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Introduction. Chapter 1: "Make Politics Your Passion" -- Unit 1. Make History Functional. Chapter 2: "Let's Find a Usable Past" -- Chapter 3: "Understand Your Moment in Time" -- Chapter 4: "Heed the Prophetic Voice" -- Chapter 5: "Experiment with Playful Protest" -- Unit 2. Exploit Human Capacities. Chapter 6: "Let Consensus Overcome Polarization" -- Chapter 7: "Use Emotion Wisely" -- Chapter 8: "Explore the Reasons for Incivility" -- Chapter 9: "Tell the Story of Poverty" -- Chapter 10: "Imagine New Political Coalitions" -- Unit 3. Open Your Mind. Chapter 11: "Listen to the First Amendment" -- Chapter 12: "Hear the Presidency Differently" -- Chapter 13: "Fix the 'Cancel Culture' Mentality" -- Chapter 14: "Cultivate Empathy for Outgroups" -- Unit 4. Confront the Establishment. Chapter 15: "Counter a Reactive Media System" -- Chapter 16: "Create a Watchdog Branch of Government" -- Chapter 17: "Modernize Healthcare Decision-making" -- Chapter 18: "Give Election Apps More Integrity" -- Chapter 19: "Shake-Up the F.C.C." -- Unit 5. Upgrade Political Campaigns. Chapter 20: "Study the Electorate Thoroughly" -- Chapter 21: "Talk About Voters Thoughtfully" -- Chapter 22: "Vote When Voting Really Counts" -- Chapter 23: "Make Ads Safe for Democracy" -- Chapter 24: "Let's Outperform Super PACs" -- Unit 6. Reimagine Traditional Journalism. Chapter 25: "Address Journalism's Crisis Boldly" -- Chapter 26: "Measure Newsroom Effectiveness Differently" -- Chapter 27: "Publicly Subsidize Journalism" -- Chapter 28: "Report on Terrorism Responsibly" -- Chapter 29: "Challenge Fox News" -- Conclusion. Chapter 30: "Enliven Your Civic Capacities."

Why did 62 million Americans vote for Donald Trump? Trump and Us offers a fresh perspective on this question, taking seriously the depth and breadth of Trump's support. An expert in political language, Roderick P. Hart turns to Trump's words, voters' remarks, and media commentary for insight. The book offers the first systematic rhetorical analysis of Trump's 2016 campaign and early presidency, using text analysis and archives of earlier presidential campaigns to uncover deep emotional undercurrents in the country and provide historical comparison. Trump and Us pays close attention to the emotional dimensions of politics, above and beyond cognition and ideology. Hart argues it was not partisanship, policy, or economic factors that landed Trump in the Oval Office but rather how Trump made people feel.

"This book is my answer to Trump-the-question. Because Mr. Trump stirs up so much controversy, I knew that only hard evidence could keep me from being tossed about in his wake. So I have assembled a great quantity of data here, looking exhaustively at Trump's speeches, his press conferences, his debates, and his incessant tweets. But these data mean little by themselves. It is only when one compares them to what the press has written that one begins to get the full measure of the man, a project also advanced by looking at what everyday citizens have said when writing letters to the editors or when responding to nationwide surveys. Donald Trump, I came to believe, can only be understood by triangulation."--

Civic Hope is a history of what everyday Americans say - in their own words - about the government overseeing their lives. Based on a highly original analysis of 10,000 letters to the editor from 1948 to the present published in twelve US cities, the book overcomes the limitations of survey data by revealing the reasons for people's attitudes. While Hart identifies worrisome trends - including a decline in writers' abilities to explain what their opponents believe and their attachment to national touchstones - he also shows why the nation still thrives. Civic Hope makes a powerful case that the vitality of a democracy lies not in its strengths but in its weaknesses and in the willingness of its people to address those weaknesses without surcease. The key, Hart argues, is to sustain a culture of argument at the grassroots level

Roderick Hart may be among the few Americans who believe that what politicians say in a campaign actually matters. He also believes that campaigns work. Even as television coverage, political ads, and opinion polls turn elections into field days for marketing professionals, Hart argues convincingly that campaigns do play their role in sustaining democracy, mainly because they bring about a dialogue among candidates, the press, and the people. Here he takes a close look at the exchange of ideas through language used in campaign speeches, political advertising, public debates, print and broadca

"Roderick Hart may be among the few Americans who believe that what politicians say in a campaign actually matters. He also believes that campaigns work. Even as television coverage, political ads, and opinion polls turn elections into field days for marketing professionals, Hart argues convincingly that campaigns do play their role in sustaining democracy, mainly because they bring about a dialogue among candidates, the press, and the people. Here he takes a close look at the exchange of ideas through language used in campaign speeches, political advertising, public debates, print and broadcast news, and a wide variety of letters to the editor. In each case, the participants choose their words differently, and this, according to Hart, can be a frustrating challenge to anyone trying to make sense of the issues. Yet he finds that the process is good for Americans: campaigns inform us about issues, sensitize us to the concerns of others, and either encourage us to vote or at least heighten our sense of the political world." "Hart comes to his conclusions by using Diction, a computer program that has enabled him to unearth substantive data, such as the many subtle shifts found in political language, over the past fifty years. This approach yields a rich variety of insights, including empirically based explanations of impressions created by political candidates. For example, in 1996 Bill Clinton successfully connected with voters by using many human-interest words--"you," "us," "people," "family." Bob Dole, however, alienated the public and even undermined his own claims of optimism by using an abundance of denial words--"can't," "shouldn't," "couldn't." Hart also tracks issue buzzwords such as "Medicare" to show how candidates and voters define and readjust their positions throughout the campaign dialogue."

AbstractThis essay distinguishes the chronology of a presidency—how long it lasts in months and years—from the phenomenology of a presidency, what it comes to mean in the eyes of the American people. The case in point is the presidency of Donald Trump, an administration that has somehow "continued" since the time he left office because of the active rhetorical work performed not only by Trump and his supporters but also by the nation's journalists, who have found it wise to keep Trump in the headlines. Phenomenologically, that is, the nation now has two presidents, one statutory and the other stipulative, a condition that preserves a sharp dialectic between past and present. Depending on one's partisan outlook, this double presidency can be seen as reinforcing, annoying, or frightening, but it is nonetheless rhetorically compelling.

Discovering why the 2020 election turned out as it did will, given the complexities of American politics, take considerable time. Discovering how Trump lost and how Biden won will take longer. This article presents an initial foray in the latter direction by subjecting the rhetoric of the campaign to computerized language analysis via the DICTION program. In doing so, this study is the most recent outgrowth of the Campaign Mapping Project, begun at the University of Texas in Austin in 1995 and designed to produce comparative rhetorical data about presidential campaigns from 1948 to the present. The argument being made here is that Donald Trump lost the election by making excessive use of what Richard Hofstadter calls the Paranoid Style. In addition, Trump made exaggerated claims about abstract and unprovable conspiracies, all of which seemed derivative to voters worried about their health and their jobs in 2020. Joe Biden, in contrast, stressed Commonality—the need for shared purpose during a dangerous and dispiriting time. Biden also spoke directly of and to the people, thereby taking a page out of Trump's own 2016 playbook. In many ways, Donald Trump's self-preoccupations made him blind to the needs of the electorate, a habit that developed over the course of his presidency and that ultimately cost him his job.