"As the nation's ceremonial as well as political leader, presidents through their rhetoric help to create the frame for the American public's understanding of immigration. In an overarching essay and ten case studies, Who Belongs in America? explores select moments in U.S. immigration history, focusing on the presidential discourse that preceded, addressed, or otherwise corresponded to events."--Jacket
This article explores the multiple challenges President Bill Clinton faced when he spoke in Selma, Alabama, at the thirty‐fifth anniversary commemoration of Bloody Sunday. Given the symbolic weight of Selma within public memory, its centrality within U.S. nationalistic narratives about equality and Clinton's own personal and political persona, the president had to operate within narrow rhetorical parameters on this occasion. His response was to both observe and depart from norms of presidents' commemorative discourse. An analysis of the speech suggests Clinton commemorated Bloody Sunday less than he memorialized the U.S. presidency, invigorating memories of its past and future power.
Instead of supporting the use of one standardized data set as proposed by Coe and Neumann, this response argues that scholars should continue to be required to construct arguments and offer justifications for what they are examining when they say they are analyzing presidential discourse, regardless of methodology. Two reasons are offered for this position. First, presidential communication is inherently difficult to define and/or delimit. Second, scholars of presidential discourse should be wary of the possible creation of a new "canon" within their object of study. The response concludes by suggesting that even if Coe and Neumann's argument is persuasive to readers, we should be careful about promoting one data set over other possibilities. Our individual research questions should set the parameters for the data sets we use, and scholarship on presidential discourse only benefits from continued argumentation about what it is, why it matters, and how it might be best understood.
