The Rhetorical Presidency Today: How Does It Stand Up?

Jeffrey Tulis based his book The Rhetorical Presidency on the empirical assertion that pre-twentieth-century presidents avoided communicating with the public on policy matters and instead directed their policy-oriented communications to Congress, in writing. Subsequent scholarship, however, has demonstrated that many of these presidents actually did communicate extensively with the American people on policy matters, rather than going through Congress. Some gave speeches or wrote public letters, while others utilized the facade of a presidential newspaper that featured commentaries widely understood to reflect the president's views. Presidential communications behavior during this era was much more variable, and far less influenced by one constitutional norm, than Tulis portrays in The Rhetorical Presidency. The variability is due to presidents attempting to accommodate conflicting views of their appropriate role in the constitutional order.