War Metaphors: How President’s Use the Language of War to Sell Policy

Abstract

During the latter half of the 20 th century, Presidents have often invoked the language of war to push through their policy initiatives.Despite the vast literature on presidential speeches, there has been little in the way of studying these rhetorical wars in any systematic fashion.This paper seeks to address that deficiency by studying several highprofile rhetorical wars that presidents have declared, from Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty to George W. Bush's war on terror.The purpose is to trace the evolution of metaphorical wars from rhetoric into public policy.In tracing this process, many other questions will be addressed, including: What message was the president hoping to send to the American people through rhetoric?What were the original goals of the president?What are some of the reasons the "wars" failed or succeeded?Finally, to what extent did future administrations adopt their predecessor's policy and to what extent did future presidents establish their own strategy for fighting the wars?

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