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The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War

Online ISBN:
9780226823645
Print ISBN:
9780226823652
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

The World Is Our Stage: The Global Rhetorical Presidency and the Cold War

Allison M. Prasch
Allison M. Prasch
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Published online:
21 September 2023
Published in print:
8 February 2023
Online ISBN:
9780226823645
Print ISBN:
9780226823652
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

This book traces how US presidents utilized their physical travel to and through various regions and nation states as a rhetorical means of constituting, defining, and limiting the boundaries of the "Free World" global imaginary during the Cold War. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book shows how chief executives designed their international tours to address audiences at home and abroad, expand their power in foreign affairs, extend the United States’ military, political, and psychological influence overseas, and elevate the nation’s image on the world stage. This book introduces the concept of the global rhetorical presidency and examines five representative moments that demonstrate how the act of going global evolved between 1945-1989: Harry S. Truman's 1945 participation in the Potsdam Conference, Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1959-60 "Good Will" tours, John F. Kennedy's 1963 visit to West Berlin, Richard Nixon's "Opening to China" in 1971-72, and Ronald Reagan's 1984 commemoration of D-Day in Normandy. These case studies reveal how multiple administrations and other US government agencies designed these global tours to function as dynamic, multi-faceted persuasive campaigns—communicative encounters that were simultaneously verbal and visual, mediated and circulated, enacted by bodies within particular spatial and geopolitical locations and addressed to audiences foreign and domestic. Ultimately, this book argues that US chief executives took their rhetoric abroad to create and sustain a particular vision of the Cold War world, one that positioned the United States as the preeminent leader and epicenter of the 20th century global order.

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