Questions of public will and private action: The power of the negative in the reagans' “just say no” morality campaign

Abstract

This essay uses Kenneth Burke's writings on the negative in language to account for the rhetorical appeal of the Reagans' “just say no” to drugs rhetoric and its application to other social problems. We argue that the “just say no” rhetoric's treatment of the social problems of drug use, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, and abortion, shifted the responsibility for these problems from the arenas of politics and medicine to that of morality. Solutions became a matter of self‐will and restraint, which, while appealing to the individual by providing a sense of control over and freedom from the social ill, essentially advocated private solutions to public problems, reasserted the authority of the government to define both problems and solutions, and undermined the vitality of the public sphere. Extensions of this “transformational” rhetoric are discussed in current public policy.

Key concepts:

• American presidential rhetoric
• public policy debate
• public and private sphere
• democratic decision‐making