Communication

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    An Analysis of Presidential Campaigns of Sitting and Former Vice Presidents: So Close and Yet so Far
    (2014) Mansharamani, Neil Hiro; Kendall, Kathleen E; Klumpp, James F; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study examines the presidential campaign communication of American sitting and former vice presidents. In recent history, four sitting U.S. vice presidents have run for president with only one (George H. W. Bush) succeeding. Three, Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and Albert Gore in 2000, lost close elections, with Nixon and Gore losing in very close and controversial contests. In the two cases of former vice presidents who ran for president, Nixon prevailed in 1968, whereas Walter Mondale failed in 1984. All of these candidates faced similar rhetorical problems attributable to their vice presidential status, particularly in defining their relationship with the president and their role in the administration. This study is a content analysis and historical analysis of campaign speeches, statements made during debates, and television advertisements by sitting and former vice presidents in the elections of 1960, 1968, 1984, 1988, and 2000. The purpose is to understand each vice president's discourse regarding both the president and the administration in which he served; and better appreciate how the inherent rhetorical situation that accompanies a superior-subordinate relationship is illustrated in these types of campaigns. Results showed that some vice presidents (e.g. Richard Nixon) chose to discuss their president/administration more often, while others chose to almost never discuss their president/administration (e.g. Al Gore). This analysis shows that when a vice president seeks election to the presidency, he has tended to pursue one or more of the following strategies: run on the administration's record; minimize the record and argue that if elected, he will produce better results; emphasize their own personal involvement and achievements in the administration; or mostly avoid discussing the president/administration.
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    J. EDGAR HOOVER AND THE RHETORICAL RISE OF THE FBI: THE PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS AGAINST VERMIN, THE FIFTH COLUMN, AND RED FASCISM.
    (2012) Underhill, Stephen Michael; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This project examines J. Edgar Hoover's rhetorical leadership of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman administrations (1933-1953). Hoover launched and sustained a concerted domestic propaganda program that helped enhance his own political power and invented the FBI as a central force in domestic and international matters. In the process, he re-envisioned conceptions of U.S. citizenship by promoting notions of idealized citizenship. Hoover entered law enforcement and U.S. politics during the early decades of the twentieth century--a time of increased use of public campaigns sponsored by the U.S. government and presidential administrations to alter public opinion on important policy matters. This period witnessed, for example, the country's experimentation with domestic propaganda during World War I. While the Soviet Union and Germany used disease, vermin, parasite, and body metaphors to organize their own domestic propaganda campaigns in the following decades, Hoover used these same metaphors to advance the need to purify America and exterminate its social pariah. Through his public campaigns against vermin (1933-1939), the Fifth Column (1939-1945), and Red Fascism (1945-1953), Hoover constructed a reality in which corruption and subversion were immutable elements of democratic life. Increasingly, Hoover's tactics of threat and intimidation began to mimic the tactics of threat practiced by America's enemies, moving the country closer to what many at the time called a police state. Hoover's coupling of propaganda and coercive tactics ultimately helped him to rapidly expand the FBI and undermine his superiors and counterparts in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Whereas Roosevelt benefited politically from building up a secret police force, Truman inherited a cunning FBI director eager to use his power to expand and exploit the rhetorical presidency during the Red Scare.