Beasley, Vanessa B. You the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric.

AuthorJeffrey, Christina F.
PositionOn Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit - Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the President's Campaign - Out of Touch: The Presidency and Public Opinion - Book Review

Beasley, Vanessa B. You the People: American National Identity in Presidential Rhetoric. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. x + 204 pp. Cloth, $39.95.

Edwards, George C., III. On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. xii + 303 pp. Cloth, $40.00.

Tenpas, Kathryn Dunn. Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the President's Campaign. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 2003. xxiv + 191 pp. Cloth, $24.95 (Garland Press, 1997).

Towle, Michael J. Out of Touch: The Presidency and Public Opinion. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ix + 162 pp. Cloth, $37.95.

These four books focus on two aspects of the American presidency. Beasley, Edwards, and Towle are most concerned with presidential rhetoric. Tenpas's insights are directed toward presidential campaigning. All are well-written and researched, take their subject matter seriously, and are interesting to anyone who follows American political history. Tenpas's book has practical utility for those contemplating involvement in a presidential reelection campaign.

Presidents as Candidates

According to Steven A. Shull, editor of the Garland series "Politics and Policy in American Institutions," of which Kathryn Dunn Tenpas's Presidents as Candidates was the inaugural volume, Tenpas's book represents a unique and invaluable introduction to the role of the White House in presidential reelection efforts (pp. ix-x). Her study treats presidential campaigns from Eisenhower to Clinton capped by an epilogue ("Memorandum to the Next President Elected in the Year of the Millennium") summing up what she learned studying the reelection efforts of eight presidents. Originally published in 1997 in hardback edition, Presidents as Candidates was republished in a handy paperback edition in time for the 2004 election.

Tenpas takes her readers behind the scenes and into the White House itself to scrutinize campaigns of incumbent presidents. Her primary concern is how the work of the president and his staff changes once the White House shifts to "campaign mode." In readable academic prose, she describes the various tools and processes involved in presidential reelection campaigns. She does a particularly good job of describing and analyzing the intersections between a president's role as head of the executive branch of government and that of presidential candidate. That he and his staff would make reelection a priority comes as no shock.

Tenpas's research draws on the best presidential case studies, statistical analysis, and fifty-three personal interviews with experts. Her bases for comparison of presidential campaigns are: public standing, whether the incumbent confronts an international crisis, the state of the economy, internal party...

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