George Bush, , and American Democracy

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Disaster is always interesting to scholars, not least because serious mistakes always demand explanation and, if nothing else, research can lay some claims to being able to provide such explanations. Indeed, the troubled history of the American military intervention in Iraq has already generated a vast body of journalistic, scholarly, and popular literature purporting to provide explanations and analysis of how we got into this war, how it has been prosecuted, and whether we ought to remain actively engaged in it or seek an end to our involvement.

This article contributes to the large and growing body of literature on the intervention in Iraq by examining the role the ideograph plays in George W. Bush's presidential rhetoric. Ideographs are the constitutive terms of a rhetorical culture and, as such, their use places matters beyond debate. Ideographs are historically bound and yet flexible. Mapping their use helps us determine how complex ideologies are translated into policy through the use of abstract phrases--ideographs are devoid of specific policy content, empty of policy direction, and can be used to defend competing, even contradictory, actions.

By strategically wielding throughout his presidency and by using to amplify his use of association and dissociation, Bush connects his actions in important ways to the foundational myths of American democracy. In so doing, he provides powerful warrants for his actions, which undermine the very practices he claims to be supporting. That is, by using as a way of tapping into the myth of America as the synecdochic representation of freedom in the world, and by associating some of his administration's actions with that myth while using it to dissociate others, Bush rhetorically reaffirms American exceptionalism while acting in ways that also subvert it. The United States, for instance, went to Iraq at least in part to defend the of Iraqi citizens, and we now find ourselves in a moment when conjures up images of free speech zones, Abu Ghraib, prisoner abuses at Guantanamo Bay, torture by members of the American military, and, more recently, admissions by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the FBI is illegally spying on American citizens under the auspices of the Patriot Act. All of these actions are defended through recourse to some conception of .

What is particularly troubling is Bush's definition of what might be. He often pairs with the phrase "free markets." By linking these terms, Bush's construction of carries with it a strong connection to economic neoliberal ideology and neoconservativism, both of which privilege free enterprise, privatization, deregulation, deterritorialization, and particular economic "rights" above political "rights." Neoliberal and neoconservative conceptions of "democracy" are thus inherently tied to how function in Bush's discourse; that is, market fundamentalism and neoliberal orthodoxy are the "democratic" freedoms and rights to which Bush refers, and these rights become debased into the freedom to consume under the veneer of a certain "moral" order. A large part of the American myth, then, is one of economic competition embedded within an ideology of consumerism that Bush brings to the fore in his use of .

This argument proceeds in four parts. First, we review the theories of ideographs, with specific attention to the connection between ideographs and our national democratic myths. Second, we make a brief case for as an ideograph in the American context, especially in regard to neoliberal free market capitalism and neoconservatism. We then turn to an analysis of George W. Bush's strategic use of the ideograph and his use of to amplify strategies of association and dissociation. The essay concludes with a discussion of the practical and theoretical benefits of understanding as an ideograph in the discourse of George W. Bush with its rhetorical and ideological connections to the shadows of democracy.

Ideographs and the Myths of American Democracy

Ideographs are culturally bound summary phrases that capture important ideological associations. They are high-order abstractions that function as attempts to unify a diverse audience around a vaguely shared set of meanings. This vagueness allows for meaning to be adapted to fit time, circumstance, and rhetorical exigency, although they are not entirely flexible and do require the creation and maintenance of cultural consensus (McGee 1975, 1978, 1980).

Ideographs are not the only important element of our shared rhetorical culture. Metaphor and narrative, for instance, are also crucial in the creation and transmission of shared meaning,

   but it is the ideograph that seems to be the most resistant to
   change. Whereas other components of the public vocabulary tend to
   disappear from view once their meaning calcifies, ideographs rarely
   disappear, even though their meanings and usages change.
   Accordingly, ideographs provide an element of the public vocabulary
   that is central to the definition of the life of the community, and
   which maintains a discursive constant that allows us to observe the
   social and political movement of the community across time. (Condit
   and Lucaites 1993, xiv-xv)

That is, ideographs such as or remain and continue to resonate throughout our public culture, even though the meanings assigned to them vary considerably over time and across speakers (see, for example, Condit and Lucaites 1993; Foner 1998).

Ideographs, then, are terms that are ordinarily found in common language but tend to resist change-- or are two examples, although ideographs can be visually driven as well (Cloud 2004; Edwards and Winkler 1997; Palczewski 2005). Ideographs possess a certain fluidity, revealing a protean nature, but their use within a cultural vocabulary produces an ossification into the public imaginary as an empty signifier that may be attached to various meanings in different rhetorical situations. This is how they function discursively and why they are so powerful--they possess a certain "givenness" that is also highly variable.

Because of the ordinariness and variability of ideographs, they are useful windows into the motives of rhetors. Michael McGee, for instance, calls ideographs "figure[s] of thought" (2001, 378), which reveal how rhetors choose to frame any given debate. By examining the context and specific use of an ideograph, it is possible to reason backward to the motive of the speaker. James Jasinki notes that "ideographs constitute a structure of 'public motives'; they are the terms we use to impart values, justify decisions, motivate behavior, and debate policy initiatives" (2001, 309). In this, they act similarly to Richard Weaver's and Kenneth Burke's "god terms." The vocabulary of politics may be limited--there are only so many foundational values to draw upon--but rhetors can use this vocabulary for very different purposes.

Ideographs are thus tools of both consistency ("We have always been dedicated to the cause of freedom") and change ("therefore we must initiate this new action"). They can be used to promote reactionary, conservative, liberal, or progressive causes, depending upon the context and the goals of the speaker. Therefore, ideographs can tell us a great deal about the rhetorical culture at any given moment and about the myths animating that culture. The reasonableness of a given term's usage is an important standard by which the effective use of an ideograph can be measured. For example, that usage can lead to policy change as well as serve as an important means of social control. McGee says, "Because they are rhetorical determinants, ideographs are not revolution friendly. They support political, social, and cultural stability by constituting the lines outside of which politicians rarely color" (2001, 380). Thus, ideographs are constrained by a certain level of narrative rationality (Fisher 1984).

Ideographs must, then, work in concert with other rhetorical terms, gaining their specific power at any one time through the wealth of associations created, which work both in a single moment and over time (Condit and Lucaites 1993). They are thus clearly connected to myth, because myths are the narratives that rely on these associations, and ideographs are the individual elements that can have ideological power because of their ability to call upon and occasionally substitute for those myths. The frontier myth, for instance, which resonates through centuries of American history, implicates specific ideographs, such as and . Ideographs can be attached to a variety of myths. and , for example, are both components of the myth of American exceptionalism as well as of the frontier myth. The rhetorical and ideological power of both myth and ideographs result from the synergy created by their union--a synergy that can change over time and across circumstances. It is the notion of , for example, that allows us to understand space as a frontier.

It is important to note that audience reactions to ideographs are not "rigidly determined" (Wright 2001). Instead, ideographs work to "exert social control by shaping political consciousness" (Jasinski 2001, 309). That is, the meanings of ideographs are negotiated, and audiences and speakers must share some sense of the meaning of an ideograph for it to function persuasively. Ideographs work best when they are unnoticed--when their use seems so natural and so inevitable that the response is not so much persuasion as recognition, an identification that is persuasion--audiences do not need to be convinced because they are already interpellated into the narrative itself. The meaning of the ideographic narrative is so "obvious" that it can pass unremarked (Charland 1987). It is important to remember, however, that this meaning is not static. It will change over time and across audiences. American conservatives, for instance, have a complicated relationship with , and they react to it differently than do American liberals.

Consequently, communities of meaning are created through the development of shared agreement on the meaning(s) of ideographs at any given point in time. Ideographs are always therefore culture bound. As Condit and Lucaites note, "To participate in a rhetorical culture one must pay allegiance to its ideographs, employing them in ways that audiences can judge to be reasonable" (1993, xiii). Ideographs do not create automatic reactions in audiences. They must resonate with how those audiences understand the political world and must seem to be deployed in a reasonable way to be recognizable and thus persuasive.

One reason ideographs are effective is that they cannot be empirically verified; …