Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:44:35.305Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2007

Colleen J. Shogan
Colleen J. Shogan
Affiliation:
George Mason University, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Due to the amplified importance of forging an intimate connection with the American public, modern presidents must adjust their political personalities and leadership. To combat allegations of elitism, recent Republican presidents have adopted anti-intellectualism as a conservative form of populism. Anti-intellectualism is defined as disparagement of the complexity associated with intellectual pursuits, and a rejection of the elitism and self-aware attitude of distinction that is commonly associated with intellectual life. This article focuses on the benefits and costs of anti-intellectualism as a strategic response to the plebiscitary demands of contemporary presidential politics.Colleen J. Shogan is a member of the Affiliate Research Faculty at George Mason University ([email protected]). She is a full-time employee of the United States Senate, and the author of The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents (Texas A&M Press, 2006). Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Miller Center of Public Affairs Colloquia Series on Politics and History and Notre Dame's Program in American Democracy Speaker Series. She would like to thank Sidney Milkis, Brian Balogh, Jennifer Hochschild, Peri Arnold, Bruce Miroff, Eileen Hunt-Botting, Christina Wolbrecht, David Adesnik, and several anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and institutional support.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 295 - 303
Copyright
© 2007 American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berke, Richard. 2000. Head games: What a mind! In politics, that's not what matters. New York Times, June 25.Google Scholar
Bose, Meena, and Fred Greenstein. 2002. The hidden hand vs. the bully pulpit: The layered political rhetoric of President Eisenhower. In The Presidency and Rhetorical Leadership, ed. Leroy Dorsey. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press.Google Scholar
Brookhiser, Richard. 2003. Mind of George W. Bush. The Atlantic Monthly, April, 55–66.Google Scholar
Bush, George W. 2001. Commencement address at Yale University. May 21. http://www.yale.edu/lt/archives/v8n1/v8n1georgewbush.htm.Google Scholar
Cannon, Lou. 1982. High-risk presidency at the crossroads. Washington Post, January 21.Google Scholar
Chait, Jonathan. 1999. Race to the bottom. New Republic, December 20.Google Scholar
Dallek, Robert. 1999. Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
D'Souza, Dinesh. 1997. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Eisenhower, Dwight David. 1996. Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower XIV. Louis Galambos and Duan Van Ee, eds. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Fineman, Howard. 2003. Bush and God. Newsweek, March 10, 22–30.Google Scholar
Frum, David. 2003. The Right Man. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Galvin, Daniel, and Colleen Shogan. 2004. Presidential politicization and centralization across the modern-traditional divide. Polity 36 (3): 477–505.Google Scholar
Gergen, David. 2000. Eyewitness to Power. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Gitlin, Todd. 2000. The renaissance of anti-intellectualism. Chronicle of Higher Education, December 8.Google Scholar
Heclo, Hugh. 2003. Ronald Reagan and America's search for a public philosophy. In The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies, ed. W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Hertsgaard, Mark. 1988. On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. 1963. Anti-intellectualism in American Life. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Isaacson, Walter. 2000. My heritage is part of who I am. Time, August 7, 55.Google Scholar
Ivins, Molly, and Lou Dubose. 2000. Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Johnson, Haynes. 1991. Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Johnston, Richard J.H., 1952. McCarthy terms Stevenson unfit. New York Times, October 28.Google Scholar
Leibovich, Mark. 2005. Don't stop him even if you've heard this one. Washington Post, March 14.Google Scholar
Lim, Elvin. 2003. “The anti-intellectual presidency.” Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, August 29.Google Scholar
Milbank, Dana. 2002. Another ol' hickory in the White House? Washington Post, September 17.Google Scholar
Milbank, Dana. 2003. Background checks. Washington Post, January 28.Google Scholar
Minutaglio, Bill. 1999. First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Miroff, Bruce. 2003. The presidency as spectacle. In The Presidency and the Political System, ed. Michale Nelson. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Moe, Terry, and William Howell. 1999. Unilateral action and presidential power: A theory. Presidential Studies Quarterly 29 (4): 850–72.Google Scholar
Pach, Chester J. Jr., and Elmo Richardson. 1991. The Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Reagan, Ronald. 1968. The Creative Society: Some Comments on Problems Facing America. New York: Devin-Adair Company.Google Scholar
Skinner, Kiron. 2001. What the Ronald Reagan archives tell us about the final decades of the Cold War. Colloquium in International History and Security at Yale University, October 17.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 2005. Leadership by definition: First term reflections on George W. Bush's political stance. Perspectives on Politics 3 (4): 817–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuckey, Mary. 1989. Getting into the Game: The Pre-presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Troy, Tevi. 2002. Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians? Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
VandeHei, Jim, and Peter Baker. 2005. President struggles to regain his pre-hurricane swagger. Washington Post, September 24.Google Scholar
Weisberg, Jacob. 1999. Do dim bulbs make better presidents? Slate, November 3. http://slate.msn.com/?id=1003943.Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob. 2002. Bush at War. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar