The Anti Intellectual Presidency is popular PDF and ePub book, written by Elvin T. Lim in 2008-06-12, it is a fantastic choice for those who relish reading online the Biography & Autobiography genre. Let's immerse ourselves in this engaging Biography & Autobiography book by exploring the summary and details provided below. Remember, The Anti Intellectual Presidency can be Read Online from any device for your convenience.
The Anti Intellectual Presidency Book PDF Summary
How is it that contemporary presidents talk so much and yet say so little, as H. L. Mencken once descibed, like "dogs barking idiotically through endless nights?" In The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin Lim tackles this puzzle and argues forcefully that it is because we have been too preoccupied in our search for a "Great Communicator," and have failed to take presidents to task for what they communicate to us. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, he argues, spoke in a qualitatively different style than Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan and Clinton merely connected with us; the two Roosevelts educated us. To alert us to the gradual rot of presidential rhetoric, Lim examines two centuries of presidential speeches to demonstrate the relentless and ever-increasing simplificaton of presidential rhetoric. If these trends persist, Lim projects that the State of the Union addresses in the next century could actually read at the fifth-grade level. Lim argues that the ever-increasing tendency for presidents to crowd out argument in presidential rhetoric with applause-rendering platitudes and partisan punch-lines was concertedly implemented by the modern White House. Through a series of interviews with former presidential speechwriters, he shows that the anti-intellectual stance was a deliberate choice rather than a reflection of presidents' intellectual limitations. Only the smart, he suggests, know how to "dumb down." Because anti-intellectual rhetoric impedes, rather than facilitates communication and deliberation, Lim warns that we must do something to recondition a political culture so easily seduced by smooth-operating anti-intellectual presidents. Sharply written and incisively argued, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency sheds new light on the murky depths of presidential utterances and its consequences for American democracy.
Detail Book of The Anti Intellectual Presidency PDF
- Author : Elvin T. Lim
- Release : 12 June 2008
- Publisher : OUP USA
- ISBN : 9780195342642
- Genre : Biography & Autobiography
- Total Page : 197 pages
- Language : English
- PDF File Size : 19,9 Mb
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