Andrew Jackson spoke to Americans in ways that reflected the
concerns of a young nation. Grover Cleveland helped citizens
redefine themselves after the havoc of the Civil War era. FDR
confronted widespread hardship with hope and determination, while
Eisenhower spoke to our fears of the Communist menace. Throughout
our history, presidents by their very utterances have shaped our
sense of who we are as Americans.
As Mary Stuckey observes, presidents embrace, articulate, and
reinvigorate our sense of national identity. They define who
Americans are--often by declaring who they aren't. In this book,
she shows how presidential speech has served to broaden the
American political community over the past two centuries while at
the same time excluding others.
Ranging broadly from Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton and George
W. Bush, Stuckey demonstrates how presidents accomplish the dual
enactment of inclusion and exclusion through their rhetorical and
political choices. Our early leaders were preoccupied with
balancing the growing nation; later presidents were concerned with
the nature and definitions of citizenship. By examining the
political speeches of presidents exemplifying distinctly different
circumstances, she presents a series of snapshots which, when taken
together, reveal both the continuity and the changes in our
national self-understanding.
Ambitious and sweeping, Stuckey's work documents the tactics
that have naturalized and legitimated inclusion and exclusion,
tracing the progress of groups such as women and African Americans
from political invisibility to partial visibility and eventual
inclusion. She also shows how the terms of inclusion have varied
with changing political winds, helping us understand how depictions
of the powerless by the powerful reflect and influence the status
of various groups.
Stuckey's analysis shows how presidents use language rooted in
their times and circumstances to frame and influence contemporary
definitions of citizenship. A provocative book that documents the
changes in our understanding of who is and who isn't one of "us,"
Defining Americans reveals that all presidents draw upon the same
set of national ideals, values, and events--but not all use those
ideas in precisely the same ways.
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