President Barack Obama’s Policy Choices in NATO Rhetoric
Abstract
This article uses Michael C. McGee’s concept of the ideograph to reflect Obama’s early foreign policy course regarding transatlantic relations. Specifically, the article draws on the ideograph “alliance” to demonstrate how the president redefined agents, acts, agencies, scenes, and purposes that fall within the rhetoric, thus informing how and why he changed US commitment to NATO. Analyzing Obama’s use of alliance serves to interpret his political choices as well as understand his ability to get the public to support them. By extension, a study of this nature offers a reading of the president’s perspective on US foreign policy and America’s global role.
Keywords
NATO; alliance; ideograph; Barack Obama; foreign policy
References
Amernic, J. H., & Craig, R. J. (2004). 9/11 in the Service of Corporate Rhetoric: Southwest Airlines’ 2001 Letter to Shareholders. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 28(4), 325–41.
Bennett-Carpenter, B. (2009). The ideograph revisited: Political, cultural, specialized. Paper presented at the National Communication Association.
Bush, G. W. (2001a). Letter to Members of the Senate on the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-members-the-senate-the-kyoto-protocol-climate-change (15/11/2018).
Bush, G. W.(2001b). Remarks Announcing the United States Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-announcing-the-united-states-withdrawal-from-the-anti-ballistic-missile-treaty (15/11/2018).
Charland, M. (1987). Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Quebecois. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 73(2), 133–50.
Cloud, D. L. (1998). The Rhetoric of Family Values: Scapegoating, Utopia, and the Privatization of Social Responsibility. Western Journal of Communication, 62, 4, 387-419.
Condit, C. M., & Lucaites, J. L. (1993). Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo-African Word. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coogan, D. (2002). Public Rhetoric and Public Safety at the Chicago Transit Authority: Three Approaches to Accident Analysis. Journal of Business and Technical Information, 16(3), 277–305.
CTBT Report. (2001). Final Declaration. Conference on Facilitating the Entry into Force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, New York, November 11-13, 2001. Disarmament Diplomacy,61, http://www.acronym.org.uk/old/archive/dd/dd61/61app.htm (15/11/2018).
Delgado, F. P. (1995). Chicano Movement Rhetoric: An Ideographic Interpretation. Communication Quarterly, 43(4), 446–76.
Delgado, F. P. (1999). The Rhetoric of Fidel Castro: Ideographs in the Service of Revolutionaries. Howard Journal of Communication, 10(1), 1-14.
Edwards, J. L., & Winkler, C. K. (1997). Representative form and the visual ideograph: The Iwo lima image in editorial cartoons. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 83(3), 289–310.
Feinstein, L., & Lindberg, T. (2009). Means to an End. U.S. Interest in the International Criminal Court. Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Gallup. (2009). Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval. https://news.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx (12/6/2019).
Grindstaff, D. (2003). Queering Marriage: An Ideographic Interrogation of Heteronormative Subjectivity. Journal of Homosexuality, 45(2), 257–75.
Hasian, M. Jr., Condit, C. M., & Lucaites, J. L. (1996). The Rhetorical Boundaries of ‘The Law’: A Consideration of the Rhetorical Culture of Legal Practice and the Case of the ‘Separate but Equal’ Doctrine. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 82(4), 323–42.
Heindel, A. K. (2004). The Counterproductive Bush Administration Policy Toward the International Criminal Court. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 2(2), 345–92.
Hodge, C. C. (2010). An ocean apart: The legacy of the Bush years in transatlantic security. Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 8(3), 279–89.
Jasinski, J. (2002). Puritans/Puritanism as Ideograph. The Review of Communication, 2, 90–96.
Johnson, D. (2007). Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist Rhetorical Criticism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4(1), 27–50.
Kupchan, C. A. (2012). A Still-Strong Alliance. Policy Review, https://www.hoover.org/research/still-strong-alliance (15/11/2018).
Kuypers, J. A., & Althouse, M. T. (2009). John Pym, Ideographs, and the Rhetoric of Opposition to the English Crown. Rhetoric Review, 28(3), 225–45.
Lee, R. (2009). Ideographic Criticism. In: J. A. Kuypers (ed.), Rhetorical Criticism. Perspectives in Action (pp. 285–320). Lanham: Lexington Books.
Long, K. (2013). ‘Terrorism’ in the Age of Obama: The Rhetorical Evolution of President Obama’s Discourse on the ‘War on Terror.’ Undergraduate Review, 9, 87–93.
McCann, B. J. (2007). Therapeutic and material ‘victim’hood: ideology and the struggle for meaning in the Illinois death penalty controversy. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4, 382–401.
McGee, M. C. (199). The ‘ideograph’: A link between rhetoric and ideology. In J. R. Andrews (ed.), The Practice of Rhetorical Criticism (pp. 331–47). New York: Longman.
Miller, L. (1999). Public argument and legislative debate in the rhetorical construction of public policy: The case of Florida midwifery legislation. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 85(4), 361–79.
Obama, B. (2008a). Global Climate Summit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0fMr2iJR3M (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2008b). Missile Defense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD0Ln_6XBCk (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009a). Remarks at a Town Hall Meeting and a Question-and-Answer Session in Strasbourg. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-town-hall-meeting-and-question-and-answer-session-strasbourg (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009b). Remarks in Prague. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-prague (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009c). Remarks to the North Atlantic Council in Strasbourg, France. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-north-atlantic-council-strasbourg-france (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009d). The President’s News Conference in London. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-london (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009e). The President’s News Conference in Strasbourg. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ documents/the-presidents-news-conference-strasbourg (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009f). The President’s News Conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Baden-Baden, Germany. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-with-chancellor-angela-merkel-germany-baden-baden-germany (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009g). The President’s News Conference with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Strasbourg, France. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-with-president-nicolas-sarkozy-france-strasbourg-france (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009h). The President’s News Conference with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom in London, England. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-with-prime-minister-gordon-brown-the-untied-kingdom-london (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2009i). The President’s Weekly Address.https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-weekly-address-143 (15/11/2018).
Obama, B. (2007). You Can Take That To The Bank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VlXfs1K04g (15/11/2018).
Palczewski, C. (2005). The male Madonna and the feminine Uncle Sam: Visual argument, icons, and ideographs in 1909 anti-woman suffrage postcards. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91(4), 365–94.
Parry-Giles, T. (1995). Ideology and Poetics in Public Issue Construction: Thatcherism, Civil Liberties, and ‘Terrorism.’ Communication Quarterly, 43(2), 182–96.
Pew Research Center (2008). Optimism and Obstacles for Obama in Europe. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/ 2009/03/26/obama-abroad/ (12/6/2019).
Pew Research Center (2010). Obama More Popular Abroad Than At Home, Global Image of U.S. Continues to Benefit. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2010/06/17/obama-more-popular-abroad-than-at-home/ (12/6/2019).
Polling Report (2016). President Obama and the Obama Administration. http://pollingreport.com/obama_ad.htm (12/6/2019).
Rielly, J. (2008). The Bush Administration’s Foreign Policy Legacy. Politique américaine, 3(12), 73–86.
The German Marshall Fund of the United States. (2008). Transatlantic Trends 2008. http://www.flad.pt/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/livro09.pdf (12/6/2019).
Towner, E. B. (2010). A Patriotic Apologia: The Transcendence of the Dixie Chicks. Rhetoric Review, 29(3), 293–309.
Valenzano III, J. M. (2006). Freedom and Terror: President George W. Bush’s Ideograph Use during his First Term. Georgia State University, PhD dissertation.
Weitsman, P. A. (2004). Dangerous alliances: Proponents of peace, weapons of war. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Winkler, C. (2006). In the Name of Terrorism: Presidents on Political Violence in the Post-World War II Era. Albany: State University of New York Press.
University of Rzeszów, Poland Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0355-790X
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
