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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Monsters To Destroy? The Rhetorical Legacy Of John Quincy Adams’ July 4th, 1821 Oration, Jason A. Edwards
Monsters To Destroy? The Rhetorical Legacy Of John Quincy Adams’ July 4th, 1821 Oration, Jason A. Edwards
Communication Studies Faculty Publications
This essay examines how the John Quincy Adams’s foreign policy maxim of “we do not go in search of monsters to destroy” has been appropriated in contemporary foreign policy, including the recent 2016 presidential campaign, arguing his aphorism are authorizing words that validate and ratify the positions of pundits, politicians, and policy-makers of not only critics of U.S. foreign policy, but those who defend it. Mapping Quincy Adams’s aphorism allows us to explore the boundaries and direction of America’s role in the world and how it impacts America’s exceptionalist ethos.
Foreign Policy Rhetoric In The 1992 Presidential Campaign: Bill Clinton's Exceptionalist Jeremiad, Jason Edwards
Foreign Policy Rhetoric In The 1992 Presidential Campaign: Bill Clinton's Exceptionalist Jeremiad, Jason Edwards
Communication Studies Faculty Publications
This essay examines presidential candidate Bill Clinton's rhetoric regarding America's role in the world during the 1992 presidential campaign. Despite the fact that foreign policy was George H.W. Bush's strength during the campaign, candidate Clinton was able to develop a coherent vision for America's role in the world that he carried into his presidency. I argue he did so by fusing together the American exceptionalist missions of exemplar and intervention. In doing so, Clinton altered a tension embedded in debates over U.S. foreign policy rhetoric. To further differentiate his candidacy from President Bush, Clinton encased this discourse within a secular …
A Superpower Apologizes? President Clinton’S Address In Rwanda, Jason Edwards, Thomasena Shaw
A Superpower Apologizes? President Clinton’S Address In Rwanda, Jason Edwards, Thomasena Shaw
Communication Studies Faculty Publications
The failure to intervene in Rwanda was one of the greatest foreign policy mishaps of Bill Clinton's presidency. In March 1998, Clinton made an extended tour of the African subcontinent with a stop in Rwanda. During his brief visit, the president attempted to repair the image of the United States among Rwandans and the broader international community. Clinton used three primary image repair strategies: democratization of blame, corrective action, and transcendence. Despite his emphasis on the important lessons that the world could learn from the Rwandan genocide, we argue that his rhetorical choices ultimately undermined his larger mission and led …