“A Widespread Loss of Confidence:” TARP, Presidential Rhetoric, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism

Abstract

This article analyzes the circulation of the term “confidence” as a prominent signifier for neoliberal logics, taking George W. Bush’s response to the economic crisis in Fall 2008 as a case study. It traces the public circulation of confidence in previous presidential administrations and notes that much like previous administrations, Bush’s response to the crisis was rooted in confidence. Bush identified a loss of confidence as the underlying cause of the economic crisis, and his focus on the need to restore lost confidence allowed him to violate his traditionally conservative principles in order to save the free market. Additionally, Bush’s reliance on the term in the context of the economic crisis articulated the nation-state to the national economy through neoliberalism as a prevailing economic logic.

Keywords:

• circulation
• confidence
• neoliberalism
• presidential rhetoric
• rhetorical criticism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Pamela Lannutti and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. He would also like to thank Erin Witte, Mary Stuckey, Stephen Heidt, Jennifer Potter, Stacy Spaulding, Megan Foley, and Mari Lee Mifsud for their comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article. An early version of this article was presented to the 2011 National Communication Association Conference in New Orleans, LA.

Notes

1. Bush’s self-description comes from an interview he gave to Bret Baier on Fox News. “Transcript: Bret Baier Interviews President Bush,” Fox News, December 17, 2008, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/17/transcript-bret-baier-interviews-president-bush.

2. Michelle Malkin, “Bush the Pre-Socializer: ‘I Readily Concede I Chucked aside My Free-Market Principles,’” MichelleMalkin.Com (blog), January 12, 2009, http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/12/bush-the-pre-socializer-i-readily-concede-i-chucked-aside-my-free-market-principles/; Glenn Beck, “Glenn Beck: Bush Says Sacrificed Free-Market Principles to Save Economy,” Glenn Beck, December 2008, http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/19444/; Carroll Conn, “Bush’s Betrayal of Free-Market Principles Now Complete,” The Daily Signal, December 30, 2008, http://dailysignal.com/2008/12/30/bushs-betrayal-of-free-market-principles-now-complete/; Michael Reagan and Jim Denney, The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan’s Principles Can Restore America’s Greatness (Manhattan: Macmillan, 2011).

3. Ralph Hallow, “EXCLUSIVE: RNC Draft Rips Bush’s Bailouts,” The Washington Times, December 30, 2008, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/30/rnc-pushes-unprecedented-criticism-of-bailouts/.

4. Michael Hirsh, “George W. Bush: He Gave Rise to the Tea Party,” National Journal, October 3, 2013, https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/69360/george-w-bush-he-gave-rise-tea-party?mref=search-result; Julian Zelizer, “It’s Tea Party vs. Bush and Obama,” CNN, November 1, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/11/01/zelizer.tea.party.bush/.

5. Agence France Presse, “Bush Says Sacrificed Free-Market Principles to Save Economy,” Agence France Presse, December 16, 2008.

6. David Zarefsky, “Four Senses of Rhetorical History,” in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, edited by Kathleen J. Turner, Studies in Rhetoric and Communication (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998), 19–32.

7. Benjamin Lee and Edward LiPuma, “Cultures of Circulation: The Imaginations of Modernity,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 191.

8. Stephen Heidt, “The Presidency as Pastiche: Atomization, Circulation, and Rhetorical Instability,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 15, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 626–27; See also Robert Hariman, “Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 34, no. 4 (October 2002): 267–96.

9. Lester C. Olson, “Pictorial Representations of British America Resisting Rape: Rhetorical Re-Circulation of a Print Series Portraying the Boston Port Bill of 1774,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 12, (2009): 1–35.

10. George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” The White House Archives, September 19, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080919-2.html; Jimmy Carter, “A Crisis of Confidence,” American Rhetoric, July 15, 1979, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jimmycartercrisisofconfidence.htm; Carl Hulse and Mark Mazzetti, “Obama Expresses Confidence in C.I.A. Director,” The New York Times, August 1, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/us/obama-expresses-confidence-in-cia-director-brennan.html.

11. Roger E. A. Farmer, How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 17.

12. Farmer, How the Economy Works, 113.

13. George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

14. Akerlof and Shiller, Animal Spirits, 11–14.

15. Akerlof and Shiller, Animal Spirits, 14–18.

16. Davis W Houck, Rhetoric as Currency: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Great Depression (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001), 1–6.

17. Akerlof and Shiller, Animal Spirits, 12.

18. Amos Kiewe, FDR’s First Fireside Chat: Public Confidence and the Banking Crisis, 1st ed, Library of Presidential Rhetoric (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 15.

19. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2001), 112.

20. Elmus Wicker, The Banking Panics of the Great Depression (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

21. Houck, Rhetoric as Currency.

22. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “First Fireside Chat (‘The Banking Crisis’),” American Rhetoric, March 12, 1933, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fdrfirstfiresidechat.html.

23. Kiewe, FDR’s First Fireside Chat.

24. Carter, “A Crisis of Confidence.”

25. Ezra Klein, “Jimmy Carter’s ‘Malaise’ Speech Was Popular!” Washington Post, August 9, 2013, sec. Wonkblog, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/08/09/jimmy-carters-malaise-speech-was-popular/.

26. Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism & Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 51–55; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 2–3; David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 10–11.

27. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1978–1979 (New York: Picador, 2010), 243.

28. Megan Foley, “From Infantile Citizens to Infantile Institutions: The Metaphoric Transformation of Political Economy in the 2008 Housing Market Crisis,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 98, no. 4 (2012): 389, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2012.714898; Thomas Lemke, “‘The Birth of Bio-Politics’: Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the Collège de France on Neo-Liberal Governmentality,” Economy & Society 30, no. 2 (May 2001): 202, https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140120042271; Graham Burchell, “Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self,” in Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government, edited by Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas S. Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 29.

29. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 270.

30. I have written a more thorough account of the economic boom and bust of the 2000s elsewhere. See Blake Abbott, “Occupy Citizenship: Economic Crisis and the Emergence of a Twenty-First-Century Social Movement,” in Venomous Speech: Problems with American Political Discourse on the Right and Left, edited by Clarke Rountree (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013); Both this current and my former account of the financial crash are drawn from the following sources: David Faber, And Then the Roof Caved in: How Wall Street’s Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009); Harvey, The Enigma of Capital; Matt Taibbi, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, 1st ed. (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010); Michael Lewis, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008); William D Cohan, House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street, 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2009); Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis—and Themselves (New York: Viking, 2009); Mark M Zandi, Financial Shock: A 360° Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2009); Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance (New York: Penguin Press, 2010).

31. Associated Press, “Great Depression Colors Seniors’ View of Crisis,” NBC News, October 15, 2008, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27202324/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/great-depression-colors-seniors-view-crisis/; Jon Hilsenrath, Serena Ng, and Damian Paletta, “Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight,” Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2008, sec. Markets, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB122169431617549947; “Obama: U.S. in Worst Crisis since Depression,” Reuters, October 8, 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/10/08/usa-politics-debate-economy-idUSN0749084220081008; “1929 and All That,” The Economist, October 2, 2008, http://www.economist.com/node/12342273; Clive Webb, “Haunted by History,” The Guardian, October 2, 2008, sec. Business, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/oct/03/us.economy.bail.out.

32. George W. Bush, “President Bush Participates in Joint Statement with President Kufuor of Ghana,” The White House Archives, September 15, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080915-2.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” The White House Archives, September 18, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080918.html.

33. Bush, “President Bush Participates in Joint Statement with President Kufuor of Ghana.”

34. Bush, “President Bush Participates in Joint Statement with President Kufuor of Ghana.”

35. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 18, 2008.

36. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008.

37. For a thorough discussion of god-terms, see Richard M. Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1953).

38. George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” The White House Archives, October 14, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081014.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” The White House Archives, October 3, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081003-11.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” The White House Archives, October 7, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081007-4.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation,” The White House Archives, September 29, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080929.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” The White House Archives, October 10, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081010.html; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” The White House Archives, October 17, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081017-4.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation,” The White House Archives, September 24, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080924-10.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008,” The White House Archives, September 20, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080920.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 4, 2008,” The White House Archives, October 4, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081004.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 11, 2008,” The White House Archives, October 11, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081011.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 18, 2008,” The White House Archives, October 18, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081018.html; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address November 21, 2008,” The White House Archives, November 21, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081121-5.html; George W. Bush, “Statement by the President on Legislation to Address Crisis in Financial Markets,” The White House Archives, September 22, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080922.html.

39. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation.”

40. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 10, 2008; Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 4, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address November 21, 2008.”

41. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 3, 2008.

42. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 10, 2008; Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation.”

43. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation” emphasis added.

44. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation.”

45. George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economic Rescue Plan,” The White House Archives, September 30, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080930.html; Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 3, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 7, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 10, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 17, 2008; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 27, 2008,” The White House Archives, September 27, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/09/20080927.html; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 4, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 11, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 18, 2008.”

46. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economic Rescue Plan”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 7, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 17, 2008; George W. Bush, “President Bush Participates in Roundtable Meeting on Economy,” The White House Archives, October 20, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081020-8.html; Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 18, 2008.”

47. Bush’s October 17th address to the Chamber of Commerce provides the clearest example of this rhetoric. Bush explicitly addressed the concern that the government was nationalizing the banks or taking over the economy with TARP by stressing the limits on the government’s intervention. Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 17, 2008.

48. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008.

49. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” September 19, 2008.

50. Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008”; Bush, “Statement by the President on Legislation to Address Crisis in Financial Markets”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 11, 2008”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” October 14, 2008; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 18, 2008”; George W. Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 25, 2008,” The White House Archives, October 25, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081025.html; Bush, “President’s Radio Address November 21, 2008.”

51. Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 4, 2008.”

52. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 3, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 7, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” October 14, 2008; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 18, 2008”; Bush, “President’s Radio Address October 25, 2008”; George W. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Markets and World Economy,” The White House Archives, November 13, 2008, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081113-4.html.

53. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 7, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 17, 2008.

54. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation.”

55. Bush, “President’s Radio Address September 20, 2008”; Bush, “Statement by the President on Legislation to Address Crisis in Financial Markets”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economic Rescue Plan”; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,” October 3, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Economy,” October 14, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses the Economy,” October 17, 2008; Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Markets and World Economy.”

56. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Rescue Legislation.”

57. Bush, “President’s Address to the Nation.”

58. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Markets and World Economy.”

59. Bush, “President Bush Discusses Financial Markets and World Economy.”

60. Agence France Presse, “Bush Says Sacrificed Free-Market Principles to Save Economy.”

61. I discuss the rhetoric of advertisements for investment services elsewhere. While that article does not explore the relationship between these discourses and confidence per se, its suggestion that the call of investment ads articulates a normative view of citizenship is compatible with the analysis here. See Blake Abbott, “Your Personal Economy: Rhetorics of <Investment> Citizenship in Financial Planning Commercials,” Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 6, no. 3/4 (2016): 74–87.