George Bush and the Rhetoric of Moral Accounting

Abstract

In this chapter I focus primarily on the rhetoric of George W. Bush but also compare his use of persuasive language with that of his father, George Bush Senior, who was President from 1989 until 1993. It seemed relevant to compare father and son for a number of reasons: they both represented the Republican Party, they both represented the interests of corporate business and they both initiated American intervention in Iraq. The major difference is that while George Bush Senior led the USA in its new role as the first global superpower, his son led his country in responding to the first major challenge to this status. This was, of course, the largest ever peacetime assault on a civilian population: the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. The nature of George W. Bush’s leadership during this period of national crisis was especially important because of the narrowness of his electoral victory over Al Gore in the highly disputed 2001 elections.