HONOLULU (Jan. 20, 2011) -- With President Obama’s recent speech following the Tucson shootings receiving wide acclaim and his State of the Union address to a newly divided Congress looming next week, political media expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson told an audience at the East-West Center Tuesday that the rhetoric used by presidents and presidential candidates is significant both in what it can reveal and what it can conceal.
 
“Rhetoric matters,” said Jamieson, noting that as a candidate Obama’s legislative accomplishments weren’t extensive, but his capacity to frame issues and speak effectively helped get him elected. “Indeed, the rhetoric of the candidate credentialed him to be President of the United States.”

Jamieson, who spoke as the EWC’s current George Chaplin Fellow in Distinguished Journalism, directs the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which among other projects runs FactCheck.org , a nonpartisan organization that researches the veracity of political claims and bills itself as a “consumer advocate” for voters. As a professor of communications, Jamieson’s research centers on political media, including studies of campaign communications and the discourse of the U.S. presidency, and she herself is a frequent news commentator.

Jamieson said she believes Obama became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee largely on the strength of three well-documented speeches – his 2002 address against the Iraq War, his 2004 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention and a 2008 speech on race that helped his candidacy recover from a controversy about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The convention keynote was significant because it offered a glimpse of how Obama could bring the country together in times of crisis, she said. In the address, then Senator Obama talked about there being a single United States, not one divided by liberal and conservative lines.

“One thing I knew when I heard that speech was that a candidate who has the opportunity in a keynote to attack the other side, to create divisions, had found a rhetoric of incorporation that offered powerful illustrations of what unites a country,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson noted that Ronald Reagan had a similar capacity, but that not all politicians possess this ability. On the other hand, she said, presidents who are skilled at connecting with audiences emotionally are not necessarily good at laying out persuasive arguments for their policies