Woodrow Wilson's western tour : rhetoric, public opinion, and the League of Nations / J. Michael Hogan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hogan, J. Michael, 1953-

Series:

Library of presidential rhetoric

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Oratory.

Wilson, Woodrow.

Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924.

League of Nations.

Oratory.

United States--Politics and government--1913-1921.

United States.

Politics and government.

Rhetoric--Political aspects--United States--History--20th century.

Rhetoric.

Rhetoric--Political aspects.

History.

League of Nations--United States.

Physical Description:

212 pages ; 22 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2006]

Summary:

On September 3, 1919, Woodrow Wilson embarked upon one of the most ambitious and controversial speaking tours in the history of American politics: a grueling 8,000-mile, twenty-two-day tour across the Midwest and Far West in support of the League of Nations. Historians still debate Wilson's motivations for touring in the first place, but most agree with Thomas Bailey that the tour proved a "disastrous blunder." Not only did Wilson collapse before completing his "swing around the circle," but the treaty likely would have been defeated even if the tour had succeeded beyond all expectations. Most agree that Wilson's decision to tour was misguided-the product of an exaggerated sense of his own persuasiveness, a martyr complex, or even mental illness.

In this masterful work, J. Michael Hogan offers the first detailed analysis of Wilson's speeches on the tour, including the most celebrated speech of the campaign, his famous address in Pueblo, Colorado. Assessing the tour in light of Wilson's own scholarly writings about civic discourse and democratic deliberation, Hogan provides new insight into Wilson's failure and a new understanding of this watershed event in the history of American public address. Over the course of the tour, Hogan argues, Wilson abandoned his own principles of oratorical statesmanship and increasingly resorted to the techniques of the propagandist and the demagogue. In the process, he subverted what he himself called the "common counsel" of public deliberation and foreshadowed some of the worst tendencies of the modern rhetorical presidency.

Contents:

The rhetorical presidency and public deliberation in the Progressive Era

The rhetoric of "common counsel"

The drift toward demagoguery

The legend of Pueblo

The legacy of Wilson's western tour.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [199]-203) and index.

ISBN:

158544524X

1585445339

OCLC:

62897307

Publisher Number:

9781585445240

9781585445332