Rhetoric Matters

A couple of interesting stories for a beautiful fall day!
Maureen Dowd speculates on a conversation between George W. Bush (43) and Bill Clinton (42) upon hearing that 44 has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Even amidst the humor of the piece, Dowd manages to highlight the possible alternatives that might have been more plausible as [...]

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Has the Obama administration totally mismanaged the health care debate?
Now, the White House announces that the president wants to address a joint session of Congress next week on health care. One of my graduate students wonders if that’s a “risky” move. It seems to me that this is a correct judgment–Obama is taking a big risk. [...]

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John Kerry said something I found quite interesting this morning on Meet the Press. The show was, as might be expected, devoted to memorializing Ted Kennedy.  

When asked about what Kennedy taught Kerry upon the junior senator’s arrival in Washington, Kerry said: “David, when I first got involved in politics, I thought that politics was just [...]

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As someone born at the very end of the baby boom, the other Kennedys are a distant childhood memory for me, living largely in the realm of image and nostalgia. Not so, Ted Kennedy. Ever a part of my generation’s political consciousness, this Kennedy’s passing seems more authentic, more real and meaningful than the tragic [...]

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UM’s Political Advertising Resource Center has started a health care reform ad project. It’s designed to offer an inventory of the ads aired during the health care reform debate, a news digest of articles about advertising in this debate, and eventually analyses of the ads from graduate students and faculty at UM. This is a [...]

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