the fall of 1996. From them I learned a tremendous amount, particularly
from the research papers by Molly Ableman, Mark Dedrick, Jeff Eager, Stacy
Hereau, Spencer Hodes, Brian Kennedy, Mark Martin, Brian Shipley, Shelly
Strong, Kathy Weatherly, and Bryn Wittmayer. Although I had read Jeffrey Tulis's
Rhetorical Presidency shortly after it was published in 1987, it was not
until the fall 1995 course that I tried to teach it. The lively discussions and
engaging research projects that the book generated helped persuade me that
the project Terri had proposed was worth pursuing. The more focused semi-
nar the following fall served as an early sounding board for many of the papers
I was considering for inclusion in the book. Those class discussions aided in
identifying the strengths and limits of the essays and informed the framing of
my introduction. At a time when so much is written of the ineradicable
conflict between teaching and research it gives me pleasure to report an
experience in which teaching and scholarship enriched each other. The essays
in this book contribute to our understanding of the historical development of
popular leadership and presidential rhetoric, but they are also presented in
the hope that teachers will find them an engaging and accessible way to
acquaint students with the contestation and dialogue that lie at the heart of
the scholarly process. The book asks teachers, students, and scholars to re-
think much of what we thought we knew about the development of the
rhetorical presidency.

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