Shortly after his inauguration in 2009, President Barack Obama set to work on health care reform. Little more than a year later the President signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which achieved a goal of so many previous administrations, into law. In order to encourage the passage of health care reform, Obama promoted a health care crisis in America. This study examines the President's rhetoric surrounding the health care crisis in order to explore the characteristics of a potential sub-genre of presidential discourse—domestic promoted crisis. Textual analysis of the President's remarks on health care revealed five strategies used in order to promote this crisis to the American people and encourage legislation to resolve it. In addition to characteristics, the concept of promotion of crises is discussed. / Master of Arts

Jana Leichterová Conservative Criticism of Obamacare and its Transformation in the Context of Donald Trump Running for President Abstract The thesis deals with the debate over the health care reforms in the United States. It focuses specifically on the debate over the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, a health care reform initiated by President Barack Obama that was signed into law in March 2010. The goal of the thesis is to identify the main arguments of the conservative criticism of the Affordable Care Act, and to determine whether the debate transformed with the emergence of Donald Trump onto the political scene. The thesis provides historical context of the three main approaches to the health care policies in the United States throughout the 20th century: the Social Security path of strong government in the 1930s, the mixed "American way" with government providing social benefits to citizens through private institutions in the 1970s, and the approach of unregulated free market since the 1980s. Obama's health care originates in the urge for a national solution of the high number of uninsured citizens (more than 50 million in 2009) and rising cost of health care. The reform has three essential pillars: 1. the reform of the health insurance market that unifies the diverse state approaches and...

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies, Theatre, and Dance / Timothy R. Steffensmeier / The 2008 presidential campaign controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons had the potential to derail Barack Obama’s candidacy. At the heart of the controversy was race, specifically Whiteness. Obama’s speech “A More Perfect Union” is perhaps one of the most significant political speeches addressing race to date, and warrants analysis. However, Barry Brummett’s book Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture (1991) argues the critic should not be limited to discrete traditional texts, rather should be able to break outside such traditional speaker-focused boundaries. Brummett’s mosaic model allows an exploration of the intersection between popular and political rhetoric of Obama and The Daily Show. I will argue from the intersection we see the emergence of the comic frame as a homology that links the disparate texts of Obama and TDS. I will argue the reason the comic frame emerges from the texts is because there is a societal mandate for the comic frame. Thus, I will ultimately argue the mandate for the comic frame can be better understood as a social movement. However, it is a movement comprised of numerous individual movements, and warrants a new term: meta-movement. Obama and TDS are not leaders of this meta-movement, but instead should be seen as contributors. Brummett urges the critic to consider “the political or ideological interests served by ordering a rhetorical transaction in a certain way” (1991, p. 98). I will argue constructing the rhetoric of Obama and TDS with the comic frame serves the ideological interests of those who are fighting for social justice and working to subvert Whiteness. Thus, I have named the meta-movement to which Obama and TDS contribute a critical optimist movement, because the comic frame provides the tools to be critical of hegemony while ultimately reinforcing the optimistic assumption of the comic frame: all humans are ultimately both flawed and good.

Ce mémoire propose l'analyse de l'approche du candidat présidentiel Barack Obama à l'égard du dossier nucléaire iranien. Plus particulièrement, nous cherchons à déterminer s'il y a cohérence entre les promesses électorales de Barack Obama concernant l'Iran et la politique étrangère des États-Unis à l'égard de l'Iran mise en oeuvre durant la première moitié de son mandat à la Maison-Blanche (2009-2011). Menace à la sécurité nationale étatsunienne, l'Iran représente un enjeu capital lors de la campagne présidentielle américaine de 2008 en raison de son programme nucléaire. Contrairement au candidat républicain John McCain, le candidat démocrate Barack Obama préconise le dialogue et le multilatéralisme. Malgré l'impossibilité pour les Américains de rétablir les relations diplomatiques avec les Iraniens, en rupture depuis la crise des otages de 1980, il tend la main à cet ennemi des États-Unis. Durant la campagne, Obama s'est engagé à prévenir l'acquisition de l'arme nucléaire par l'Iran, principalement en conduisant une diplomatie agressive sans toutefois écarter l'option militaire.Ce mémoire conclut qu'il y a bel et bien cohérence entre les promesses électorales et la politique étrangère du président Obama, car celui-ci a respecté la presque totalité de ses engagements électoraux concernant l'Iran. Dans les deux premières années de son mandat, il s'est par exemple adressé directement aux leaders iraniens dans l'espoir d'ouvrir un dialogue avec ceux-ci, il a révisé la posture nucléaire américaine et a conclut [i.e. conclu] un nouveau traité avec la Russie en matière de désarmement nucléaire, et il a été en mesure de mobiliser une coalition internationale afin d'imposer de nouvelles sanctions au régime iranien.

This paper examines the causes of the rise in vacancies on the federal courts in recent decades. Under President Barack Obama, the number of vacancies on the federal courts has sharply jumped. This is due to firm opposition by Senate Republicans, who have used the various procedural tools of that body to make it difficult for nominees to get confirmation. This antagonism is the result of a shift in how the parties view the courts and their role in the American political process. The Warren Court's expansion of substantive due process rights increased the Court's powers to the chagrin of conservatives. Republicans responded by blocking the nomination of Abe Fortas for Chief Justice; Democrats retaliated by defeating several of Richard Nixon's nominees to replace Fortas. These battles, and the prominence of legal issues such as abortion, would culminate in the vicious fight over Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Court, which influenced increasingly bitter fights in recent decades. I also propose a possible solution to the obstruction problem, inspired by procedures used in jury selection.

During the 2008 Presidential election, questions concerning Barack Obama’s religious views arose. Specifically, the controversy surrounding Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, caused some people to wonder how Wright’s theology may have influenced Obama. This project investigates Obama’s religious views and examines several forces, including Wright, which influenced his theological perspective. Wright bases his theological perspective on the works of James Cone, a significant figure in Black Liberation Theology and a mentor to Wright. This thesis compares and contrasts Obama’s religious perspective with that of James Cone.

This essay examines the persuasive side of language in a speech given by Senator Barack Obama on Super Tuesday in February 2008. It studies how Senator Obama utilizes language to convince and persuade his audience. This is done from an Aristotelian point of view, meaning that the study focuses foremost on how the senator’s word choices relate to Aristotle’s three means of persuasion, ethos, pathos and logos. Those basic guiding principles are relevant to use since Aristotle’s work on the subject of rhetoric is still today one of the most relevant works in that field. The analysis is basically performed through personal observations guided by previous studies, within the frame of Aristotelian rhetoric. The results show how Senator Obama enforces the three means of persuasion through language and how it can be considered persuasive. The study might add to rhetoric studies from a linguistic perspective since it reaches a better understanding of language used in the field of politics, where rhetoric is a prominent component.

This dissertation analyzes the discourse of Obama’s speeches to argue my thesis that Obama won election by virtue of his rhetorical speechmaking but more specifically, his ability to manage race in those speeches. I define and refer to Obama’s rhetorical handling of race in his speechmaking throughout the campaign as the rhetoric of race management. By rhetorical race management, I mean the strategic use of race (or obfuscation of race) in one’s discourse to manage or affect the audience’s beliefs or opinions of the listener. From a communication-based standpoint, understanding how race operated in this election requires us to examine the history of racism in the United States as well as critical scholarly work on the subject. Understanding how Obama was able to manage race in his rhetoric is necessary because it forces us to perhaps reexamine and scrutinize the 2008 Presidential election more carefully for several reasons. As rhetorical scholars, if we are in the business of understanding how our icons and politicians can potentially manipulate and use our rhetorical signs and symbols against us—or in spite of us--it is in our best interest to understand why the process occurred and why we allowed it to happen. I suggest that Obama’s deliberate attempt to weave ideological constructs like patriotism and the American Dream into his campaign strategy obfuscated his representation as the marginalized “other” and created a new political identity that has little to do with marginalization. By examining the theories of scholars like Kenneth Burke, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Walter Fisher, and Dana Cloud, I outline how race and racism historically operated in our political elections, from both a sociopolitical, or quantitative perspective, as well as a critical perspective. By using a multimethod analysis, we are better positioned to understand how Barack Obama successfully played the race card in the Presidential Election of 2008. More importantly, I argue in my conclusion why his use of rhetorical race management, was absolutely necessary if he were to become the first African-American president in a historically racist country. / text

Rhetorical skills are a very important part of political discourse. Being able to persuade an audience in a speech is central for politicians. This study aims to investigate how the personal pronouns I, you, we and they are used strategically in Barack Obama’s speeches. Previous research suggests that certain personal pronouns can enable politicians to take on different identities, which in turn gives them an opportunity to distance themselves from problematic issues and also invoke specific ideological ideas on their audience.  The study analyzes personal pronouns by the means of the co-text and the broader social context. It is found that I, you and we are used both to enhance the ‘self’ and portray the opposition in a negative way, while they focused on portraying the opposition negatively. However, the fact that politicians have speechwriters can be problematic when drawing conclusions of the pronominal choice.

Il presente lavoro di ricerca indaga i rapporti tra la disciplina delle Relazioni Internazionali (RI) e la tradizione filosofica americana del Pragmatismo (PP), focalizzandosi sui possibili contributi che quest’ultimo può fornire alle RI, guardando sia allo sviluppo del dibattito paradigmatico della disciplina sia alla dimensione delle politiche. In particolare, dopo aver fornito un quadro generale dei principi fondamentali del pragmatismo e averne evidenziato la positiva influenza sullo sviluppo della disciplina delle Relazioni Internazionali, il lavoro di ricerca si concentra sul tema del pragmatismo applicato alla dimensione della politica estera, qui concepita come sottolivello delle RI multifattoriale, multidisciplinare e nel quale l’agente/attore specifico assume un ruolo centrale. In linea con questa impostazione, la ricerca si concentra sull’elaborazione della politica estera del 44° Presidente americano, Barack Obama, mettendone in luce gli explanans, la cui applicazione viene poi testata nell’ambito di due casi-studio particolari: le relazioni degli Stati Uniti con Cuba, da un lato, e Israele, dall’altro. Attraverso l’analisi della letteratura esistente, in gran parte piuttosto recente, di documenti ufficiali rilasciati dall’Amministrazione Obama e dai discorsi ufficiali del Presidente stesso, il lavoro mira a dimostrare l’effettiva importanza del Pragmatismo sia per gli studiosi delle RI che per i policy-makers. / This research work aims at addressing the relations between the discipline of International Relations (IR) and the American philosophical tradition of Pragmatism (PP), investigating the possible contributions PP can provide IR with, both at a theoretical and a policy level. In particular, once given an overview of the basic principles of PP and the positive inputs it can provide to the discipline of the IR, the research work addresses the issue of whether pragmatism can direct and explain the formulation of a foreign policy (FP) – conceived as the sublevel of IR which is actor-specific, agent-oriented, multifactorial, multilevel, and multidisciplinary. In order to do so, an interpretative actor perspective is adopted, and the foreign policy of former U.S. President Barack Obama is analyzed, focusing on the explanans of his foreign policy making and vision. Their application is then tested on two case-studies: U.S.-Cuba relations and U.S.-Israel relations, in the timeframe of the Obama Presidency. Through the analysis of the existing literature – some of which quite recent, official documents released by the Obama Administrations and speeches given by the President, the research work tries to demonstrate that PP can indeed constitute a useful tool-kit for both IR scholars and policy-makers.