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Abstract
This essay draws upon the work of Northrop Frye to show that stories enacting the American Dream contain elements associated with romance, and briefly traces how Ronald Reagan and conservatives utilized the romance of the American Dream to the point that many Americans associated it exclusively with conservatism. The essay then details how Barack Obama, in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, recast the American dream from a conservative to a liberal story.
Keywords:
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association convention in Boston in November 2005.
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association convention in Boston in November 2005.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful for the insights provided by Denise Bostdorff, anonymous reviewers, and the editor.
Notes
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the National Communication Association convention in Boston in November 2005.
1. Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 34. It is important to note that Hacker and Pierson are setting up a straw-person argument that they will refute. Nonetheless, their statement reflects the conventional wisdom.
2. Todd Purdum, “An Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values,” New York Times, November 4, 2004, p. A1.
3. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, The 2005 Political Typology: Beyond Red vs. Blue (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2005), 67.
4. Pew, The 2005 Political Typology, 40.
5. Pew, The 2005 Political Typology, 41.
6. Hacker and Pierson, 51.
7. Hacker and Pierson, 52–3.
8. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, AARP, Greenspan Most Trusted on Social Security: Bush Failing in Social Security Push (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2005), 3.
9. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, The American Public: Opinions and Values in a 51%–48% Nation (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2005), 7.
10. Pew, AARP, 5.
11. CBS, Low Poll Numbers for Bush, http://www.cbsnews.com, May 25, 2005; see also Hacker and Pierson.
12. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, National Security More Linked with Partisan Affiliation: Politics and Values in a 51%–48% Nation (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2005), 5.
13. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Evenly Divided and Increasingly Polarized: 2004 Political Landscape (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2003), 75.
14. Pew, National Security, 11.
15. Pew, Evenly Divided, 39.
16. Pew, Evenly Divided, 39, table 43.
17. Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, Public Yawns at 104th Congress So Far: Strong Support for Minimum Wage and Preserving Entitlements (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 1995), 1.
18. Pew, AARP, 3.
19. Hacker and Pierson, 40.
20. Joanne Ostrow, “Networks Miss ‘A Bit of History’ as a Star is Born,” Denver Post, July 28, 2004, p. A12.
21. Robin Toner and Todd Purdum, “On 2nd Night, Unity is Theme for Democrats,” New York Times, July 28, 2004, p. A1.
22. David Bianculli, “No-show Networks Miss Out,” Daily News, July 28, 2004, p. 89.
23. Kevin Chappell, “Barack Obama, U.S. Senate Candidate is Electrifying Keynote Speaker at Democratic National Convention,” Jet, August 16, 2004, p. 4.
24. Amanda Ripley, “Obama's Ascent: How Do You Leap from Neighborhood Activist to U.S. Senator to Perhaps Higher Office? Even For Barack Obama, It's More Complicated Than It Looks,” Time, November 14, 2004, p. 74.
25. Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, “Crowd-Pleaser From Illinois Considers White House Run,” New York Times, October 23, 2006, p. A12; Anne E. Kornblut, “Running or Not, Senator From Illinois Makes Splash,” New York Times, September 18, 2006, p. A21.
26. McClatchy News Service, “Democrat's Star Power has Partisans Agog,” Kansas City Star, April 9, 2006, p. A4.
27. In a brief analysis of Obama's speech, Babak Elahi and Grant Cos argue that both Obama and Arnold Schwarzenegger (at the Republican National Convention in 2004) drew on the immigrant dream narrative in their convention speeches. Elahi and Cos also argue that Obama featured the moralistic aspect of the American Dream, but do not focus on the balance between individualism and societal responsibilities in the speech. See Baback Elahi and Grant Cos, “An Immigrant's Dream and the Audacity of Hope,” American Behvioral Scientist 49 (2005): 454–65.
28. Obama himself seemed to recognize this point in retrospect. In spring 2006, he released on his web site a selection from a new book with the same title as his keynote speech, with one key addition, The Audacity of Hope: Reclaiming the American Dream, http://www.barackobama.com/main.php. The book became an immediate best seller, rising to the number one spot on the New York Times nonfiction best seller list. See Julie Bosman, “Obama's New Book Is Surprise Best Seller,” New York Times, November 9, 2006, pp. B1, B6.
29. See Walter Fisher, “Reaffirmation and Subversion of the American Dream,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 47 (1973): 160–7; Martha Solomon, “Robert Schuller: The American Dream in a Crystal Cathedral,” Central States Speech Journal 34 (1983): 172–86; Alan DeSantis, “Selling the American Dream Myth to Black Southerners: The Chicago Defender and the Great Migration of 1915–1919,” Western Journal of Communication 62 (1998): 474–511; Vanessa Beasley, You the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004).
30. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 33.
31. Frye, 33.
32. Fisher, “American Dream,” 161.
33. In his classic study of liberal thought, Louis Hartz argues that liberal ideology, which he sometimes calls classical liberalism, encompassed both the “old Whig and new democrat.” He also distinguishes between “modern social reform connotations” of the term, which he later calls “Liberal Reform,” and “the classic Lockian sense,” which is broad enough to encompass both reform and what we today would call the contemporary conservative movement. See The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1955), 4, 18, 228.
34. Advocates of classical liberalism, including Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Stuart Mill, defended a system of limited government, representative government, separation of powers, and various protections of personal liberty. Especially important foundational documents can be found in James Madison, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1999) and John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government (London: J. M. Dent, 1910). Particularly useful analyses of Madison and Mill can be found in Lance Banning, The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995) and Dennis F. Thompson, John Stuart Mill and Representative Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). The contemporary liberal and conservative political movements fit within the classical liberalism of Jefferson, Madison, and Mill.
Neither conservatism nor liberalism can be defined in precise terms and both movements contain groups with a diversity of perspectives on issues of value and policy. For example, the contemporary conservative movement includes free market conservatives, who have been strongly influenced by the economic analysis of Milton Friedman and believe that the marketplace is inherently superior to government action, and social conservatives, who often endorse using government power to support their social agenda. There are similar differences of opinion within the liberal movement. While recognizing the diversity of opinion in each movement, there are two fundamental fault-lines relating to values and policy in the domestic sphere that divide them. At the level of values, liberals argue that government has a positive duty to do more than protect the security of citizens; it also has a responsibility to help them achieve a better life. Consequently liberals support government intervention in various sectors of the economy and society. At the value level, conservatives tend to believe that the responsibilities of government should be much more limited, and also that government action is rarely effective and therefore should be limited. For analysis of the development of contemporary conservatism see George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Ted Honderich, Conservatism (London: H. Hamilton, 1989); and Louis Filler, Dictionary of American Conservatism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1987). As noted earlier, the classic analysis of liberalism as a broad ideology can be found in Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America. One of the most important recent analyses of the reform wing of liberalism is John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).
35. Hartz, 16, 23, 213, 228.
36. Beasley, 38.
37. Ernest Bormann, The Force of Fantasy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 236.
38. Solomon, 174.
39. Robert C. Rowland and David A. Frank, Shared Land/Conflicting Identity: Trajectories of Israeli and Palestinian Symbol Use (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002), 28.
40. The distinction we are drawing between myth and romance does not relate to the larger dispute among rhetorical critics concerning whether myth is best defined in broad or narrow usage. What we are labeling a romance comfortably fits within even the narrowest approach to myth among rhetorical critics. For instance, it fits the definition of myth in Rowland and Frank and the usage in Rowland's earlier essay, “On Mythic Criticism,” Communication Studies 41 (1990): 101–16.
41. Our approach to the American Dream has been heavily influenced by the dramatistic perspective of Kenneth Burke, as well as Northrop Frye's work on romance. Burke's influence is reflected not so much in the particulars of the theory that we develop, but in the overarching idea at the heart of both dramatism and the pentad that there is a close relationship between scene, agency, and the nature of the agent. See Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) and Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).
42. Ellen Goodman, “Storm Scenes Dampen Belief in America,” Lawrence Daily Journal World, September 10, 2005, p. 8B.
43. Rowland and Frank, 27.
44. Barbara Jordan, “Democratic Convention Keynote Address,” in Contemporary American Public Discourse, 3rd ed., ed. H. R. Ryan (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1992), 274.
45. William Lewis, “Telling America's Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 280–302.
46. Craig A. Smith, “Mister Reagan's Neighborhood: Rhetoric and National Unity,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 52 (1987): 219.
47. Henry Scheele, “Ronald Reagan's 1980 Acceptance Address: A Focus on American Values,” Western Journal of Communication 48 (1984): 59.
48. Richard Crable and Steven Vibbert, “Argumentative Stance and Political Faith Healing: ‘The Dream Will Come True,’” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69 (1983): 293.
49. Mark Moore, “Ronald Reagan's Quest for Freedom in the 1987 State of the Union Address,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 53 (1989): 61.
50. Walter Fisher, “Romantic Democracy, Ronald Reagan, and Presidential Heroes,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 47 (1982): 305.
51. Fisher, “Romantic Democracy,” 307.
52. John M. Jones and Robert C. Rowland, “A Covenant-Affirming Jeremiad: The Post-Presidential Ideological Appeals of Ronald Wilson Reagan,” Communication Studies 56 (2005): 157–74.
53. See Barack Obama, “Reclaiming the Promise to the People,” Vital Speeches of the Day 70 (2004): 623–5. Subsequent citations from this address will be indicated in parentheses in the text.
54. Mark Lawrence McPhail attacked Obama for this very reason in an essay jointly authored with David Frank. See David A. Frank and Mark L. McPhail, “Barack Obama's Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention: Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 8 (2005): 571–94.
55. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 21.
56. Frank and McPhail, 577. Frank's analysis of consilience is very similar to our focus on how Obama's message created identification. One difference, however, is that while Frank sees Obama's use of consilience as producing “results through translation, mediation, and an embrace of different languages, values, and traditions” (577–8), we see Obama's message as producing a stronger sense of shared identity as Americans. Consilience is a strategy of “translation,” while identification is a strategy of producing a shared sense of identity.
57. Martin Luther King, “Letter From Birmingham City Jail,” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper), 290.
58. Mary Fisher, A Whisper of Aids, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/maryfisheraids.html, August 19, 1992.
59. Wayne N. Thompson, “Barbara Jordan's Keynote Address: The Juxtaposition of Contradictory Values,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 44 (1979): 228; Wayne N. Thompson, “Barbara Jordan's Keynote Address: Fulfilling Dual and Conflicting Purposes,” Central States Speech Journal 30 (1979): 272. The problem of “two audiences” was identified in an essay by Craig R. Smith, “The Republican Keynote Address of 1968: Adaptive Rhetoric for the Multiple Audience,” Western Speech 39 (1975): 32–9.
60. David Henry, “The Rhetorical Dynamics of Mario Cuomo's 1984 Keynote Address: Situation, Speaker, Metaphor,” Southern Speech Communication Journal 53 (1988): 116, 117.
61. Mario Cuomo, Democratic National Convention Keynote Address: ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/cuomo1984dnc.html, July 16, 1984.
62. Bill Clinton, “Acceptance Address,” Vital Speeches of the Day 58 (1992): 641–5.
63. McPhail in Frank and McPhail, 583.
64. Mary Mitchell, “Obama Embodies the Hopes of the People,” Chicago Sun-Times, July 28, 2004, p. 7.
65. Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 55.
66. Ripley, 74.
67. Jesse Jackson, “The Rainbow Coalition,” in Contemporary American Public Discourse, 3rd ed., ed. H. R. Ryan (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1992), 318.
68. Ronald Reagan, “Farewell Address to the Nation,” in A Shining City: The Legacy of Ronald Reagan, ed. D. Erik Felten (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 21.
69. Hacker and Pierson, 34.
70. David Wallechinsky, “Is the American Dream Still Possible,” Parade, April 23, 2006, pp. 4–6.
71. Bob Herbert, “The Fading Dream,” New York Times, November 13, 2006, p. A27.
72. Pew, Opinions and Values, 2.