• health care debate
• presidential rhetoric

Tonight's speech attempted to frame health care as a moral question. This seems to be the fundamental sticking point in the debate, does it not? Is health care a right or a privilege?

There seemed to be true common ground when the president spoke of making it illegal for insurance companies to discontinue care for "pre-existing conditions." But what was most disconcerting was something that Nate Silver pointed out in his live blog of the speech:

• Jim Brown's blog
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• presidential rhetoric
• wankery

• Jim Aune's blog
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• presidential rhetoric

I confess to never having liked Jimmy Carter much, but it's interesting to see a new book out on the "malaise" speech. NYT here and here. And the WSJ. Meanwhile, I think I can avoid reading this book for some time.

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• presidential rhetoric
• public address

Is it a fair statement that we have relatively fewer rhetorical studies of Nixon than of other recent presidents/political figures? What else is there besides Bochin's "rhetorical biography"?

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• motivating change
• presidential rhetoric

I watched Earth 2100 the other night. I thought it was horrid: an either-or set-up of what the world will be like depending on whether or not we all decide to be more Green or not. But it did get a discussion going in the room about how to motivate people...

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• intimacy
• presidential rhetoric
• public sphere
• sexuality

Music: Willard Grant Conspiracy: Mojave (1999)

Tonight President Obama will hold a press conference in honor of his first 100 days in office. The speech coincides with a current project I am writing today on the tone of presidential public address; I have been arguing for almost a year now that Obama's ability to dispense intimacy without ecstasy with his voice partially explains his rhetorical successes. To this end I have been reading-up on Lauren Berlant's work on public intimacy, and I think her arguments give us something to think about as we watch the president this evening.

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• presidential rhetoric

Whoa. . . .

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• presidential rhetoric

Any thoughts? I really really hate to be negative, on today of all days, but the contrast between Pastor Rick's fundamental narcissism (why should I CARE that Yeshua changed your life?) and the Rev. Lowery's truly "catholic" inclusiveness was astounding. Right there we have the two Christianities that have warred against each other for 2000 years.

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• lessig
• Palin
• presidential rhetoric

Lawrence Lessig provides evidence (and evidence, and evidence) that Palin would be the least experienced (at best, the third least experienced) VP ever.

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• campaign rhetoric 2008
• presidential rhetoric

In this month's Atlantic, James Fallows performs an interesting rhetorical analysis of primary debates in order to predict what kind of president Obama or McCain might be. He focuses much more on Obama, arguing that the Republican debates played a smaller role in McCain's nomination. In many ways this seems to be a cop out, and it could be argued that this turns into an Obama puff piece, but the mere fact that it's entitled "Rhetorical Questions" means that Fallows' discussion deserves The Blogora's attention.

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