Conclusion

On August 17th, 1998 President Clinton faced a number of rhetorical dilemmas stemming from his illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent, ill-fated attempts at covering it up. Having been forced to concede to a grand jury that same day that he had not been entirely truthful about the Lewinsky affair, he now had to confess wrongdoing to the American people and express remorse, yet appear Presidential and persist in maintaining his legal innocence. It was to his advantage as well to attack his attackers, but only if, in so doing, he did not undermine his own apology. All this needed to be done after a grueling day of grand jury testimony to a television audience that was divided politically and culturally but nearly unanimous in suspecting that their President was not entirely trustworthy.

Much has been said about the ethics of the Clinton defense, including his apparent failure to express genuine remorse, his retreat to legal hairsplitting, his tarnishing of the office of the Presidency, and his assault on the very meaning of moral responsibility. Analysis of communication ethics is vitally important, but this essay addressed more pragmatic questions: Did Clinton do as well as could be expected given his very difficult rhetorical situation? Were his remarks appropriate not only to the immediate situation but to the challenges that lay ahead? Concomitantly, the essay sought to contribute to rhetorical theory and method in assessments of political apologia.

In addressing these questions I turned repeatedly to the colloquy about the speech on CRTNET, the official listserv of the National Communication Association. I said earlier that the speech occasioned more reaction on CRTNET than any other event in the long-running Monica-gate scandal, but, if memory serves, nothing in the recorded history of public address studies rivals the breadth of attention paid to the Clinton speech. To be sure, the speech does not approach in depth and significance the sacred texts or literary masterpieces over which scholars in other fields have invested their critical and hermeneutic energies, yet it is in its own way a worthy object of disciplinary attention.

As regards method and theory, the CRTNET colloquy exhibited the limitations of reliance on media commentary, political reaction, overnight polling, psychohistory and apologia theory without sufficient analysis of the rhetorical situation. Situational analysis can begin with a situation-sensitive theory of political apologias taken as a whole, and the rudiments of such a theory were proposed. But analysis must then proceed to the particular, the local, the unique--to a theory of the specific event-- out of which one could then derive a sense of limits and possibilities and of the tradeoffs involved in selecting this option rather than that.

Much has been written in a general way about rhetorical situations. We know that rhetors are both impelled and constrained by them. (Bitzer, 1969; 1980) We have been told that speakers need not simply cope with them but may transform them rhetorically. (Vatz, 1973)

Yet not enough has been said about the dilemmas they confront. I have argued here that few rhetorical dilemmas are completely intractable. Problems that might have initially seemed irremediable can be resolved or dissolved by recontextualizing. In this sense Vatz is right in pointing to the potential transformability of rhetorical situations.

But some predicaments remain dire; Clinton's was on August 17th. Grand jury testimony by one's sex partner is not easily controverted, especially when it is backed up by DNA evidence. Public denials of sexual involvement are not easily undone, especially when they have been uttered repeatedly over many months. As Andrews observed in relationship to the Chartist movement, some situational factors are recalcitrant, others are more malleable.. (Andrews, 1973) In this sense the dispute between Bitzer the objectivist and Vatz the social constructionist rests on a false either-or.

But, as I argued here, even dire predicaments can be managed rhetorically. Clinton managed his predicament "not badly," but not as well as he could have, under the circumstances. Specifically:

(1) The President was able in his opening comments to create a persona combining supplication with gritty determination. Relying as it did on ambiguity, vagueness, and apparent contradiction, the introduction probably reinforced the wrath of the righteously indignant while providing rationales for continuing support of the President by the more pragmatically minded--those for whom Clinton's job performance was the overriding consideration.

(2) Clinton's confessions of wrongdoing and expressions of remorse had an unnecessarily hollow ring to them. He could have appeared more contrite without groveling. The September 10 Prayer Breakfast provides a model.

(3) Clinton's legalistic constructions of the case were necessary in the long run, however objectionable they were politically in the short run.

(4) Clinton's continued attack on the Independent Counsel was advisable, but it needed to have been paired with a more abject apology to the American people, lest they view the attack as an undoing of the earlier confession of wrongdoing. Here retired Senator Dale Bumpers' handling of the dilemma provides a model.

(5) However appealing it might have been to Clinton diehards and to those seeking simple answers, the President should not at this late date in the scandal have continued to insist that it was a strictly private matter. The rhetorical situation required t hat he characterize the original transgression as a private matter while continuing to express remorse over having subsequently and quite publicly misled the American people.

(6) Clinton's concluding plea for closure was unexceptional and predictable; its acceptance hinged less on the transcendent appeals supporting it than on prior audience predispositions and on reactions to the preceding portions of the speech.

Much has been said in this essay about fault lines dividing the audience for the August 17th address, but there is another fault line that has not been much discussed: that between innocents and sophisticates. Many, perhaps most Americans, are moved by politicians' invocations of God and Country, Mom and Apple Pie: witness the overwhelmingly favorable receptions given to campaign films like Reagan's "A New Beginning" and Clinton's "A Place Called Hope." Political innocents were probably the most likely to have bought Clinton's argument that "this matter is between me, the two people I love most -- my wife and our daughter -- and our God." What then of the sophisticates?

James Aune observed in CRTNET a "new rhetorical consciousness" among many Americans, concomitant with a bracketing of issues of truthfulness. (Aune, Sept. 11) Cappella and Jamieson have studied this phenomenon, finding that what they call a "strategy" frame, as opposed to an "issue" frame in news media coverage tended to produce public cynicism. (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997) Jamieson had earlier documented the tendency of journalists to supply strategy frames rather than issue frames in coverage of political campaigns. Presumably the media has contributed to this new found rhetorical sophistication. (Jamieson, 1992)

Presumably too, sophisticates should have been turned off by Clinton's speech, seeing it not as a fitting and acceptable response to the situation's "forensic complexity" (Burke, 1961/1935) but as a study in unbecoming hypocrisy--built, as CRTNET contributor Michael Roth put it, on "confusion of the issues, reframing them to change the question, and a shifting of blame." (Roth, Oct. 16).

Yet it does not necessarily follow that cynicism-induced rhetorical sophistication produces attitudinal rejection. Sophisticates might have found much to admire in Clinton's sleight-of-hand, particularly if they were initially predisposed to favor his beating the rap and continuing in office. Yet another alternative was ambivalence. (13)  The relationship between attitudes and rhetorical sophistication remains intriguing but relatively unexamined.

Also worth examining are public reactions to specific components of speeches as important as the August 17th address. The technology exists for electronic analysis of moment-by-moment reactions, and institutional mechanisms should be set in place to make these and other text-related surveys of audience reaction a routine occurrence.

One final comment, and that concerns the difference a frame makes in the management of dilemmas. In private conversation, Kathleen Jamieson suggested that Clinton could have not just apologized but defined the terms of redemption. Needed was a pledge of corrective action congruent with Clinton's high approval rating as President. Said Jamieson, Clinton should have said (in words to this effect): "I let you down, and for that I'm deeply sorry. That's why I intend to spend the rest of my term as President making it up to you." (Jamieson, 1998)

That sounds exactly right.