October 3, 2008
The Impoverishment of Political Rhetoric
A scholar quantifies creeping anti-intellectualism
It is too early to tell whether recent economic bombshells will force the presidential candidates into a sustained discussion of actual issues, but weeks of debate about lipstick, pigs, and hockey moms have underscored the role of anti-intellectualism in the rhetoric of the campaign so far. At least since the 1980s, scholars have advanced a number of theories to explain the degeneration of presidential oratory: lengthier campaigns, the
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