The Nature Of Desire 4th Edition Anne C Pluta Julien A Deonna by Anne C. Pluta, Julien A. Deonna 9780700634354, 0700634355 instant download after payment.

Most presidential scholars claim that the “rhetorical presidency,” in which presidents seek to engage directly with the public and appeal to the nation as the basis for governance, emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, shifting away from the constitutional norms of the nineteenth century when presidential communication was purely ceremonial and exceedingly rare. Pluta challenges this head-on by arguing that even the earliest presidents understood their unique relationship with the public and sought to leverage this connection through popular communication.

Pluta offers up her alternative theory of opportunistic communication in this comprehensive assessment of the popular communication practices of American presidents from 1789 to 2021. Her new argument of opportunistic communication explains the relationship between the president and the people in terms of a framework of opportunities structured by technology, the media environment, enfranchisement, and party politics—not constitutional norms.

This fresh reassessment is based on Pluta’s unique dataset of thousands of presidential public speeches, including more than 3,000 instances of pre-1929 presidential rhetoric. While the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have often been overlooked by political scientists, Pluta argues that it is an essential period to understanding presidential communication. Using a massive original dataset with a multimethod analysis, she offers a new theoretical approach to understanding how and why presidential communication has evolved.