What Presidents Talk about: The Nixon Case

Abstract

Aside from the much‐analyzed State of the Union addresses and other major speeches, existing research tells us little about which issues presidents emphasize in their public rhetoric, how they do it, why, and with what effects. This article closely analyzes the public rhetoric of Richard Nixon over his entire presidency. The first section catalogs key characteristics of Nixon's rhetoric that confirm central expectations of the modern “public presidency” including the tendency of the “rhetorical presidency” toward oral rather than written formats, the orientation of “going public” by primarily addressing the general public rather than elite audiences, and a “two‐presidency” tilt toward emphasizing foreign over domestic policy. In addition, the article uses the month‐to‐month variations in the amount and content of presidential rhetoric to examine two hypotheses—that presidential rhetoric is a strategic tool that presidents use to affect real‐world events (rhetoric‐driven events) and that rhetoric is cast about by the winds of the world (event‐driven rhetoric). Despite the impression in some presidential studies that presidents are primarily movers of events, our findings offer substantial support for the event‐driven rhetoric hypothesis and only some evidence of the rhetoric‐driven event hypothesis.