A few initial words about what goes on here . . .
Rarely does a rhetorical scholar have the opportunity to know in advance that public discourse will be of momentous importance. Rhetorical analysis and criticism usually look at public address that, in retrospect, had a discernible impact on the social sphere. The questions are then a matter of what this impact was, how it was made, was the impact what the speaker intended, etc.
True, there are some rhetorical situations that one can bank on being potentially relevant in advance. This is particularly true of presidential rhetoric, which often takes the form of "set pieces" taking place at predetermined moments: convention acceptance speeches, inaugural addresses, addresses to Congress, etc. Even when such addresses fail to achieve lasting effects, they are worthy of comment simply by virtue of having failed in circumstances in which others have made history.
However, granting that any bit of presidential rhetoric might be said to be, by definition, important, the fact is one never knows whether one is going to get a moment such as Kennedy's inaugural address (about which entire books have been written) or something utterly forgettable (such as Carter's inaugural address 16 year later).
In short, even with presidential address, what rhetorical acts will be worthy of analysis due to the way they shape the nature of political discourse and the presidency itself is rarely clear except when looking in the rear-view mirror.
With the apparent election of Donald Trump to the presidency, however, we have an almost unique situation. Given Candidate Trump's near total disregard for the norms of campaign rhetoric, we can bet fairly safely that his presidential rhetoric will be similarly unconventional (to use, for the moment, a deliberately neutral term).
If, as Karlyn Korhs Campbell and Kathlen Hall Jamieson suggest, public presidential discourse is not simply a "performance" of the role of president but in fact "creates" the role of president, then we are likely in for not simply a new take on how the presidency should sound, but a change in the presidency itself.
Whether it be his predilection for late night Tweeting, his affinity for profanity, his penchant for engaging in public personal squabbles with people by whom he feels he's been slighted, his tendency to eschew prepared remarks and riff on whatever happens to be going through his mind, or any of the myriad other ways he departs from the norms of political rhetoric, Trump's communication style will challenge long-established definitions of how presidents talk and, thus, what the presidency is.
For that reason, I think it is worthwhile to chronicle the particularly noteworthy aspects of Trump's rhetoric as they happen. Such an examination will no doubt lack the depth of the summative analysis that will be done after the fact, but what it lacks in this perspective might (I hope) be made up for by capturing ideas about the "Trump effect" on the presidency as it happens. That's the purpose of this blog--to provide some thoughts about this "creating of the presidency" in real time.
One final note: although I've framed this project in largely academic terms and draw on a background in rhetorical criticism as an academic discipline, this will not solely (or even primarily) be an "academic" project. I'm not attempting to write from a disinterested, neutral point of view, and what will be offered here will often be "critical" in multiple senses of the word. Satire, criticism, rebuttals, and snark will all be on the table as the occasion warrants.
Indeed, part of the motivation for this project is a realization that, although not inevitable or even likely, the advent of a Trump presidency could potentially be the harbinger of the destruction of many of our most revered aspects of American political talk; it may well be that such norms, once broken, can never be fully restored. And again calling to mind KKC and KHJ's ideas, this means a destruction of certain aspects of the presidency itself.
Such an event ought, I think, be discussed as it happens by those of us who, as the fabled Chinese curse says, are fated to live in (rhetorically) interesting times.
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