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The Oratory of George H.W. Bush

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Republican Orators from Eisenhower to Trump

Part of the book series: Rhetoric, Politics and Society ((RPS))

Abstract

This chapter argues that the oratory of George Herbert Walker Bush mirrors the political context of American politics, situated between the confident and certain Conservatisms of Reagan Republicanism, and the self-proclaimed ‘Republican Revolutionaries’ of 1994 under Newt Gingrich. Accepting his party’s nomination for president in 1988, President Bush promised a ‘kinder, gentler nation’, employing ethos so as to temper the hubristic pathos of the Reagan years. Indeed, he utilised pathos when invoking the spirit of pre-New Deal voluntarism with his ‘thousand points of light’, but this was an ostensibly inclusive Republican language, quite distinct too from the moralising of the Reagan years.

However, as the Republican Party was dragged to the Right during the Bush years by the Reaganite Praetorian Guard, his language and oratory became less deliberative and judicial and more emotional and performative. Indeed, the oratorical changes of the Bush Sr. years marks the decisive Rightward shift from Reagan Republicanism to post-Reagan Republicanism, laying the oratorical and political foundations for Bush 43.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Whitgift Boarding School, London, UK

    Matthew Lakin

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  1. Matthew Lakin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Andrew S. Crines

  2. University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom

    Sophia Hatzisavvidou

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Lakin, M. (2018). The Oratory of George H.W. Bush. In: Crines, A., Hatzisavvidou, S. (eds) Republican Orators from Eisenhower to Trump. Rhetoric, Politics and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68545-8_7

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