Leading over the Long Run: Rhetorical Consequentialism and Rhetorical Leadership

Clarke Rountree

doi:10.29107/rr2019.2.1

Abstract

Because the goals leaders and organizations seek typically require persistent engagement over time, rhetorical leadership has as a central concern the long-term consequences of the leader’s rhetorical choices. Although traditional rhetorical theory downplayed this long-term perspective in favor of the singular rhetorical engagement (such as a speech), rhetorical theorists have begun considering the rhetorical implications of persuasion wrought over the long-run. This essay applies rhetorical consequentialism, a theoretical perspective developed by the author, to explain the orientation and strategies the rhetorical leader must consider in longterm persuasion. Leaders must be concerned about consistency over time to avoid charges of waffl ing, delusion, lying, hypocrisy, and the like if they are to maintain their ethos and that of their organizations. They also should take positive steps to create the symbolic and material conditions for rhetorical success over the long run. The essay describes „constraint avoidance” strategies that limit inconsistencies over time, as well as „stage-setting” strategies that prepare the symbolic and material ground for future rhetorical success. The essay draws examples from American political rhetoric, especially that of Donald Trump, to illuminate these strategies. The essay concludes by considering the challenges and prospects of such strategies.

Highlights

Ze względu na to, że cele, do których dążą liderzy i organizacje, zazwyczaj wymagają stałego zaangażowania w dłuższym okresie, retoryczne przywództwo ma zasadnicze znaczenie dla długoterminowych konsekwencji retorycznych wyborów lidera
Like the emphasis on the rhetorical presidency by scholars in the United States, that adjective rhetorical is meant to draw our attention to the central importance of the management of communication in leadership as it helps to build coalitions, frame ways of seeing, define the terms of discussions, set goals, urge particular solutions, encourage followers, persuade those who resist, and so forth, in support of actions that move a group or organization towards the ends it seeks
They must use a language that supports or constrains them through its historical accretions and its terministic screens (Burke 1966, 44-62). They speak in situations that invoke generic expectations, shaping what they may appropriately say and do, and how that will be interpreted (Campbell, Jamieson 1978). Out of this vast array of rhetorical work undertaken by leaders I would like to draw attention to one critical dimension of the challenge facing them: their concern with rhetoric over the long run

Summary

Rhetorical Consequentialism

Aristotle drew attention to the central feature of rhetorical discourse as situated when he urged that speakers need to discover “the available means of persuasion in a given case” (Rhetoric, I.2.; emphasis mine). In a 1987 essay I described the two concerns of the rhetor with this long-term orientation (Rountree 1987): first, a speaker must be defensive and take care to avoid saying things today that may constrain what she can say in the future. He opposed a health care law passed by President Obama that dramatically increased the number of Americans with health care insurance He insisted he could do better, promising to replace it with something “terrific.” He told the television news program 60 Minutes in 2015: “I am going to take care of everybody. After two years as president, he had taken no action at all to „take care of everybody;” on the contrary, he actively sought to do the opposite and take coverage away from people

Constraint Avoidance Strategies

Stage-Setting Strategies

Trump’s Challenge to Rhetorical Consequentialism

Findings

Anticipating the Future