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Verbal Shifts in the American Presidency: A Content Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

James W. Prothro
James W. Prothro
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Extract

The resurgence of conservatism may be described as the most significant postwar development in American thought. “No intellectual phenomenon has been more surprising in recent years,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., concedes, “than the revival in the United States of conservatism as a respectable social philosophy.” No longer can one lament, as Alpheus T. Mason did in 1948, that “conservatism, once more than respectable political theology (especially among the educated), now carries overtones of reaction well nigh as discrediting as the rabidities attributed to communism.” Intellectual spokesmen are now, on the contrary, making a concerted effort to revisit and revitalize the conservative point of view.

Although most of this “egg head” element in the conservative camp may be, and has been, dismissed as expressing an anachronistic yearning for the anticommercial traditions evolved in British feudalism, the business leaders whom they neglect have themselves been revising and actively selling a conservatism that appears to be more closely related to the realities of the American social situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1956 , pp. 726 - 739
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1956

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References

1 “The New Conservatism: Politics of Nostalgia,” The Reporter, Vol. 12, p. 9 (June 16, 1955)Google Scholar.

2 The Democratic Process: Lectures on the American Liberal Tradition (New London, 1948), p. 32Google Scholar.

3 See e.g., Wilson, Francis, Case for Conservatism (Seattle, 1951)Google Scholar; Kirk, Russell, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar; Rossiter, Clinton, Conservatism in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; and Viereck, Peter, Conservatism Revisited: The Revolt Against Revolt (New York, 1949)Google Scholar. The current appeal of conservatism among academicians is perhaps best attested by the fact that critics of the “New Conservatives” now argue, not against the defects of their conservatism, but that they are really liberals without knowing it. See Crick, Bernard, “The Strange Quest for an American Conservatism,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 17, pp. 359–76 (July, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 See Schlesinger, op. cit. The most conspicuous exception to this charge is Professor Rossiter, who holds that “the full conservative tradition, a graft on feudalism, simply will not flourish on this soil.” “Toward an American Conservatism,” Yale Review, Vol. XLIV, p. 357 (Spring 1955)Google Scholar.

5 U.S.A., The Permanent Revolution (New York, 1951)Google Scholar. And see Randall, Clarence B., A Creed for Free Enterprise (Boston, 1952)Google Scholar.

6 Berle, A. A. Jr., “Businessmen in Government: the New Administration,” The Reporter, Vol. 8, pp. 8–12 (February 2, 1953)Google Scholar.

7 See the author's The Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920's (Baton Rouge, 1954), especially pp. 209–21Google Scholar.

8 For the types of categories employed, and on content analysis in general, see Berelson, Bernard, Content Analysis in Communication Research (Glencoe, Illinois, 1952)Google Scholar.

9 Lasswell, Harold D., Analyzing the Content of Mass Communication: A Brief Introduction (Washington, 1942), p. 16Google Scholar.

10 “Describing the Contents of Communications,” in Propaganda, Communications, and Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference Guide, ed. Smith, Bruce L., Lasswell, Harold D., and Casey, Ralph D. (Princeton, 1946), p. 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 85, 82.

12 Ibid., p. 85.

13 Berelson, op. cit., p. 167.

14 Ibid., p. 172.

15 Ibid., p. 173.

16 The respective number of thematic and non-thematic paragraphs for each president were: Hoover, 176, 62; Roosevelt, 96, 26; Truman, 205, 19; Eisenhower, 171, 59.

17 The author is indebted to Penrose B. Jackson for his willingness to serve as second coder.

19 “Inaugural Address,” in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States: From George Washington 1789 to Harry S. Truman 1949, House Document No. 540, 82nd Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 215–24Google Scholar.

20 “The State of the Union—Address by the President of the United States,” Congressional Record, Vol. 99, pp. 748–53 (February 2, 1953)Google Scholar.

21 Two themes specially stressed by Hoover, cooperation and law enforcement, may be partly attributed to factors only tangential to a liberal-conservative alignment: his Quaker background and his concern for prohibition enforcement.

22 The middle class symbols for Roosevelt are progress and candor, for Truman peace, freedom, prosperity, democracy, and a negative symbol, Communism.

23 The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1947), pp. 267–82Google Scholar.

24 American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)Google Scholar.

25 “Toward an American Conservatism,” loc. cit., p. 361. Emphasis his.

26 See Davenport, op. cit.

27 Berelson, op. cit., p. 147.

28 “Address of Acceptance,” in The New Day Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover, 1928 (Stanford University, 1928), pp. 9–44Google Scholar.

29 Crick, Bernard, “The Strange Quest for an American Conservatism,” The Review of Politics, Vol. 17, pp. 359–60 (July 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The gratuitous character of this remark, in an article re-labelling most of our professed “New Conservatives” as liberals, suggests the interesting possibility that methodological and political conservatism may be positively correlated. This condition might, indeed, be logically expected from persons at either extreme of the ideological spectrum since they would presumably be committed to politics as a vehicle for the realization of their values rather than as a subject for objective analysis. To argue that no political science is possible is a perfect rationalization for the pursuit of artistic polemics rather than scientific inquiry.

30 Carleton, William G., “The Triumph of the Moderates,” Harper's, Vol. 210, pp. 31–37 (April 1955)Google Scholar.

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