Modern presidents regularly appeal over the heads of Congress to the people at large to generate support for public policies. The Rhetorical Presidency makes the case that this development, born at the outset of the twentieth century, is the product of conscious political choices that fundamentally transformed the presidency and the meaning of Amer

"This is a brilliant book. The author does not overlap with the existing literature as much as offer an entirely new way of thinking about the phenomenon he describes. The book should draw respectful attention in a variety of disciplines--history, philosophy, and communications, as well as political science. . . . I could go on and on; there is no end to my appreciation for this work."--Michael Nelson, Vanderbilt University

"This book is full of good writing, sound judgment, and the exactly appropriate rhetoric for an analysis of the rhetorical presidency. Everyone is aware of references to the presidency as a bully pulpit and to presidents as great (or poor) communicators. But it takes a book like Tulis's to put all this together as an essential, perhaps the essential, political dimension of the presidency."--Theodore J. Lowi, Cornell University

Praise for the previous edition: "Making an image for presidents today is a sham rhetoric that must be judged within the history of presidential rhetoric since the Founding. In this brilliant and original work, Jeffrey Tulis finds a new aspect of the presidency and rediscovers a forgotten topic in political science."--Harvey C. Mansfield, Harvard University

"Jeffrey Tulis's book The Rhetorical Presidency has experienced a scholarly reception enjoyed by few other works in presidency studies. Ten years after its 1987 publication, it was the subject of at least two retrospective edited volumes (Ellis 1998; Medhurst 1996). Ten years later, Critical Review published a 20-year retrospective on the work, with another edited volume plumbing the nuances of the book's thesis following (Friedman 2007; Medhurst 2008)."---David Crockett, Presidential Studies Quarterly