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Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
William Jefferson Clinton, "Racism In The United States" (16 October 1995), Jill M. Weber
William Jefferson Clinton, "Racism In The United States" (16 October 1995), Jill M. Weber
Communication Studies Faculty Scholarship
In "Racism in the United States," President Bill Clinton acknowledged racial differences and called upon Americans to "clean our house of racism." Maintaining that the discussion of differences was the first step in alleviating racial tension, Clinton made dialogue a centerpiece of his race initiative. Clinton's approach to civil rights and his emphasis on dialogue marked an important step in the ongoing debates over civil rights in America by illustrating a president's role in shaping such debates.
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
José D. Villalobos
Scholars have debated extensively the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and congressional behavior, but have largely ignored the determinants of what the president actually says. This inattention is partly the result of the difficulty of acquiring systematic observations of presidential speech crafting. We devise a method of quantifying White House staff influence over the composition of rhetoric that captures the multistage negotiations between the president's speechwriters and his policy advisors and provides a framework for future studies on the determinants of presidential rhetoric. We employ our method to study influence over the writing of President George H. W. …