.