Presidential Rhetoric from Wilson to Obama: Constructing crises, fast and slow [Hardcover]

1. Constructing Crises, Converting Values, and Credibility Gaps  2. Wilsonian Transformations: Presidential Rhetoric and Crusading Internationalism  3. Constructing Cold War Consensus: Trumans Crusade and Eisenhowers Restraint  4. The Limits to the Cold War Consensus  and to the Pragmatic Lessons of Vietnam  5. Constructing Liberal Lessons of Vietnam  and the Limits to Post-Cold War Pragmatism  6. Constructing a Crusading Freedom Agenda or a Pragmatic Responsibility to Protect  7. Conclusions: Populism, Intellectualism and the Limits of Foreign Policy by Crisis

Widmaier (Griffith Univ., Australia) presents readers with an intriguing theory about how US presidents craft foreign policy and the rhetoric used to communicate foreign policy to the American public.
-- J. R. Hedtke, Cabrini College, CHOICE

Over the past century, presidential constructions of crises have spurred recurring redefinitions of U.S. interests, as crusading advance has alternated with realist retrenchment. For example, Harry Truman and George W. Bush constructed crises that justified liberal crusades in the Cold War and War on Terror. In turn, each was followed by realist successors, as Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama limited U.S. commitments, but then struggled to maintain popular support.

To make sense of such dynamics, this book synthesizes constructivist and historical institutionalist insights regarding the ideational overreactions that spur shifts across crusading excesses and realist counter-reactions. Widmaier juxtaposes what Daniel Kahneman terms the initial fast thinking popular constructions of crises that justify liberal crusades, the slow thinking intellectual conversion of such views in realist adjustments, and the tensions that can lead to renewed crises. This book also traces these dynamics historically across five periods  asl³&