The very model of a modern major (media) candidate: Colin Powell and the rhetoric of public opinion

In the surfacing stage of the 1995 Presidential campaign, media attention was focused on a non‐candidate, Retired General Colin Powell. This study examines the media's justification for such attention, in light of the absence of Powell's public instigation of a campaign. Coverage of Powell as a potential candidate reflects current media practice with regard to speculative reporting and the assertion of objectivity. Application of Burke's pentad to specific coverage in TIME and Newsweek illustrates how the media uses constructions of public opinion to rhetorically justify campaign coverage of a non‐candidate, transferring agency from the candidate to the “Public.”;

Key concepts:

• Public opinion
• presidential campaigns
• preprimary “surfacing”
• Colin Powell
• pentad
• objectivity