(Re) Enacting Frontier Justice PDF

Quarterly Journal of Speech
Vol. 92, No. 4, November 2006, pp. 379 412
(Re)Enacting Frontier Justice: The Bush

Administrations Tactical Narration
of the Old West Fantasy after
September 11
Mark West and Chris Carey
The Bush administrations public discourse after September 11 weaves a new story
embedded in the national myth of the Old West. Seen in its historical context of a frontier
political mentality reaching back to the early 19th century, and in its broader
communication context as the rhetorical narration of a defining cultural myth, the
tactical narration of the frontier justice story gains its fullest gravity. Bush and Cheneys
proliferation of this rhetorical vision is not merely a quantitative increase in frontier
references from past presidencies. Instead, this essay argues that an appreciably different
character of narration is underway, one that tactically deploys and directs frontier
mythology as a fantasy theme at discrete audiences: to cope with a national crisis,
reassure a partisan political base, and discipline international allies for a controversial
war.
Keywords: Narrative; Myth; Fantasy; Frontier; Presidential Address
At a Pentagon press conference in the first days after the attacks of September 11,
President George W. Bush was asked about the war planning in the wake of
the destruction in New York and Washington. In addition to his description of the
tragedy, and references to the enemy and the world community of allies,
he concluded the lengthy dialogue with the following recollection of his youth:
Mark West (J.D. University of Washington, Ph.D. candidate Northwestern University) is currently the
Communication Advisor for the USAID Judicial Strengthening Initiative. Chris Carey (J.D. Southern Illinois
University, M.S. Portland State University) is an Assistant Professor in the University Studies Interdisciplinary
Program at Portland State University and a doctoral student at Arizona State University. Correspondence to:
Chris Carey, University Studies Interdisciplinary Program, Portland State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR
97207-0751, USA. Email: ccarey@pdx.edu. The authors thank Sonja Foss, Daniel Canary, Margaret Thompson
Drewal, Sue Poulsen, Carrie Anderson, and Zuzana Sadkova West, and remember Dwight Conquergood, for
their advice and support. The authors also thank Sheldon Carey and Richard West, the best cowboys we know.
ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2006 National Communication Association
DOI: 10.1080/00335630601076326
380 M. West & C. Carey
I want justice. Theres an old poster out west, as I recall, that said, Wanted: Dead
or Alive. [When asked to clarify . . . ] I just remember, all Im doing is
remembering when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in
the old west, a wanted poster. It said: Wanted, Dead or Alive. All I want and
America wants him brought to justice.1
Many threads emerging from the early presidential press conferences would continue
in the years to follow, weaving and expanding into new doctrines and policies *from
the initial responses to September 11 through the war in Iraq. Perhaps the most
consequential and enduring of the effects of the early Bush administration utterances
was the return to a favored national mythology. This unifying trope would continue
to emerge in the first months after the September attacks, return again a year later in
the build-up to the Iraq war, and be deployed in scores of stump speeches to the party
faithful by the President and his partner, Vice President Dick Cheney. That trope,
which was born again on September 17, 2001, in a press conference at the Pentagon,
is the American myth of frontier justice.
The Bush administrations public discourse after September 11 pursued many
rhetorical veins, but a story embedded in the national myth of the Old West carried a
special significance, with vast implications for the sentiment of its audiences and for
war policy. A careful examination of the tactical narration of frontier justice by
President Bush and Vice President Cheney reveals the deliberate deployment of a
particularly potent chapter of Americas story, delivered to key audiences to secure
consent at critical junctures in the War on Terrorism.2 Seen in its deeper historical
context as a frontier political mentality reaching back to the early 19th century, and in
its broader communication context as the rhetorical narration of a defining cultural
myth, the character and consequences of the frontier justice narrative gain their
fullest gravity. This essay argues that the Bush administration placed itself as heir to
the Reagan presidential frontier in a time of war, and used the narration of a defining
cultural myth to invite key audiences to join the administration fantasy, and in turn
participate in the rhetorical vision of frontier justice.
While the association of Old West tropes with American presidents is nothing new,
the tactical narration of frontier rhetoric in the Bush administrations parlance far
outstrips that of its predecessors. What is new following September 11 is the
opportunity to witness a deliberate, sustained, and unyielding deployment of frontier
fantasy, over three years of shifting political terrain leading to re-election, in response
to a military attack on American soil, and in tandem*through a White House
partnership. President Bush and Vice President Cheney put on a relentless display of
cowboy rhetoric, and apply their narration to three distinct objectives: helping the
public make sense of a sudden war, reassuring their partisan political base of the
Presidents noble character, and assembling a posse for a controversial second war.
Throughout these three different undertakings Bush and Cheney invite participation
in the same fantasy theme: a reminder to the audience that Bush (and whoever
chooses to join him) is acting just as Ronald Reagan would in this dangerous time.
Vice President Cheneys participation in the frontier narration is especially
important to the rhetorical vision. Not only does Cheneys corpus contain twice as
Rhetorical Narration
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many cowboy references as the Presidents, but his role in the tactical deployment of
the fantasy theme is arguably more important than Bushs. It is Cheney, as former
Secretary of Defense, longtime Wyoming congressman, and defense industry CEO,
who embodies wartime partisan political credibility. And it is only Cheney who can
vouch for the President by explicitly likening Bush to Reagan.
In its initial response to the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration
employed a variety of rhetorical approaches to the crisis. The abstract values of
freedom and faith were heralded patriotically, evildoers were condemned with
religious overtones, and urban heroes were embodied by firefighters and policemen.
As commentators have noted*discussing the Presidents speeches during the first
months after the attacks*the tone of the virtuous was sounded regularly through
epideictic rhetoric, and this intonation struck national chords.3 Denise Bostdorff
explained that it was more than just rally-round-Bush in wartime that belatedly
inaugurated him into the presidency, but it was, in fact, the rhetoric of faith or
Puritan renewal.4 John M. Murphy argues that through this same epideictic rhetorical
process the President shaped experience, amplified visible qualities, and created a
firm footing for himself as the synecdoche of a broad virtuous covenant.5 In these
observations about the presidential epideictic undertaking, however, one favored
thread*weaving alongside and through these other methods of telling the war
story*was mostly overlooked. The pattern of the frontier narrative was not yet in
clear view. Initially dismissed by Bostdorff as an offhand remark, and mentioned by
Murphy in passing as an example of Reaganesque narrative dramatics, the Old West
fantasy would indeed prove resilient: recurring and escalating in the years that
followed, and forming a key to the story of presidential virtue.6
This essay takes the longer view of the Presidents epideictic strategy. It looks back
on the White Houses embodiment of virtue and its use of narrative to deliver this
strategy, and fixes on one trope which endures for the four-year term of the
September 11 presidency: a tactic deployed to secure consent for the paradox of
virtue and vice. Virtue only goes so far*a reassuring and inspiring naming of who
we are after an attack on Americas shores. But in an ongoing War on Terrorism, a
story that embodies both virtue and vice is a more fitting framework, especially for
certain corners of the electorate. This essay identifies the frontier narrative as
especially capable of allowing symbolic convergence around this wartime virtue and
vice paradox, by triggering imagination of a fantasy theme at the very heart of
American mythology.7
An understanding of the Bush administrations response to September 11 would
not be complete without observing the tactical re-enactment of frontier justice, a
rhetorical vision that is at once fueled by, and absorbs, the other presidential tropes:
the cowboy fights for freedom and faith, defeats evil, negotiates between the
individual and community, and is the archetypical hero.
What began as a predictable nod to the Reagan persona with the purchase of the
Texas ranch in the same weeks that Bush declared his candidacy then grew in the days
after September 11 into an unprecedented rhetorical narration of a defining cultural
myth. This essay traces that growth, and argues that the White House penchant for
the cowboy fantasy theme should be seen as more than merely a quantitative increase
in references from past presidents. Theodore Roosevelt embodied the frontier
president in promoting westward expansion, John F. Kennedy occasionally invoked
the same trope to advance American influence globally, and Ronald Reagan both
embodied the myth and named outer space as the frontier to sell the Strategic
Defense Initiative.8 The Bush-Cheney White House deploys the narrative not only as
a re-enactment of these and other predecessors, but also adds a new element to the
Old West fantasy. As the world is told, Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists, 9 the command is contextualized through a frontier fantasy definition of
us*namely, a lone rider with a very few loyal men. The cowboy narration by the
President and Vice President takes keen aim at building and forming a select cadre of
allies*consent of the general public at the formal outset of two wars, reassurance of
the partisan base at intimate political rallies, agreement of the leaders of a limited
international coalition*and then anchoring these audiences in a frontier place that
sustains the narration: the Crawford, Texas ranch.
This account of this part of the administrations communication strategy reviews
the whole first Bush-Cheney term, but focuses on two distinct periods in the
administration: the three months after the attacks (from mid-September through
mid-December 2001), and the two years bracketing the beginning of the Iraq war
(from late Fall 2002 through the re-election in late Fall 2004). The rhetorical analysis
comes in five sections. First, the essay identifies the engine for the fantasy theme, by
locating the history of presidential frontier rhetoric within the framework of defining
cultural myths. Second, the essay focuses on President Bushs direct use of this
rhetorical trope with the general public to frame both the military response to
September 11 and the war with Iraq. Third, the essay chronicles Bush and Cheneys
increased use of tactically placed frontier narratives in their speeches as the Iraq war
approaches, and intensifies. Fourth, attention shifts to the Presidents ranch,
describing how invitations there are used to build the international posse by
rewarding Iraq war allies, and punishing those who hesitate to join the Coalition of
the Willing. Finally, the essay explores how these tactical deployments of the defining
American myth provide a unique fantasy theme of virtue and vice, and avoid the
danger and fragility of a cohesive narrative approach by allowing the audienceparticipants to digest the theme in particular settings, shoring up key political
constituencies at critical times.
Rhetorical Narration of Defining Cultural Myths
Access to the persuasive qualities of narrative comes in many forms, as the speaker is
able to modify the audiences perception of the thing discussed with a vast array of
rhetorical choices: small anecdotes, low-abstract references to concrete details in
otherwise broadly constructed talks, or sweeping stories that act as parables to evince
moral precepts. The use of narrative builds a stronger sign in the perception of the
listener, a sign bolstered by images close to home*an inrush of memory.10 This
process of narration brings a familiarity that appears to cause a match between the
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paradigm of the audience and that of the rhetor, bridging divisions otherwise too
wide to cross.11 What can trigger this connection, this inrush of memories, acutely is
the deployment of a fantasy theme that in turn sets off a fantasy chain*the engine
of a shared rhetorical vision.12
In the case of presidential address, the rhetorical efficacy of narrative is a long-held
tradition in efforts to make a moral case, with a strong track record of results.13 The
presidential deployment of defining cultural myths is one of the most effective ways
of harnessing consent, as displayed by the political artistry of Ronald Reagan. William
F. Lewis*in his definitive chronicle of Reagans presidential narration*writes of the
myth told by Reagan, the political embodiment of the frontier hero:
[It] applies not to the origin of the world, but to the origin of America; not to the
destiny of humanity, but to the destiny of Americans. . . . Reagan repeatedly tells his
audiences that if they choose to participate in the story, they will become part of
Americas greatness.14
The methodological focal point of this essay is where myth and narrative intersect.
Reagan told Americas story in different ways over different years, and embodied its
values and history in his general narration of the myth of America. However, when
the presidency chooses a particular narrative thread, made of a particularly potent
American myth, and repeatedly targets this story, then the use of the fantasy theme
method is warranted. As Ernest Bormann instructed, [D]o the same people keep
cropping up as villains . . . are the same stories repeated?15
For the new President George W. Bush, inheriting a court-contested election
victory, an endorsement by less than half the electorate, and job approval ratings
hovering around 50% for each of his first six months in office, the connective power
of narrative was elusive.16 When September 11 arrived, the Bush administration*
facing a significant divide from much of the public*made a decision to seize
the power of narrative: both to bridge the Presidents distance from public favor, and
to heal a national trauma through the narrative promise of justice. A hero was
needed, specifically a frontier hero, to push back the inrush of trauma with a flood of
other memories*memories of a shared, defining cultural myth. President Bush and
Vice President Cheney took the reigns of narrative to address a pair of political
difficulties: they set out both to repair the fissures of early 2001, and to fill the void of
September 11. Along the way, they discovered a trope that would prove useful for
other needs.
The Presidential Frontier
In order to understand fully the clinic in narration of mythology put on by Bush and
Cheney, the litany of cowboy iconography that follows must be placed in the
common context of the American cultural mind. Very few rhetorical tropes in
American cultural discourse generate as much fantasy imagery, as hurried an inrush
of memories, as the mythology of the Old West.17 From childhood games of
imaginary cowboys and Indians, to enduring Western films and their spin-off
characters in other genres such as Star Wars (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark
(1981), to the mythos of the Marlboro Man, the frontier is firmly fixed in the
American psyche.18 The ubiquity of this defining American mythology has been
noticed and recorded by rhetoricians in this journal since before the original
September 11 at Pearl Harbor,19 and its powerful presence on the political pulpit
has been a subject of communication analysis here since 1942.20
The half-century that bridged the closing of westward expansion in the late 1800s,
to the early years of electronic mass media in the mid-1900s, was supported, as all
rhetorical narrative is, by the telling of stories. The actual lived experiences of the
frontiersmen and women of the historical Western territories made their way to the
American public consciousness both through news stories and the tall tales that were
the popular currency of the age before cinema and television.21 Perhaps the central
character on the historical bridge from the Western expansion to the rise of a national
identity, the shift from country to court, is an American president: war hero,
storyteller, and model of rugged individualism, Theodore Roosevelt.22 As President
during the turn-of-the-century national effort to populate the newly expanded
American West, and at the same time seeking to preserve the natural environment of
the new states, Roosevelt set out to make a strong mark on the mind of the electorate.
In addition to his embodiment of the Western hero, one of the earliest records of
explicit presidential rhetoric conjuring the values of the Old West was in the speeches
of President Roosevelt. His advocacy of conservationism built todays stage for the
sacred mythology of the Old West,23 and his push to increase immigration to
populate the newly sovereign territory with loyal citizens gave identity to the Western
hero, one and all: We want Americans, pure and simple.24
Reagan
Other presidents following Roosevelt, and preceding Reagan, employed the naming of
the frontier as a powerful trope for advancing policy.25 But Roosevelt and Reagan
were unusual; they didnt need to speak the key words of American frontier
mythology repeatedly because each embodied them in himself. Each president was an
avid outdoorsman and no-nonsense individualist, the former actually growing up in
the time of the frontier, and the latter playing such characters in films. Just as
Roosevelts political party affiliation was somewhat secondary to his Americanness,
Reagans switch from Democrat to Republican was overlooked by the U.S. polity as
unimportant in the mythological scheme of things. The news media dubbed the
swing voters of 1980 Reagan Democrats but there was something deeper going on.
As William F. Lewis in his thorough study of Reagan the rhetor quoted one Reagan
voter as saying, the Presidents appeal wasnt about politics, it was about culture:
[H]es not a Republican, hes an American.26 Much of Reagans appeal as cowboy
president was a flux of art imitating life, and life imitating art. The Western ethos was
coming back in popular American culture at the time, reflected in films like Urban
Cowboy (1980) and the electronic bulls it spawned in hay bale-decorated bars around
the country. In this context Reagans own frontier hero ethos was accentuated, with
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his ranch and horseback riding, his roles in Western films, and his allusions to John
Wayne.
Reagans associations with Roosevelt and Wayne, and his media portraiture at
home on the ranch, primed his embodiment of the defining American cultural myth.
Thus the rare, explicit naming of the frontier in Reagans political rhetoric would
markedly amplify the fantasy narrative*fusing past and present, mythos and
policy.27 Frontier heroes have enemies, and in the case of Reagan the primary foe was
Communism. While Reagans much-examined Star Wars speech, promoting the
Strategic Defense Initiative, would use the frontier trope to transform the Old West
into the New Frontier,28 it was his direct cowboy imagery that built the most
striking, and haunting, fantasy. In Reagans 1984 re-election campaign the famous
television commercial that framed the Soviet threat as a bear in the woods was a
rare political moment explicitly conjuring the President as the guardian gunslinger.29
The spot featured a faceless hunter with a rifle, crunching through the forest, with a
warm voiceover favoring Reagans candidacy*an image not unlike Davy Crocket or
any other iconic Western settler keeping the national psyche safe. The camera cut
away to the image of a grizzly bear in the same woods, ominously moving through
the underbrush, and then back to the hunter. At the close of the ad, the elder male
voiceover asked: Theres a bear in the woods. . . . Isnt it smart to be as strong as the
bear?30 In the ongoing fantasy chain of presidential frontier this Reagan commercial
holds a very strong link, creating cultural cinematography that stuck in the American
consciousness.
After September 11, the myth of frontier justice returned. When President Bush
adopted the Old West narrative in the first days after the attacks on New York and
Washington, and resurrected it for specific audiences during the controversial Iraq
war, the narrative returned to its rightful place as a defining American cultural myth.
Unlike Reagan, whose persona was already closely aligned with the cowboy fantasy,
President Bush would need to explicitly and repeatedly conjure the frontier
mentality.31 George W. Bush set out to name his cowboy credentials early and often,
and he would do so with a partner already vouched for by the party faithful*Dick
Cheney. With the ink barely dry on the deed to Bushs Crawford ranch, the nation was
back to its original myth, with a cowboy from Texas at the bully pulpit.
The Tactical Narration Begins
Immediately after the September 11 attacks the Bush administration was looking for
a rhetorical frame for what was without question an historic moment in America,
and the beginning of a long war against an as yet unnamed enemy. The Presidents
first week of addresses featured remarks pertinent to various war preparation scenes,
and used various tropes. This series of speeches, delivered in excursions to key sites
during a week of uncertainty and national trauma, balanced the company of heroes (a
high-level National Security Team at the White House, ordinary doctors and nurses
in the Washington Hospital Center, hard-working firefighters and police in New York
City) with the language of values: freedom, justice, faith, and good and evil. What was
not yet fixed in these first days was a singular, coherent narrative framework to help
members of the public make sense of their trauma, to prepare them for war, and to
connect them to their president. Then on September 16, as President Bush closed the
week with his first address to the public from the White House, it appeared that the
administration had decided upon crusade as a narrative framework to bind its
messages.32 In a Sunday afternoon speech from the White House South Lawn,
entitled Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We Work, the President provided a bridge
from trauma to mourning, to a return to labor. And, to war.
This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while. . . . It is time for us to
win the first war of the 21st century decisively, so that our children and our
grandchildren can live peacefully into the 21st century.33
Taken collectively, the initial messages from the first week after September 11
demonstrated a sophisticated combination of varied rhetorical tactics, in turn
bolstering Bushs authority to govern. The fusion of tropes, explained by John
Murphy in his 2003 essay Our Mission, Our Moment, helped the President
manifest the national character, purport its values, and answer the question Who are
we? in a time of crisis.34 Murphy concludes that President Bush had begun to act as a
synecdoche for the American people, standing in for them and moving through the
necessary tasks of recovery: prayer, work, war. Murphys broad strokes painting the
rhetorical moves of the presidential synecdoche are extremely useful, but they stop
short of identifying a model for these moves. The essays exhaustive detailing of
Bushs rhetorical choices does demonstrate his use of epideictic rhetoric*to
persuasively exhibit, rather than invite deliberation *and his emphasis on the
virtuous over the practical.35 These details provide a solid basis from which to
continue to ask: Then what is the vehicle for these values, the engine for these ideas,
and the symbol for the synecdoche? If Bush is the stand-in for all Americans, what
coherent story is he telling*if any?
After mounting criticisms of Bushs Sunday afternoon reference to a crusade,
criticisms citing the fanatical religious implications from history, the Presidents
decisive narrative finally emerged: The next day Bush abandoned the metaphor for a
more home-grown motif, Wanted*dead or alive.36 The first rehearsal of the new
motif was September 17 at a Pentagon press conference. Bush spoke extemporaneously about his pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and the forces of Al
Qaeda, and then slipped back into childhood memories, almost sounding as if he
himself had lived in the Old West: I just remember, all Im doing is remembering
when I was a kid I remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted
poster. It said: Wanted, Dead or Alive.37 The personalization of the frontier motif
onto President Bushs own body, at the moment of naming the response to the Al
Qaeda attacks, signaled the beginning of a long communication journey that would
expand and contract throughout his presidency. A few minutes before personalizing
the narrative framework to his body, the President applied it to the enemys body:
Its an enemy that likes to hide and burrow in. . . . But were going to smoke them
out.38 With these two descriptions (smoke them out, and dead or alive) the two
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essential dimensions of the cowboys life, as described by Janice Hocker Rushing, were
in full bloom: the cattleman combating vermin, and vigilante lawman seeking to
defend the community through a mixture of virtue and vice.39
Once underway, the tropes of frontier justice and the cowboy began popping up
everywhere. Across the globe in Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Bushs
second use of we will smoke them out of their holes, a day after the initial Pentagon
press conference.40 The cowboy appeared again the following week as President Bush
described what would happen after the enemy left its holes: [S]moke them out and
get them running and bring them to justice.41 Three weeks later these continuing
references to frontier justice began to be explained, as Bush alluded to the law of the
rope: Were hunting him down, he can run but he cant hide. As weve said before,
the noose is narrowing.42 In this emerging conceptual framework, the noose could
refer to many things: the lasso around a cows neck, the hanging of a condemned
outlaw, or perhaps a vigilante lynching. The narrative possibilities of the law of the
rope are rich and varied, but one unifying force is unmistakably at work: Old West
justice. After three months, the series of presidential references tapered off.
With the beginning of the Iraq war, the President returned to the frontier narrative
in a pair of ritual addresses: the declaration of war, and the declaration of victory. In
his March 19, 2003 speech to the nation, announcing that war had begun against
Iraq, President Bush identified the enemy as an outlaw regime.43 Six weeks later,
declaring, In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed, Bush
expanded the outlaw reference into a challenge to others: Any outlaw regime . . . will
be confronted.44 It is possible that the term outlaw in these contexts is not
intended to reference the cowboys nemesis, and that it simply gestures at someone
outside the rules of society. But the associations to frontier outlaws run deep in the
American cultural psyche, a connotation laid out by, among others, the aptly named
American Heritage Dictionary : The word outlaw brings to mind the cattle rustlers
and gunslingers of the Wild West.45
Taken in isolation, the Presidents folksy dead or alive anecdotes, and the
cattleman and outlaw references which followed, could be dismissed as spontaneous
remarks intended to toughen up himself and his audience at an extremely difficult
time for the nation. However, a presidential address is a highly orchestrated
communication ritual, and the masters of these rituals are not paid to be inattentive
to detail. They are paid to know that William Henry Harrison won the presidency in
1836 following an intensive frontier president campaign, repeatedly reminding voters
of his heroism in the Indian Wars (Tippecanoe and Tyler too), and distinguishing
himself from his blueblood opponent Martin Van Buren by regularly propagating the
narrative that Harrison was born in a log cabin and drinks hard cider.46 For Bush,
on September 17, 2001, the placement of a key narrative fantasy moment*after a
week of intensive preparation by his communication advisors*warrants close
examination. This was the Presidents first formal opportunity to rally a nation to
fight an attacker on his own terms. Watching the narration of the myth very closely is
essential, writes communication anthropologist Margaret Thompson Drewal, to
demystify performances such as ritual.47 This close reading enables us to perceive
the ritual practitioners as self-reflexive masters of metaphor that people in turn live
by.48 In the case of the Presidents articulation of the frontier motif to the American
people, the cowboy fantasy theme would not fall on deaf ears, but would chain-out
widely among press, public, and pundits alike.49
Attending to the Party Base
In addition to the rich history of success enjoyed by the frontier presidential
narrative, the dead or alive anecdote and its supporting frontier references cannot
be taken in isolation for further reason: Bush had revealed an earlier interest in
placing such folk narratives into public addresses to partisan crowds. The President
had tested the cowboy narrative during speeches twice before. First, in March of 2001,
in remarks to the Chamber of Commerce in Portland, Maine, Bush told a story of
how he was once tutored by a cowboy to listen more closely to his mother. Recalling
his early days as Texas Governor, the President explained how he had introduced his
parents to the audience at a dedication for WWII veterans. He told the Chamber:
And I said, mother. Before I could get out another word, the place went wild. And I
said, well, mother, its clear that the people of Texas love you and so do I, but you
are still telling me what to do after 50 years. And a guy in a big cowboy hat moved
out in the middle of Main Street, Fredericksburg, and cupped his hands and
screamed at the top of his lungs in front of 30,000 constituents, you better listen to
her too, boy. [Laughter.] I can assure you that the President of the United States is
listening to his mother. Remember that. [Laughter.]50
The President repeated this story five months later, in August, at a YMCA picnic in
Colorado, with the same finely-grained punch line: And a guy in a big cowboy hat
steps out in the middle of Main Street, Fredericksburg, and screams, You better listen
to her, too, boy.51 While these two earlier examples illustrate that the postSeptember 11 press conference was not an isolated use of the frontier myth, a broader
view of the Presidents addresses reveals a significant trend: a deliberate shift in
narrative strategy. In President Bushs first eight months in office, before September
11, he placed cowboy stories in only two formal public addresses.52 In the first two
years of the controversial Iraq war, he placed them in 19*all directed at partisan
audiences.53
Bush as Cowboy
Following a year of frontier silence during 2002, once the controversial 2003 start of
the Iraq war was underway, Bush began his campaign of cowboy rhetoric with a
marked consistency. The President placed cowboy references early in his addresses to
harness the primacy effect, most often in the very first paragraph.54 Sometimes the
President would make unique references in his introductions, such as naming a
country Western singer present at the event,55 or placing a joke about cowboy icon
and film legend Roy Rogers, as he did in Portsmouth, Ohio: I want to thank by the
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way, I always thought Roy Rogers was from Texas. [Laughter.] I know, Im wrong.
[Laughter.]56 For the most part, the President would simply stick with cowboy hats.
Although Bush would abandon his early 2001 Main Street, Fredericksburg story,
the cowboy hat icon at the storys fantasy core would endure. August 21, 2003,
Redmond, Oregon: You know youre in a pretty good country when you see a lot of
cowboy hats out in the crowd [laughter and applause] and when you got horses
guarding the perimeter. [Applause.]57 November 25, 2003, Phoenix, Arizona:
[House Speaker Jake Flake is] a real, live cowboy. I like coming to states where
they have real, live cowboys. [Applause.] You know, Senator, were keeping pretty
good company when people show up to fundraisers in cowboy hats. [Laughter.]58
March 26, 2004, Albuquerque, New Mexico: Its good to be in front of a crowd
where people are wearing . . . cowboy hats. [Laughter.] That doesnt happen all the
time in Washington. Let me just say, it doesnt happen nearly enough in Washington.
[Laughter.]59
The most common version, coming in the style of naming William Henry
Harrisons preference for hard cider over champagne, emphasizes Bush patriotic
credentials of country over the corrupting influences of court. June 1, 2004, Denver,
Colorado: I love coming to this state. Its a state where the cowboy hats outnumber
the ties.60 November 1, 2004, Sioux City, Iowa: Its good to be in a part of the world
where the cowboy hats outnumber the ties.61 February 3, 2005, Great Falls,
Montana: Nice to be in the part of the world where the cowboy hats outnumber the
ties.62 Of the Presidents 19 cowboy references following the build-up to the Iraq war,
eight make this explicit normative country v. court (cowboy hat v. tie) distinction.
A close reading of Bushs 19 explicit cowboy references, all in addresses to the
party faithful, demonstrates their tactical deployment in time and space. Temporally,
all uses of the cowboy narrative occur after the build-up to the Iraq war, after the
post-September 11 public mandate had begun to slip, and unease with expanding the
War on Terrorism beyond Afghanistan had begun to emerge. Geographically, nearly
all 19 cowboy references were made to partisan audiences in so-called Red States*
with the exceptions only of Iowa and Oregon, two states on the fence. Iowa would
become a Bush win in 2004; Oregon would not. It is noteworthy that Bushs
deployment of the cowboy narrative in the first paragraph of his Iowa speech
occurred the day before the 2004 election, the day before Iowa turned from Blue
(2000) to Red.
Why a cowboy hat? It is visual, it is simple, and it is the heroic icon of the Old
West. Shakespeare taught us that brevity is the soul of wit, and latter-day pop poets
remind us that less is more, and to keep it simple. Most important, the cowboy hat
icon is the bridge to Ronald Reagan. When President Reagan died in June 2004, the
two leading American weekly newsmagazines, archrivals Time and Newsweek, made
an extremely unusual*but telling*decision: they each ran the exact same
photograph of President Reagan on their June 14, 2004 covers.63 Of the countless
photographs of Ronald Reagan from which to choose, the editors each picked the
same 1976 portrait by Michael Evans of the smiling, ruddy-faced Reagan*a color
close-up, wearing a denim shirt, and a white cowboy hat.
In addition to his stump speeches to thousands of party faithful, President Bush

also pursues cowboy hat rhetoric in highly charged moments of personal contact in
the Oval Office. The Presidents office is the coveted destination of the most loyal
supporters, and these trusted visitors to the Bush office are greeted by a landscape
adorned with several frontier paintings and statues*visual rhetoric specifically
interpolated by the President. As the White House curator explains of the moment
experienced by all visitors:
President Bush selected for the Oval Office works that depict his native Texas. One
special painting he selected is A Charge to Keep, a scene of Western riders that
inspired a book he wrote. He always talks to guests about this painting.64
Cheney as Cowboy
President Bush is not the only resident of the White House favoring tactical narration
of the frontier myth to secure key audiences after the attacks of September 11. Vice
President Dick Cheney shares the Presidents affinity for the cowboy motif and he
deploys it in the same pattern, with only one main difference: his corpus far
outnumbers that of the President. Cheney displays a slightly wider range of tactics in
his frontier narrative, occasionally using self-effacing jokes starring cowboys*like
the President*but more often referencing his upbringing in Wyoming, where he
served as a congressman. Like Bush, Vice President Cheney establishes his cowboy
credentials early in his speeches*usually in the first three paragraphs of addresses
which continue for 50 more, speeches elaborating at length on the War on Terrorism
and other policy matters. Like Bush, he does so nearly always in addresses to partisan
audiences. The President and Vice President deliver hundreds of speeches while in
office, but only a minority of these are to the party faithful*usually delivered at
fundraisers for a fellow Republican, or a rally for their own re-election. It is in these
partisan settings that Bush and Cheney focus most of their Old West mythology to
shore up the base. Also like Bush, prior to the attacks on New York and Washington
Cheney had not used the frontier narrative.65 Most notably like Bush, in the two years
following the start of the controversial Iraq war the Vice Presidents references
increased: from none in his first eight months in office to 36 after the September 11
attacks.66 Even when Vice President Cheney loses his voice, it doesnt stop his frontier
narration: Mrs. Cheney will stand in for him and deliver an address, and she has her
own cowboy references in the introductory paragraphs of her speeches.67
Cheneys targeted campaign of frontier persuasion began in earnest in the summer
that the Iraq war started, and, like the President, continued unabated.68 Sometimes
Vice President Cheneys introductory references to Wyoming are subtle, merely
naming his home state and joking that the congressional delegation was small (one:
him). On occasion the references would have a little more color, for example on
September 22, 2003 in Hartford, Connecticut when he remarked on the extra
necessities of his small Wyoming delegation: [Y]ouve got to round up supporters
391
on the issues that are vital. So you become a pretty good judge of congressional
horseflesh.69
Cheneys most expansive introductory tales of the Old West come in the form of
two favorite jokes at the start of his speeches, featuring heroes in cowboy hats. One
emerged on August 12, 2003, and is a story about one of his early congressional reelection campaigns in Wyoming. At the start of election season the farm groups invite
all the candidates to a rural barbeque, and young Congressman Cheney, up for reelection, displayed enthusiasm:
[B]efore it was my turn to get up and speak at that last rally that I attended out
there, I was out working the crowd. I wanted to make sure I personally greeted
every voter there. I walked up to one old cowboy with his back up against a tree,
cowboy hat down over his eyes, reached out and grabbed him by the hand, and
said, hi, Im Dick Cheney. Im running for Congress. And Id like your vote. He
said, you got it. That fool we got in there now is no damn good. [Laughter.]70
The other favorite story, first tested on June 3, 2003, involves a similar character with
the same costume, and is set in a small Wyoming town at the Rams Horn Bar and
Grille:
And we walked in. There were people lined up there at the bar having a beer with
lunch. And one old cowboy over there with his boot up on the rail, cowboy hat
pulled down over his eyes, he looked over at me when I was introduced to him. He
said, son, are you Democrat? And I said, no sir. He said, are you a lawyer? I said, no.
He said, Ill vote for you. [Laughter and applause.]71
Like President Bushs cowboy hat v. tie motif, this latter story advances the William
Henry Harrison argument privileging the American mythological trustworthiness of
country over court. The frontier coordination between the tandem White House
rhetors converges in this core of the myth*rugged individualism*and the fantasy
chain loops back onto itself. Cheney, March 14, 2004, in Artesia, New Mexico:
President Bush once said he likes a place where a cowboy hat is part of the working
uniform. And we feel right at home here.72
Bush as Reagan
As President Bush repeatedly sought to establish his credentials as a Washington
outsider through the tie v. cowboy hat distinction, and Cheney did so through the
non-Democrat and non-lawyer narrative, the partners built up the fantasy theme of
the rugged individual*unburdened by the corrupting influences of bureaucracy and
court. This is an essential part of the fantasy woven for the partisan Republican base,
but insufficient without stronger evidence. The party base needed assurance that the
Commander in Chief*with no experience as a war veteran, and having strutted his
military victory a little too early*was on the right track in Iraq. Losing Reagan
Democrats back to the Democratic Party was a very real possibility for this
administration in 2004, having won its first election with fewer than half the voting
population. By Summer 2003, the White House had witnessed its post-September 11
public opinion mandate gone for good from the polls. The Presidents May 1, 2003 jet
landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln certainly drew attention to his courage (and
laughter from some opponents), but the premature declaration of Mission
Accomplished likely drew whispers from some corners of his own party. This was
a president with no combat experience, and with as-yet unanswered questions about
his National Guard service. As casualties continued to mount over the next two
months in Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction remained nowhere to be found,
with the U.N. Security Councils rejection of the invasion still stinging, and the
Coalition of the Willing numbering just a few, by June 30, 2003 the Presidents firm
footing with his base had become increasingly unstable.
Then, as if in a Hollywood movie, a lone rider on a white horse came to the
Presidents rescue: Ronald Reagan. Bush could not call himself Ronald Reagan*such
an act would surely shatter the fragile narrative structure of the frontier myth.73 But
Vice President Cheney could, and his speechwriters know this. Just as Cheney is the
rhetorical bookend to Bush on the speech circuit, the recency effect is the rhetorical
mate of the law of primacy within a public address. As Dick Cheney was successfully
stitching his introductions with stories from Wyoming, and with fantasy narratives
featuring mysterious cowboy sages, in the Summer of 2003 he began to match these
images with an appropriate anchor in his closing remarks. Tactically aimed at the
same partisan base, and providing reassurance that Bush was doing what Reagan
would have done in Iraq, Cheney launched the new chapter of the fantasy theme on
June 30, 2003. Almost always in the third-to-last paragraph, Cheney would first
explain his own many years of experience working with different presidents, then
raise Bush up for comparison, and finally deliver the key line: I saw the conviction
and moral courage of Ronald Reagan.74
Christened on June 30 at the start of a barnstorm tour of partisan audiences to
shore up support for the war, the new, direct, Reagan-fantasy naming would be
repeated 21 times in the crucial six months that followed.75 Every time Cheney
concluded his speeches with the Reagan link in the fantasy chain during this period,
the speech introductions would feature a frontier narrative piece.76 The line is a
perfect parallel to the vice and virtue that form the enduring appeal of the frontier
myth: in a war context, conviction conveys one standing up to enemies despite
opposition, and moral courage cues the audience that the Republican platform
values remain secure.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not cowboys who just happen to talk
like cowboys in their public addresses.77 Their shared corpus reveals a deliberate,
tactical deployment of the defining cultural myth. Of the three primary audiences for
the Bush-Cheney tactical narration of the frontier fantasy, the general public and the
party base were targeted with precision: the public, in the early weeks of war against
Afghanistan, and again at the ritual start and finish of major combat operations in
Iraq; the party faithful, in regular stump speeches throughout the Iraq conflict. The
third primary audience was a select few members of the posse. These heads of state,
and their constituencies, were needed both for material support in Iraq and, more, as
international reference points for the otherwise anemic storyline of the Coalition of
393
the Willing. These would-be allies found a wholly different form of frontier narrative
directed their way. It was a time, and a place. The time: Spring 2003. The place: a
ranch just outside of Crawford, Texas.
The Ranch
The aspect of Old West cultural mythology that carries perhaps the strongest and
most lasting influence for the Bush administration*indeed, it ushered in the
administrations existence*is the wide expanse of Texas frontier known as Prairie
Chapel. Although it now seems to have been a permanent fixture in the life of
George W. Bush, it was actually during the same weeks that President Bush was
declaring his candidacy for the presidency that he shopped for, and then purchased,
the ranch.78 In the years since, Prairie Chapel has served Bush well as an essential part
of the rhetorical vision, conjuring images of President Reagan on horseback in the
hills of California. But Bush takes it to the next level: the Lone Star state acts as his
pure Old West scene, and the impact of his ancestral estate in Kennebunkport,
Maine*which has been at the heart of the Bush family . . . since the turn of the
century*fades into the distant memory.79
The Presidents ranch forms the essential backdrop for the rest of the Western
mythology generated by Cheney and Bush, as landscape provides a cultural way of
knowing that reinforces, and often surpasses, verbal communicative modes.80 The
scene of the rhetorical act cannot be overlooked when examining this dramatic
narrative, and the visual rhetorical force of the ranch to re-inscribe the defining
cultural myth of the frontier should not be underestimated.81 As William F. Lewis
explained in this journal, the core of Reagans mythological narration was an
invitation to his audience to participate in his vision of America. The visualization
of the ranch provides a pathway for acceptance of that invitation.82
The presence of the Crawford, Texas ranch as the non-Washington locus of frontier
justice acts as a potent counter-narrative to how the Bush administration may view,
or wish to portray, the U.S. capital: an overly bureaucratic place, compromised by
special interests, and lacking in Western heroes. Doing business at the ranch enables
the administration to downplay its Washington credentials in favor of the ranch
ethos, a significant chapter also present in previous presidential renditions of the
frontier narrative.83 As one local history journal writes fondly of the new
arrangement: The Texas town of Crawford is about as far from Washington D.C.
as a man could hope to get.84 Or as Vice President Cheney described his presidents
frontier home, in a remark placed in the first paragraph of a long address to a
gathering of Korean War vets, one year after September 11: I bring good wishes to all
of you from the seat of power*Crawford, Texas. [Laughter and applause.]85 The
humorous remark foreshadowed a key chapter in the use of the ranch: a persuasion
tactic employed as part of the round-up of the Iraq war alliance.
Disciplining the Posse

The ranch served as the war room for the administrations inner circle immediately
following the September 11 attacks, and continued to act as a safe house which
expanded after the beginning of the Iraq war. Prairie Chapel would host only the
most trusted and loyal international allies*those who unequivocally supported the
war in Iraq. This process of vouching war allies in Crawford was previewed early in
2002 with the visit of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Declared Americas truest
friend at Bushs first post-attacks State of the Union Address, Britain would remain
Americas key Iraq partner through thick and thin, regardless of the political fallout
for Blair. The U.K.U.S. relationship was cemented at Crawford on April 6, 2002
when Blair was the first of a select list of four heads of state welcomed to the seat of
power.86 The ritual of rewarding firm allies with Crawford invitations, and rejecting
those who faltered on Iraq, intensified in the Spring and Summer of 2003 as those
who had agreed to the alliance prior to the March 19 invasion were granted visits, and
those who balked were denied.
The formal Iraq war ranch courtship consisted of a series of weekend visits to
Crawford. It began on February 22, 2003 with the hosting of Spanish President Jose
Maria Aznar, was interrupted briefly while the March 19May 1 major combat
operations took place, and then continued again in May. On May 3 Australian Prime
Minister John Howard and his wife were next to be received in Crawford and spent
the weekend with the Bushes, and on May 23 Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi arrived for a weekend visit to Prairie Chapel, completing the set of visits by
the four key allies. One American reporter commented on the cultural significance of
the war visits to the ranch in a USA Today article on May 18, 2003.
The meetings are a political boon for those who receive them. . . . No war
opponents have been invited to receive the Presidents hospitality. But the
presidents pique has not gone much beyond symbolism. Some of the actions
against war opponents have been more cosmetic than substantive. Bush has not
severed any diplomatic ties or called for any reductions in aid.87
The symbolism alone is evidently an important diplomatic tool in itself.

In addition to the reward of a ranch invitation, this period of diplomacy in Spring
2003 also revealed the disciplinary side of the ranch. On May 14, when newly sworn
in President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea came to the United States and was
warmly received by Bush at the White House, the talk among Koreans back home in
Seoul was not of pride, but of scandal: He wasnt invited to the ranch.88 Unlike the
British Prime Minister, the Spanish President, the Australian Prime Minister, and the
Japanese Prime Minister, President Roh of South Korea*a political newcomer*had
initially expressed hesitation about the U.S. role in Iraq, and for this hesitance he had
paid. Amid the heated courtship of the Iraq war posse, the growing rift with France
over the role of weapons inspectors in Iraq produced similar allusions to the seat of
power in Crawford, Texas. On May 14, American television personality John Stewart
commented about French President Jacques Chirac on his Daily Show : I doubt hell
be coming to the ranch anytime soon.89
395
With the ever-expanding reach of Hollywood abroad, and the increasing

dominance of American cultural influence, it is not surprising that the frontier
narrative is a tactic aimed toward the international community as well as key
domestic audiences. Globally, the frontier hero does hold a strong appeal across
cultures, as evident in the Marlboro Mans grand presence on towering billboards in
Kathmandu, and the costuming of soccer superstars in Old West garb in Pepsi ad
campaigns from Beijing to Phnom Penh. The global consumption of this rhetorical
vision echoed a week after the USA Today report, this time by the correspondent for a
Japanese daily writing from Crawford: Koizumis overnight visit at Prairie Chapel
ranch puts him among only a handful of world leaders to meet Bush here, seen as a
gesture of thanks for Japanese support for the United States in the Iraq war.90
Naming a Deputy
Of the four core alliances within the Coalition of the Willing cemented at Crawford,
the relationship with Koizumi is perhaps most instructive on the intimate connective
power of the frontier narrative. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and
President George W. Bush have, for four years, nurtured a common identity as dual
inheritors of the character Marshal Kane from the 1952 film High Noon. The
invitation to the Crawford ranch was likely the climax of this relationship. It began in
2001 when Bush received Koizumi at Camp David on June 30 and the two leaders
reported a very positive new relationship, comparing themselves to the lone, stoic
and honor-bound marshal played by [Gary] Cooper.91 On September 25 that year,
two weeks after the terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Koizumi visited the White
House, and left with a framed copy of the film poster from High Noon *a gift
Koizumi said he treasures.92 The Christian Science Monitor noted that Bush had
dubbed Koizumi Gary Cooper, after the sheriff in High Noon.93 On their next visit
together, this time with Bush traveling to Tokyo on February 18, 2002, Koizumi
returned the gesture, treating his guest to a performance of traditional Japanese
mounted archery*called yabusame*and giving President Bush a drawing of
Bush himself performing yabusame on horseback. The Japanese Prime Minister told
the American President that the print symbolizes the U.S.-led fight against the evil of
terrorism.94
This shared affinity for the frontier fantasy carried on in President Bushs two years
of regular placement of cowboy icons in his stump speeches to partisan crowds. In
fact, when Bush would discuss Prime Minister Koizumi while on the campaign trail
in 2004 (although Bush would also offer up Koizumis affection for Elvis) the
Japanese leaders name and the High Noon hero were never far apart. On April 21 the
reference in a Washington address was more of an Abbot and Costello routine: His
favorite movie was Gary Cooper in High Noon. One time he walked up to me and
said, You like Cooper. [Laughter.] I said, Im like Cooper? He said, Yes. [Laughter.]
I finally figured out what he meant. [Laughter.]95 Later in the year, as the 2004
election loomed, the Presidents reference at a September 10 campaign stop in Ohio
again brought laughs, but this time was more succinct, more on-message: One of my
favorite leaders in the world is Prime Minister Koizumi. . . . His movie was High
Noon. [Laughter.] He loves the values embodied in High Noon.96
Virtue, Vice, and Fantasy
In the particular case of the frontier narrative, Janice Hocker Rushing built a vast
scholarship describing the scope and depth of this defining cultural myth as a
mediator of human paradox.97 The central operating theme of the frontier hero in
presidential rhetoric is what Rushing calls the paradox of a dialectical tension
between Individualism and Community.98 The solution of the paradox lies in
defining the needs of the frontier community (America) as the goods delivered by the
individual frontier hero (security). Rushing argues that the paradox of the cowboy
figure is the fusion of both individualism and community in the persona of the
Western hero:
To cope with the harshness and savagery of the frontier environment, he must
above all be a rugged individualist. However, in order to settle and civilize the
frontier, he must continually face the demands of the community for cooperation
and conformity. The cattleman, one of the myths most enduring heroes, was both a
pioneer and a man of property. In almost all expressions of the myth, the Western
hero must somehow deal with the paradox of being alone in a community. If he
does not manifest rugged individualism in all of his crucial actions, he cannot be a
hero. Yet if he does not respond to the needs of a community, typically to be saved
from outside or inside evil forces, he cannot meet the goodness requirement of a
hero. It is this enduring situation that provides much of the poignancy, mystery,
and perennial appeal of the Western myth.99
This paradox is not a contradiction as much as the healthy engine of the psyche of
mythology. What were once questions about Bushs ability to lead are now explained
by the need for him to manifest rugged individualism. When the American frontier
hero becomes associated with war, this acts to highlight an essential function of the
cowboy ethos: he is at once a mixture of vice and virtue.100 Thus as President Bush
stands in as the synecdoche for the American people, he represents both the
individual feelings of the electorate and the collective needs of a threatened state. The
rugged qualities of the frontiersman at war allow the public*through the shared
rhetorical vision*to navigate its own post-September 11 feelings of both virtue and
vice, of faith in community and desire for revenge. Rushing references psychologist
Carl Jung to describe how mythological figures [are] based on the paired opposites
of persona and shadow, anima and animus.101 In the context of his own
construction of the frontier myth during wartime, President Bush can rebuild and
reinforce his goodness by combating the evil forces of terrorism.
This repair of the fissures in Bushs mandate, and heroic leadership of a
traumatized nation, is not total. Many partisan opponents will see political artifice
where others experience a healing myth. But as Rushing concludes, the frontier
narrative is difficult to reject, for it is home to the enduring situation of the
American experience*the paradox of a rugged individuals virtue and vice in
397
defense of community. In this situation lays a poignancy, mystery, and perennial

appeal.102 Appeal to voters it did, as Bushs approval ratings, which had never once
reached 60% in his first six months, made a drastic turn, with 15 consecutive months
where they never dipped below 60%.103
The question remains: If the appeal of this enduring situation is paradox itself,
then how can a rhetor attempt to target her or his narrative with accuracy? And what
framework can be used to witness and understand how one of the rhetors messages,
weaving though numerous other presidential tropes, can seek to spark consent?
Coming on the heels of his deliberation with Ernest G. Bormann on symbolic
convergence theory (SCT), and the role of conscious imagination in creating
symbolic realities,104 Joshua Gunn posed the same question as he sketched the
borders of communication models after the poststructural turn. The question arises:
if this gap in the communication model bespeaks a maddening, ever-moving reality
of becoming, then what are we fixing? Texts? Relations? Rituals? Practices? The answer
I offer in the remainder of this essay is fantasies.105 When rhetorical narrative is
fused with a defining cultural myth such as frontier justice, a fantasy theme emerges,
creating a rhetorical vision into which one can fit all policies and character attributes
of the speaker, beneficial and detrimental alike. The paradoxical nature of the frontier
myth allows this fantasy to stretch and contract, negotiating between individual and
community, and between vice and virtue, with the result a mythical construct that
becomes historic and deeply meaningful.106
For President Bush, a fantasy theme analysis might also benefit from a focus on
motive, and take into account the role of family in the Presidents selection of the
frontier fantasy. As Gunn explains of the motive behind the rhetors use of a fantasy
theme, psychological needs rooted in an individuals earlier family relationships
may affect the deployment of a fantasy chain.107 The legacy of President Bushs
father is closely associated with what a Newsweek magazine cover had ignobly termed
The Wimp Factor*as a perpetual Beltway insider, whose second home was in the
blueblood environs of Kennebunkport, Maine.108 The weight of a president-father on
the imagination must be strong indeed; more than once the younger Bush has made
powerful public remarks about his relationship with Bush Sr. In a 1989 Time
magazine interview, George W. Bush described his constant worry about his fathers
shadow: "My biggest liability in Texas is the question, Whats the boy ever done? He
could be riding on Daddys name.109 In the run-up to the war against Iraq, President
Bush further emphasized the gravity of this relationship, noting to CNN that Saddam
Hussein tried to kill my dad.110 It is impossible to pin down, but important to
consider, that Bushs use of the fantasy theme may be connected with a fundamental
fantasy: a desire for reconciliation of Self and Other.111 In this case the desire would
be Bushs wish to honor his father, or his other predecessors in the Oval Office.
Bush may also be in a protracted fundamental fantasy dialogue with the people of
Texas, after a painful introduction there to his political career: a stinging loss in his
first campaign for Congress to a Democrat who publicly called out Bush for his
allegedly fake Texas credentials, having spent most of his formative years far from the
frontier. Note the radio ad that dogged Bush in 1978:
In 1961, when Kent Hance graduated from Dimmitt High School in the 19th
congressional district, his opponent George W. Bush was attending Andover
Academy in Massachusetts. In 1965, when Kent Hance graduated from Texas Tech,
his opponent was at Yale University. And while Kent Hance graduated from
University of Texas Law School, his opponent *get this, folks *was attending
Harvard. We dont need someone from the Northeast telling us what our problems
are.112
This essay does not seek to investigate fully these possible motives for the fantasy
theme, or to conclude whether the psychoanalytic unconscious approach or the SCT
conscious approach provides a more accurate accounting. Nonetheless, an integration
of both approaches can aid the understanding of the frontier fantasy that is repeatedly
being deployed: a deeply shaken public listens to its president after September 11, and
political allies are beckoned by a familiar rhetorical vision during the difficult times of
the Iraq war. What is clear is that the narrative of Bush-as-cowboy and Cheney-ascowboy traverses a deep meaning for much of the public: spreading beyond
individual and family, connecting to a broader American mythology, to powerful
cultural and political figures such as John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, and to the
historical characters of the Old West whom they represent.113
President Bushs conjuring of the original modern cowboy President Ronald
Reagan, whatever the motive, acts as a fantasy narrative chain to all of the previous
American mythological moments. It weaves through the public collective memory of
the Old West in film, literature, history, and politics.114 Reagan came onto the scene
without much need to build a symbolic structure of frontier justice; his embodiment
of the defining cultural hero preceded his inauguration.115 As the early Reagan
months unfolded, Martha Ann Martin reflected on the needs of a nation fixated on
the storms brewing in the Middle East hostage crisis, the omnipresent fear of war
with the Soviet Union, and the perceived need for a president with the mythological
qualities of war heroism*a fantasy, American style.
Ironically, the media age had no Teddy Roosevelt to offer. Instead, the 1980s offered
an actor whose identification was with pseudo-heroism as filtered through film of
his ranch, his horses, possibly even his ability as a nice guy to defeat the guy in
black (the Ayatollah and the Communists), Hollywood version.116
Fast-forward 20 years to 2001, and the early months after the inauguration of another
Republican president, also facing a war with enemies seen and unseen, and the
rhetorical narration of heroic leadership emerges once again: [W]hen I was a kid I
remember that they used to put out there in the old west, a wanted poster. . . .117
Consequences for Governance
What remains to be seen is the legacy for the political process of this symbolic shift of
the seat of power to a 1500-acre ranch in Texas. While the conscious imagination of
audiences was rendered and spirits raised through this inrush of frontier memories,
what was obscured in this process? As the President literally and figuratively moves
the locus of American power from Washington, DC to Crawford, Texas his actions
399
may hint at other Bush administration priorities. Washington, long maligned as

home to special interests and corrupt politics, receives less and less importance, as
does the need to cooperate with opposing parties and to navigate the checks and
balances of the governments other branches. Rushing writes that the frontier hero
must continually face the demands of the community for cooperation and
conformity (emphasis added).118 However, face does not mean consent. In fact,
the Presidents retreat to the Crawford ranch serves to feed the frontier mythology,
bolstering the rugged in the individualist.119 The Presidents move away from
traditional forms of domestic deliberation, as well as international cooperation,
highlights this re-definition of community.
On the domestic front, the Bush administrations downplay of inter-branch
deliberative traditions can be seen through the example of longtime Republican
stalwart Senator Richard Lugar. Perhaps the senator most trusted by President Reagan
on foreign policy, Lugar also was the man charged by both President Bush Sr. and
President Clinton with leading the incomparably important effort to help secure the
Soviet nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Senator Lugars experience
with the second Bush Administration tells of a startling change in the view from the
American White House. Even Reagan, facing the greatest immediate national security
threat since the Civil War*the nuclear arms race*had robust deliberation with the
Congress on foreign affairs. As David Rosenbaum wrote of the Bush-Cheney
treatment of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
[Senator Richard Lugar] said he had reluctantly come to accept the reality that he
and his committee had but a secondary role. When he was chairman of the
committee in the last two years of the Reagan administration, he said, he was
included in White House meetings on foreign affairs and had regular breakfasts
with Secretary of State George Schultz. This president and this secretary dont do
that, Lugar said.120
Drawing a comparison to the last long-term war facing the United States,
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel created further context for the Bush administrations shunning of the traditional collaboration with the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee:
This is a completely different political world. In 1966, the foreign policy debate was
focused on the Foreign Relations Committee. It was the only forum the people of
the country could go to. [Now] you have an administration that does not reach out
to or see much value in consulting with Congress. They treat Congress as an
appendage, a constitutional nuisance.121
This manifestation of the mistrust of neckties and lawyers peddled in the BushCheney narrative fantasy themes may also extend beyond the Congress, and to the
courts. The bipartisanship that greeted passage of the U.S.A. Patriot Act soon after the
terrorist attacks, and gave the President leeway on the expansion of law enforcement
privileges, eroded in late 2005 as serious questions began to emerge about warrantless
domestic wiretapping. Commentators began to raise concerns again about risks to
the delicate separation of powers*which guards against executive overreach,
especially in times of war*in the Bush administrations issuing of thousands of

domestic wiretap orders without approval by the special national security F.I.S.A.
Court. The American Bar Association task force on the Presidents domestic
surveillance program concluded that bypassing the courts has allowed the U.S.
Constitution to become a victim of terrorism, explaining: [T]he issue is not
whether the President can conduct surveillance but whether he can do it
unilaterally.122
By extension the United Nations and Americas traditional allies in Europe, sidestepped in the war against Iraq, seem to take a back seat to the administrations
confident case of pre-emptive self-defense. Instead of a partnership between
Washington, the U.N., Europe, and the world*cooperation heralded in the early
days after September 11*something very different is implied by the frontier trope:
justice delivered through rugged individualism, by one trusted hero. When the Bush
administration lost the 2003 vote in the U.N. Security Council, and was denied
authorization for a war against Iraq, the administration rejected the legal order and
rustled up a coalition consisting of one main European ally, a handful of other
nations, and a bigger handful of mercenary soldiers.123 Together the posse decided to
go it alone. After nearly a decade of work in Iraq for the U.N. Security Council,
former Chief Weapons Inspector and U.S. Marine veteran Scott Ritter reflected on
President Bushs unilateral foreign policy, writing about the new American posture in
his book Frontier Justice:
There is a reason why the United States brought an end to vigilante rule over a
hundred years ago *it is anathema to civilized society. Frontier justice was
replaced with a system of laws governing the interaction between citizens and
communities, as envisioned by our founding fathers when they framed the
Constitution over two hundred and twenty years ago. This system of law has,
through the form of binding international treaties and agreements, extended itself
into how the United States, as a civilized nation, interacts with the global
community of nations. . . . In the post-World War II environment these principles
and values have been codified within the Charter of the United Nations. While far
from perfect, the rules and regulations set forth in the charter have succeeded in
helping the global community navigate some seriously troubled waters during the
five decades the charter has been in place, avoiding the kind of global conflagration
from which it was born. The charter is useful only so far as its collective
membership finds it useful.124
Conclusion: The Courage of Ronald Reagan

Where William F. Lewiss past study of Reagans narration described how that
president built a strategic bridge to the public through myth, the study left open a
door to understanding how a specific, repeated tactical narrative can be deployed to
secure particular audiences in a time of war. Moreover, it laid the foundation for
seeing how Reagan himself would, in the future, become part of Telling Americas
Story. Lewis couldnt have known the ways that Reagans legacy would be re-enacted
20 years later. But a close reading of the Bush-Cheney Reagan re-enactment is
401
necessary to understand how future White House residents will navigate the fragile
and dangerous narrative territory that Lewis did predict.125 What is new about the
use of the frontier narrative by Bush and Cheney is that they appear to have settled
upon a solution for some pitfalls of the narrative framework. Fragility and danger
inhere in a commitment to a cohesive narrative whole, since fallible humans will
likely deviate from their story of virtue*as Reagan did during Iran-Contra. These
traps are avoided, however, in two ways: first by Bush and Cheneys selection of a
rhetorical vision that thrives on the paradox of virtue and vice, and second by their
specific tactical deployment of this chosen fantasy theme.
The Rhetorical Vision
The setting, characters, and actions of the frontier narrative were able to shift and
morph depending on the tactical needs of the White House. But the core of the
rhetorical vision remained firmly anchored in its motivation: pragmatic politics
based in a moral tale. The hero characters were, immediately, President Bush and Vice
President Cheney, but also those christened through proximity: American soldiers,
Prime Minister Koizumi, select leaders of the Coalition of the Willing, and partisan
audiences at stump speeches. Interwoven among these immediate and secondary
characters were other characters conjured from the past: Presidents Reagan and
Roosevelt, Gary Coopers Marshal Kane, the Western riders showcased on Oval
Office walls, and the long history of fictional and historical frontier heroes triggered
in the fantasy chain. The villains were those condemned as Wanted: Dead or Alive
but also those members of the polity rejecting country in favor of court, those
wearing the tie instead of the cowboy hat.
Country, rather than court, became the setting for the rhetorical vision and the
field for its actions. The White House heroes dwelled immediately in frontier settings
(the Crawford ranch, the Western state locations of the partisan stump speeches and
the scenes of the stories Bush and Cheney told of their political travails). These heroes
also projected themselves and their audiences into battle through their narrative
(villains smoked from their holes and brought to justice), their iconography
(cowboy hats, wanted posters), and the conjuring of the frontier towns saved by the
Coopers and Reagans of the past. America itself becomes the composite of this
frontier setting, as Cheney stands in a flag-drenched political rally, describing his and
the Presidents feelings after witnessing the cowboy hat working uniform: And we
feel right at home here. The motivation of the rhetorical vision is the delivery of
pragmatic solutions by a frontier hero, solutions for the fantasy needs of the speakers
and audience alike*a solution for the moral paradox of how to defeat an enemy
while remaining virtuous, a solution for how to trust a war president when evidence
of his courage remains wanting, and a solution for how to act alone yet remain
legitimate in a community of nations.
Particular Publics
The President and Vice President do not attempt to apply the frontier narrative
regularly to the American public as a whole. President Bush used the rhetorical frame
in this way only during the crisis of the Fall of 2001, and, convinced that it was a
successful trope in that situation he returned to it again in the Spring of 2003, when
launching the Iraq war and then declaring it complete. In these two crucial instances,
amid the uncertainty of wartime, the public needed what myth can provide: a sense
of importance and direction and . . . a communal focus for individual identity.126
Members of the general public were able to choose this fantasy, if they so pleased,
from among the various post-September 11 tropes offered by the Bush administration. Bush and Cheney did not push it: they merely offered it as one rhetorical vision
among other rhetorical means.
For the partisan core, and the key international allies sitting on the fence, however,
the fantasy theme was viewed by the tacticians as an indispensable tool for shoring up
support for Bush-as-Reagan during the difficult early period of the Iraq war. An
effective base is an active base, and as the streets filled with millions of war protesters
in the Spring and Summer of 2003, the White House team reacted by energizing their
own army of public opinion: the grassroots nieces and nephews of President Ronald
Reagan. Seen through a 21st-century poststructuralist communication lens, the
decisions to offer up Reagan or cowboy or ranch or America were not
different rhetorical choices, but refractions of the enduring appeal of the same myth.
As Gunn explained, especially of the 20 years after Reagan, because the
communication model bespeaks a maddening, ever-moving reality of becoming,
Bush and Cheney are not so much fixing texts, relations, rituals, or practices, but
instead: fantasies.127 Whether it resides more potently in conscious imaginings, or in
unconscious fundamental fantasies, a powerful shared rhetorical vision envelops this
telling of the Old West myth.
Lewiss focus on the public is at once the edge of his work and the beginning of
this rhetorical inquiry. Lewis was interested in how Reagan communicated Americas
story to the people, and explored Reagans appeals to popular belief and popular
morality through the narrative form.128 This essays inquiry is not about how
Americans listen to Bush and Cheney, but how the White House used the lessons
learned from its rehearsal with the general public to target the party faithful in the
United States, and a few American dreamers abroad. In a new political climate that
speaks frankly about the separate sovereignties of Red States and Blue States, any
analysis of presidential rhetoric must look closely at who is being spoken to. What
this corpus reveals about the Bush-Cheney rhetorical record is a skilled and singleminded focus on three things: protecting their winning base, challenging a majority
of the remaining Reagan Democrats to stay with their leaders in a time of war, and
convincing a few allies that if they choose to participate in the story, they will
become part of Americas greatness.129 In the new millennium, as America faces a
War on Terrorism seeming without end, and with the deepening divide between the
political parties, analyses of presidential narration must also look closely at the
403
tactical narration of fantasy themes: trends and threads aimed singularly and
repeatedly at particular audiences, to reinforce and to obscure.
Notes
[1] George W. Bush, Guard and Reserves Define Spirit of America: Remarks by the President
to Employees at the Pentagon, The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
releases/2001/09/20010917-3.html (accessed 27 September 2001).
[2] William F. Lewis, Telling Americas Story: Narrative Form and the Reagan Presidency,
Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 280 302.
[3] For a review of the descriptions of the Presidents use of epideictic rhetoric in response to
September 11 see Bostdorff s discussion of Bushs appeal to Puritan roots, and Murphys
review of Bushs various uses of virtuous narration to place himself as the synecdoche for the
American people. Denise Bostdorff, George W. Bushs Post-September 11 Rhetoric of
Covenant Renewal: Upholding the Faith of the Greatest Generation, Quarterly Journal of
Speech 89 (2003): 293 319; and John M. Murphy, Our Mission and Our Moment: George
W. Bush and September 11, Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 607 32.
[4] Bostdorff, George W. Bushs Post-September 11 Rhetoric, 294.
[5] Murphy, Our Mission and Our Moment, 620.
[6] In her introductory paragraph, Bostdorff describes the dead or alive standard as an
offhand remark, 293. Murphy hints at the Old West master strategy in his inquiry, but only
briefly, when discussing the virility of the Todd Beamer reference during Bushs 2002 State of
the Union Address. Murphy notes the Reaganesque move of visual rhetoric, but stops short
of exploring this as a specific and ongoing synecdochic vehicle:
[Through the] sight of Lisa Beamer, the applause, followed by the amplification of common
televisual experience . . . the action the nation should take was clear, acts compelled by the
pictures we saw and the pregnant grieving widow whom the president displayed. A western
sheriff, in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, knew what justice meant for men who made
pregnant wives widows. (619 20)
[7] Ernest G. Bormann has defended symbolic convergence theory (SCT) in the context of the
postmodern critique by Joshua Gunn, explaining how the rhetorical process can create
symbolic realities through conscious imaginations, thus allowing for seemingly contradictory
interweaving of messages. Gunn responds that fantasy chains are more likely the work of the
unconscious, and that the scholar whose work was foundational for Bormann *Robert
Freed Bales *would agree that the process is unconscious, best understood through a
Freudian psychoanalytic approach. Whether unconscious or conscious, the presidential
narrators of the frontier myth evidently expect a fantasy chain, or in-rush of memory, that
comes from witnessing this defining cultural myth, especially as applied to a war effort aimed
in large part at revenge. Bormann, Defending Symbolic Convergence Theory from an
Imaginary Gunn, Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 366 72; Gunn, Refiguring
Fantasy: Imagination and Its Decline in U.S. Rhetorical Studies, Quarterly Journal of Speech
89 (2003): 41 59; and Gunn, Refitting Fantasy: Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Talking to
the Dead, Quarterly Journal of Speech , 90 (2004): 1 23.
[8] See LeRoy G. Dorsey, The Frontier Myth in Presidential Rhetoric, Western Journal of
Communication 59 (1995): 1 19; LeRoy G. Dorsey, The Myth of War and Peace in
Presidential Discourse: John F. Kennedy and the Peace Corps, Southern Communication
Journal 62 (1996): 42 55; Janice Hocker Rushing, Ronald Reagans Star Wars Address,
Quarterly Journal of Speech 72 (1986): 415 33.
[9] George W. Bush, President Bushs address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American
People (Justice Will Be Done), September 20, 2001, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/
speeches/gwbush911jointsessionspeech.htm (accessed January 24, 2003).
[10] Bert O. States, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms (Berkeley: The University of California Press,
1985).
[11] Walter R. Fisher, The Narrative Paradigm: An Elaboration, Communication Monographs 52
(1985): 347 57.
[12] Ernest G. Bormann, Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: the Rhetorical Criticism of Social
Reality, Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1972): 401. As this essay does not seek to provide
evidence of audience effects, but only to look at the deployment of a narrative tactic, fantasy
theme analysis can help explain why Bush and Cheney may have repeatedly chosen the
frontier narrative to create a symbolic reality (the Reagan mantle placed on Bushs actions)
with key audiences. In the context of political communication and the presidency, fantasy
theme analysis can be a tool for evaluating a rhetorical discourse, which focuses on the
message. William L. Benoitt, Andrew A. Klyukovski, John P. McHale, and David Airne, A
Fantasy Theme Analysis of Political Cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr Affair, Critical
Studies in Mass Communication 18 (2001): 379.
[13] Walter R. Fisher, Romantic Democracy, Ronald Reagan, and Presidential Heroes, Western
Journal of Speech Communication 46 (1982): 299 310; Janice Hocker Rushing, Mythic
Evolution of The New Frontier in Mass Mediated Rhetoric, Critical Studies in Media
Communication 3 (1986): 265 96.
[14] Lewis, Telling Americas Story, 282.
[15] Bormann, Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision, 401.
[16] The Wall Street Journal Harris Poll shows President Bushs job approval rating for February
through August at 56, 49, 59, 50, 56, and 52 percentage points respectively (no poll was taken
in April), http://online.wsj.com/public/article/sb112481890611420718-_yhqce_om7fxmitsk
to2ycr8zim_20060824.html?mod /blogs (accessed January 4, 2006)
[17] Janice Hocker Rushing, Frontierism and the Materialism of the Psyche, Southern Journal of
Communication 56 (1991): 270; LeRoy G. Dorsey, We Want Americans Pure and Simple,
Rhetoric and Public Affairs 6 (2003): 55 78.
[18] Rushing, Mythic Evolution, 1.
[19] Edward Everett Dale, The Speech of the Frontier, Quarterly Journal of Speech 27 (1941):
354.
[20] Robert D. Clark, The Influence of the Frontier on American Political Oratory, Quarterly
Journal of Speech 28 (1942): 283.
[21] Scholars of rhetoric have long traced these first-hand narrative imprints on the national
political narrative, from analyses of frontier speech codes in disputes over statehood to the
canonizing of Old West lawmen and the revisionist history of media accounts bringing
frontier heroines back into the public mind. See: Frances Lea McCurdy, Invective in
Frontier Missouri, Quarterly Journal of Speech 46 (1960): 54 8; Albert Lewis, Diamondback Jack: A Study in Frontier Justice, Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (1970): 456 7; and
Carol Lomicky, Frontier Feminism, Journalism History 28 (1992): 102.
[22] Gary C. Woodward, Reagan as Roosevelt: The Elasticity of Pseudo-Populist Appeals,
Central States Speech Journal 34 (1983): 53 8.
[23] Dorsey, The Frontier Myth.
[24] Dorsey, We Want Americans.
[25] The rhetorical narration of this defining cultural myth reaches across both sides of the aisle,
so that even a Massachusetts liberal like John F. Kennedy could attempt to embody the
Western hero and in turn bless his new and controversial policies. Kennedys promotion of
the Peace Corps relied heavily on portraying the world as a widened frontier, and the need
for the United States to spread its values of peace and democracy through the efforts of
volunteer American heroes who would convert swords into plowshares. See Leroy G. Dorsey,
The Myth of War and Peace in Presidential Discourse: John F. Kennedy and the Peace
Corps, Southern Communication Journal 62 (1996): 42 55. At the same time, with a new
conflict brewing in a faraway land, Kennedy sought to lionize the U.S. soldiers sent to
[26]
[27]
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35]
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
[41]
[42]
[43]
[44]
[45]
405
Vietnam to begin what would become nearly 15 years of war. His narrative choice was to
paint the Green Berets as frontier heroes *a parallel to the rare pro-Vietnam War
Hollywood film that was released a few years later, called Green Berets (1968), and starring
none other than John Wayne. See Justin Gustanis, JFK and the Green Berets,
Communication Studies 40 (1989): 41 53.
Lewis, Telling Americas Story, 295.
Fisher, Romantic Democracy, 299 310; Woodward, Reagan as Roosevelt, 44.
Lewis, Telling Americas Story, 299.
William L. Benoit, Reagan, Republican 1984, in Texts of Television Spots: 1984 1996 ,
http://www.missouri.edu/ /commwlb/html/84-96.html (accessed March 1, 2004).
Ibid.
In 1989 Bush told Time magazine, "My biggest liability in Texas is the question, Whats the
boy ever done? He could be riding on Daddys name. Alan Ramsey, The Sydney Morning
Herald , February 15, 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/14/104492779
9034.html (accessed April 16, 2004).
Long before Bush first referenced the crusade on September 16, the concept of the coming
clash of civilizations between Islam and the West had begun to develop in political circles.
The lightning-quick response to the presidents war/crusade rhetoric was likely due to the
1990s debate about Samuel Huntingtons alliterative phrase. See Dana L. Cloud, To Veil the
Threat of Terror: Afghan Women and the B/Clash of Civilizations / in the Imagery of the
U.S. War on Terrorism, Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 285 306.
George W. Bush, The White House website, President: Today We Mourned, Tomorrow We
Work, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html (accessed April
14, 2004).
Murphy, Our Mission and Our Moment.
Ibid.
Todd Gitlin, Grasping Ruins, openDemocracy, September 25, 2001, http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-47-211.jsp (accessed January 4, 2002).
Gitlin, Grasping Ruins, 31 6.
Other scholars have compared this rhetorical strategy of the president to calling out the
demons in relation to religious exorcisms. Joshua Gunn again, The Rhetoric of Exorcism:
George W. Bush and the Return of Political Demonology, Western Journal of Speech
Communication 68 (2004): 1 23.
Rushing, Mythic. See also Scott Ritter, Frontier Justice (New York: Context Books, 2003):
17.
George Acorn, Michael Riley, and Richard Kremmer, America the Avenging Angel, Sydney
Morning Herald on the Web, November 15, 2001, http://newsstore.f2.com.au/apps/
newssearch.ac?sysmh (accessed December 12, 2001).
War in Iraq: Pentagons Deck of Most Wanted Iraqis, CNN.com , http://www.cnn.com/
2003/world/meast/06/05/iraqi.captured/index/html (accessed November 15, 2003).
Bush: Were Hunting Him Down, Newsmax.com , November 20, 2001, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/11/19/185825.shtml (accessed April 16, 2004).
George W. Bush, President Bush Addresses the Nation, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030319-17.html (accessed January 4, 2006).
George W. Bush, President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations Have Ended, The
White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501-15.html
(accessed January 4, 2006).
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language , 4th ed. (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company: 2000), 1249. See also the world wide web search engine Google.com , which
lists seven of the top ten hits for the word outlaw as Old West references, http://
www.google.com/search?hl /en&q/outlaw (accessed January 20, 2006). Former U.N.
Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter picked up the outlaw connotation: Justice needed to be
[46]
[47]
[48]
[49]
served, frontier justice, through a war ostensibly waged to preserve democracy and the
American way of life from the threat of an outlaw regime. Frontier Justice, 48. As did Village
Voice author Erik Baard, who noted that the President branded Saddam Husseins Iraq an
outlaw regime and took the vanquished dictators pistol as a trophy. George W. Bush Aint
No Cowboy, September 28, 2004, http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0439,baard,57117,
1.html (accessed October 18, 2004).
The masters of these rituals are also paid to recall that, later in the 19th century, Secretary of
the Navy Theodore Roosevelt left his cushy Washington job to fight on horseback with the
Rough Riders in the Battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. While
Secretary Roosevelt may not have been positioning himself as a Western hero for his later
presidential run, the 1898 performance in Cuba likely didnt hurt matters.
Margaret T. Drewal, Embodied Practice/Embodied History: Mastery of Metaphor in the
Performances of Diviner Ositola, in The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on
African Arts, ed. Rowland Abiodun, Henry J. Drewal, and John Pemberton III (Washington:
Smithsonian Institution, 2003): 171. Drewals research among the Yoruba casts a helpful light
on the machinations of presidential press conferences. Just as the Yoruba performers indicate
different narratives with their various tropes *such as placing white ash atop the shaven
head of a young man performing his coming of age ritual, to represent the white color of the
birth caul *the president indicates different narratives with his own choices: faith v. an axis
of evil, a firefighter hero atop a vehicle at Ground Zero, and the wanted poster indicating
himself as a frontier sheriff.
Ibid.
American newspapers were filled with frontier references following the Presidents remarks in
Fall 2001. USA Today, a national paper reaching a cross-section of middle American
audiences, featured 34 articles with dead or alive references in the first three months after
Bushs September 17 comment. See the newspapers archive at http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/
usatoday/. Student newspaper columnist David Weigel wrote in an October 2001 edition of
the Northwestern Chronicle about his experience researching fellow students reactions to the
Presidents use of the cowboy metaphor. Weigel, who had been sitting with classmates
watching a televised presidential address, noted: And then the President said, Were gonna
smoke them out. A girl to my left laughed and said, Yee-haw cowboy! David Weigel,
Northwestern Chronicle , October 19, 2001, 1. This connection made by an audience member
shows the possibility of an expanded fantasy structure based on a single frontier reference.
The instantaneous nature of the students remark further highlights the quick and lasting
effects of the fantasy theme. President Bush chose to enact one part of the Old West myth
(the cattleman), invited his viewers to fill in their own parts, and the student did just that.
She performed a response in parody that exceeded the initial reference, adding laughter, a
horse-riders cry, and the actual word cowboy. These multiple layers of reference *the
historical frontier, and the myth embodied by Reagan, used by Bush, then parodied by the
viewer *evince the thick and lasting layers of this narrative. Even the parody in this context
refuels the frontier reference, traversing and binding several layers of text to a simple
reference to the hunting of vermin. Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of
Twentieth-Century Art Forms (New York: Methuen Press, 1985). Scott Ritter, a U.S. Marine
veteran of the first Gulf War, and U.N. weapons inspector for seven years, described Bushs
March 19, 2003 call to battle ((Frontier Justice , 48):
The President could very well have been a frontier sheriff, explaining to the
assembled town folk why he was taking their men out on a posse, to hunt
down a dangerous criminal element. The (outlaw) regime of Saddam
Hussein was threatening the edges of civilized society, and the frontier was at
risk. Justice needed to be served, frontier justice, through a war ostensibly
407
waged to preserve democracy and the American way of life from the threat of
an outlaw regime possessing illegal weapons of mass destruction.
Chain-out is a phrase from Bormann discussed by Gunn: Refitting Fantasy, 5.
[50] George W. Bush, Remarks by the President to the Greater Portland Chambers of Commerce
Meeting, The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/03/
20010323.html (accessed October 25, 2005).
[51] George W. Bush, Remarks by the President to YMCA Picnic, The White House website,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids,connection/20010814-4.html (accessed October 25, 2005).
[52] The White House provides a complete library of the President Bushs public addresses,
catalogued on its website in full text: http://www.whitehouse.gov.
[53] Ibid.
[54] For a discussion of the primacy effect see Ralph Rosnow, Whatever Happened to the Law of
Primacy? Journal of Communication 16 (1966): 10 31, and Ralph Rosnow and Edward J.
Robinson, Experiments in Persuasion (New York: Academic Press: 1967).
[55] George W. Bush, President Celebrates Independence Day, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/07/20040704.html (accessed January 5, 2006), and
Presidents Remarks in Greeley, Colorado, The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041025-4.html (accessed January 5, 2006).
[56] George W. Bush, Presidents Remarks at Ask President Bush Event, The White House
website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040910-16.html (accessed January 5, 2006).
[57] George W. Bush, Presidents Remarks on Healthy Forests, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/08/20030821-4.html (accessed October 30, 2005).
[58] George W. Bush, Remarks by the President at Bush-Cheney 2004 Reception, The White
House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031125-15.html (accessed April 1, 2004).
[59] George W. Bush, President Bush Meets with First-Time Homebuyers in NM and AZ, The
(accessed November 1, 2005).
[60] George W. Bush, Presidents Remarks at Victory 2004 Reception, The White House website,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040601-15.html (accessed November 1,
2004).
[61] George W. Bush, Presidents Remarks in Sioux City, Iowa, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041101-20.html (accessed November 12,
2005).
[62] George W. Bush, President Discusses Strengthening Social Security in Montana, The White
House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050203-13.html (accessed January 8, 2006).
[63] Jay DeFoore, Reagans Death Returns Photographer to the Limelight, Photo District News ,
June 10, 2004, http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id /
1000529649 (accessed January 5, 2006).
[64] Bill Alman, Ask the White House, The White House Website , http://www.whitehouse.gov/
ask/20030605.html (accessed on January 20, 2006).
[65] Twice prior to September 11 Cheney referred to Wyoming in the introductions to his
speeches, but the context included the subject of Wyoming. One took place in the state of
Wyoming: Dick Cheney, Remarks of the Vice President at the Transfer of the JY Ranch, The
White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/
vp20010526.html (accessed November 7, 2004). The other was during a speech to honor
the recipient of the National Park Ranger Award: Dick Cheney, Remarks by the Vice
President Presentation of the Harry Yount National Park Ranger Award, The White House
[66]
[67]
[68]
[69]
[70]
[71]
[72]
[73]
[74]
[75]
[76]
[77]
website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010427.html
Like the corpus of President Bush, the total number of the Vice Presidents speeches
referencing the frontier was taken from the official White House archive, in the section that
collects all formal public addresses of the Vice President: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
vicepresident/news-speeches/.
Mrs. Cheney tells a story from their youth, demonstrating her husbands work ethic and
cowboy credentials. Two examples of the same anecdote are placed in speech introductions
from late in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. First, on September 10, 2004, in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin: He used to dig ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo
Grounds. Lynne Cheney, Vice President and Mrs. Cheneys Remarks and Q&A at a Town
Hall Meeting, The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/
20040913-2.html - 78.5KB (accessed November 7, 2004). Second, on September 29, 2004, in
Duluth, Minnesota: Ive known him since he was digging ditches at the Central Wyoming
Fair and Rodeo Grounds. Lynne Cheney, Vice President and Mrs. Cheneys Remarks and
Q&A at a Town Hall Meeting in Duluth, Minnesota, The White House website , http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040929-7.html - 79.5KB (accessed November
7, 2004).
Although Vice President Cheneys references began earlier than the Presidents, the remarks
prior to the beginning of the Iraq war were limited to a very few instances. These involved
placement of Western references in introductory paragraphs: naming himself as a fellow
Westerner and speaking of Texas at a pair of Republican events in Washington in late
October 2001; and the phrase back home in Wyoming at another Washington event four
months later in February 2002.
Dick Cheney, Remarks by the Vice President at Bush-Cheney 04 Luncheon, The White
House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030922-6.html (accessed November 7, 2004).
Dick Cheney, Vice Presidents Remarks at Reception, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/08/20030812-1.html (accessed November 7, 2004).
Dick Cheney, Remarks by the Vice President at the Bush-Cheney 2004 Reception, The
Dick Cheney, Remarks by the Vice President at a Luncheon for Congressman Steve Pearce,
The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/200403164.html (accessed November 7, 2004).
Lewis, 296.
Cheney, Remarks, The White House website, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2003/06/20030630-9.html.
Cheney delivered the line I saw the conviction and moral courage of Ronald Reagan in the
conclusions of his speeches on the following dates: June 30; July 15; August 6 and 12;
September 5, 12, 15, and 22; October 24, 29, and 31; November 6, 17, 17 (two speeches), 18,
24, and 24 (two speeches); December 5 and 12; and January 13 and 15. On August 7, 2003
Cheney also referenced Reagan in the conclusion of his speech, but used a different
alliterative phrase: decisive, determined leader. See the Vice Presidents speeches at: http://
www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/.
Ibid.
President Bushs cowboy credentials themselves are open to question. He was born in
Connecticut and summered in Maine. His blueblood education began at the most exclusive
of Boston boarding schools, Phillips-Andover Academy; then he went to Yale, then Harvard.
Yes, his family moved to Midland, Texas, where he would later set up a career. And yes, Bush
would become part-owner of the Rangers, then Governor of Texas. But these are just
words *Rangers, Texas *and when seen through the discursivity of space, one must
409
remember that the words come with city jobs. The reality for a Midland man raised with a
silver spoon in his mouth doesnt appear to match the Old West archetype. Native rural
Texan and cowboy scholar Dian Malouf sees a disconnect:
Wearing boots doesnt make you a cowboy. She explains, Im in Midland

lots, and I havent seen a Midland cowboy yet. . . . Bush and Cheney are not
cowboys by any stretch of the imagination. Cowboys are silent types, remote
but genuine, with serious integrity and caring. They are a bit rough and work
hard, and they dont want to call attention to themselves the way George W.
Bush kind of does. I know and admire cowboys. Erik Baard, George W.
Bush Aint No Cowboy, The Village Voice , September 28, 2004, http://
www.villagevoice.com/news/0439,baard,57117,1.html (accessed October 18,
2004).
[78] Staff Writer, Major Events in U.S. Presidential Campaign 2000, Reuters News Service ,
Center for Voting and Democracy website, http://www.fairvote.org/e_news/pres_campaign_events_2000.htm (accessed June 18, 2003).
[79] Steve Schifferes, Bush Keeps Promise to Stay Out of Sons Way, Topeka Capital-Journal
Website , June 10, 2000, http://www.cjonline.com/stories/o61000/new_bush.shtml (accessed
April 16, 2004).
[80] Donal Carbaugh, Just Listen: Listening and Landscape Among the Blackfeet, Western
Journal of Communication 63 (1999): 250 70.
[81] Kenneth Burkes dramatic pentad serves as a useful starting point for appreciating the
rhetorical force of place in a campaign of persuasion. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1945). The pentad reminds us to focus on the
scene of a rhetorical act. Investigations of a defining cultural myth might also do well to
borrow from its neighbors in the field of visual anthropology. In his recent survey of the early
decades of that discipline, Jay Ruby struck a similar chord to Burke when he wrote: Culture
is conceived of as manifesting itself in scripts with plots involving actors and actresses with
lines, costumes, props, and settings. Jay Ruby, The Professionalization of Visual
Anthropology in the United States: The 1960s and 1970s, Visual Anthropology Review 17
(2000 2001): 10 11. In this instance the actor is a president, the lines include dead or
alive, the costume is a hat and boots, and the props feature a wanted poster and the most
sophisticated army in the world. What these pieces need is an Old West setting, and that is
provided to the audience by the Crawford, Texas ranch.
[82] Visual landscape can provide a crucial link to the audience: it is a place large enough for the
audience to join the rhetor, a place where it can receive an invitation to participate in a
defining cultural myth. J. Anthony Blair explains in The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments, in
Defining Visual Rhetorics , ed. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004), 59:
What is the setting [and what] visual imagery will the audience understand
and respond to? What historical and cultural modes of visual understanding
does the audience bring to the situation? Visual arguers will answer these
questions in creating their visual enthymemes, thus drawing the viewer to
participate.
[83] Eric OKeefe, The Bush Ranch, Cowboys and Indians, December 2002, http://www.cowboysindians.com/articles/archives/1202/bush.html (accessed April 17, 2004):
The ranch retreat is a presidential tradition that dates back long before Camp
David. Ronald Reagans Rancho del Cielo, and LBJs Pedernales spread, are
only the most recent incarnations of a Western connection to the White
House that began with Teddy Roosevelt. It was 1883 when a 24-year-old TR
first set foot in Little Missouri, a soon-to-be-forgotten cow town in the
Dakota Territory. Intent on overcoming his physical frailties, Roosevelt spent
two weeks in the region on his first foray. By the time he left, he had bagged
not only a bison but also a stake in the Maltese Cross Ranch.
[84] Ibid.
[85] Dick Cheney, Vice President Honors Veterans of Korean War, The White House website,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020829-5.html (accessed April 20,
2004).
[86] President Bush, Prime Minister Blair Hold Press Conference, The White House website,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/images/20020406-3-600h.html (accessed
November 7, 2004).
[87] Richard Benedetto and Bill Nichols, Bush Rewards Backers of Iraq War, USA Today, May
18, 2003, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-05-18-retribution-usat_x.htm
(accessed May 20, 2003).
[88] The Asian press put significant focus on the weeks of mid-May 2003 when Prime Minister
Koizumi had another warm meeting with Bush, this time in Crawford, and President Roh
was not welcomed to Texas: [U]nlike Japans Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, he has not
been invited to the more intimate setting of Camp David or the Presidents Crawford, Texas,
ranch. Uphill task for South Korean leader, BBC Online , May 14, 2003, http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3028283.stm (accessed June 2, 2003). Byoung Yoo,
PhD Fellow at Stanford University, explained that shame rather than pride was the reaction
to the White House visit back home in Seoul: He wasnt invited to the ranch. Interview by
first author, personal interview.
[89] The Daily Show, Comedy Central Network , May 14, 2003.
[90] Bush, Koizumi Discuss Baseball, Role Model Cooper in High Noon, Japan Today, May 23,
2003, http://www.japantoday.com/gidx/news260851.html (accessed November 7, 2004).
[91] Kyodo News International, Bush Presents High Noon Poster to Koizumi, Japan Policy and
Politics , October 1, 2001, http://www.kyodonews.com/ (accessed January 5, 2006).
[92] Japan Today, Bush, Koizumi Discuss.
[93] Takashi Oka, Japans Economic High Noon, Christian Science Monitor, January 7, 2002,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0107/p9s1-coop.html (accessed January 10, 2006).
[94] Japan Today, Bush, Koizumi discuss. For a photo of the two leaders watching the
horseback yabusame performance in Japan, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2002/02/20020218.html.
[95] George W. Bush, Bush Outlines Path for Lasting Prosperity in Wednesday Speech, The
(accessed January 7, 2006).
[96] George W. Bush, Presidents Remarks at Ask Bush Event, The White House website, http://
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040910-16.html (accessed January 7, 2006).
[97] Rushing, Mythic; Rushing, Reagan; Rushing, Frontierism; Janice Hocker Rushing,
Alien , Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (1989): 1 24.
[98] Rushing, Mythic, 15.
[99] Ibid.
[100] Wayne J. McCullen, Reconstruction of the Frontier Myth in Witness, Southern Communication Journal 62 (1996): 31 41.
[101] Ibid.
[102] Rushing, Mythic, 15.
[103] The Wall Street Journal Harris Polls list President Bushs job approval rating for October
2001 through December 2002 at 88, 86, 82, 79, 79, 77, 75, 74, 70, 62, 63, 68, 64, 65, and 64
percentage points respectively.
411
[104] See the discussion in Note 7.

[105] Joshua Gunn, Refitting Fantasy, 4.
[106] Robert Ivie, Metaphor and the Rhetorical Invention of Cold War Idealists, Communication Monographs 54 (1987): 167.
[107] Bush seniors difficulty with the press and the wimp factor is pertinent to fantasy theme
analysis, both from the conscious (Bormann, SCT) perspective and the unconscious (Gunn,
psychoanalytic) perspective on imagination. Gunn (Refitting Fantasy, 6) explains that the
intersection of these two views resides in the question of motive:
Once these two senses of motive are understood, it becomes easier to

distinguish between fantasy theme analysis as the description of conscious
fantasies and their deployment, and psychoanalytic criticism as the
interpretation of fantasies as symptoms or traces of unconscious desires.
[108] This aspect of the fantasy chain in the Bush story is explained by Norman Soloman in The
Wimp Factor: Goading to Shed Blood, Media Beat on the Web, http://www.fair.org/mediabeat/010928.html (accessed April 17, 2004):
Back in 1988, the father of our current president was bedeviled by what
media outlets called the wimp factor. After eight years as vice president,
George Bush was making a run for the Oval Office. But quite a few
journalists kept asking whether he was a tough enough man for the job.
Newsweek even headlined the wimp epithet in a cover story about him.
That image problem faded in late December of 1989, when U.S. troops
invaded Panama. The commander-in-chief drew blood *proving to some
journalists that he had the right stuff. A New York Times reporter, R. W.
Apple, wrote that the assault on Panama was Bushs presidential initiation
rite *as though military intervention in a Third World nation was
mandatory evidence of leadership mettle. But even later, while still ensconced
in the White House, the senior Bush remained notably stung by the epithet.
He couldnt always keep the pain of it under wraps. Youre talking to the
wimp, President Bush commented on June 16, 1991. Youre talking to the
guy that had a cover of a national magazine, that Ill never forgive, put that
label on me.
[109] Alan Ramsey, Toms Bleating about Bush Goes back a Way, The Sydney Morning Herald ,
February 15, 2003, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/14/1044927799034.html (accessed April 16, 2004).
[110] John King, Bush Calls Saddam the Guy Who Tried to Kill My Dad, CNN.com , September
27, 2002, http://archives.cnn.com/2002/allpolitics/09/27/bush.war.talk/index.html (accessed
January 10, 2006). The BBC describes the particularly potent father son relationship when it
writes: George W. Bush is a man who has lived in the shadow of his father , former president
George Bush, all his life: George W. Bush, Out of His Fathers Shadow, BBC News ,
November 8, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/americas/2000/us_elections/profiles/
576504.stm (accessed on January 10, 2006).
[111] Gunn, Refitting Fantasy, 9.
[112] See Online News Hour, PBS , http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2004/candidates/
can_bush-political.html (accessed November 8, 2004).
[113] The poststructuralist semiotic notion of intertextuality helps in revealing the heightened
potency of signs as they reference each other, as an inrush of memories, through a fantasy
chain. Just as a text connects reader and author, texts can reach to other texts *or in the case
of President Bush, a speech can facilitate an inrush of frontier heroes while simultaneously
generating an inrush of Reagans frontier heroes. For more discussion of the rhetorical
[114]
[115]
[116]
[117]
[118]
[119]
[120]
[121]
[122]
[123]
force of intertextuality, see Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to

Literature and Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
Richard A. Maynard, The American West on Film: Myth and Reality (Rochelle Park: Hayden
Book Company, 1974): 125.
Fisher, Romantic Democracy, 305; Lewis, Telling Americas Story, 281; Gary C.
Woodward, Reagan as Roosevelt.
Martha Ann Martin, Ideologues, Ideographs, and The Best Men: From Carter to Reagan,
Southern Speech Communication Journal 49 (1983): 23.
Bush, Guard and Reserves.
Rushing, Mythic, 15.
It is precisely the mix of virtue and vice that appeals to the consumer of the cowboy motif.
James P. McDaniel, Figures for New Frontiers, Quarterly Journal of Speech 88 (2002): 91
111.
David E. Rosenbaum, "Foreign Policy and a Forlorn Senate," International Herald Tribune ,
May 3, 2004, 1.
Ibid.
Michael Conlon, Lawyers Group Slams Bush on Eavesdropping, Reuters , http://
go.reuters.com/newsarticle.jhtml?type /topnews&storyid/11197466&section /news (accessed February 15, 2006).
On April 13, the President in his first press conference in several months responded to a
reporters inquiry regarding the dominance of US troops in the coalition. From
NYTimes.com , April 13, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13cnd
btex.html?ex /1083988800&en /09073c9d97f87b6f&ei /5070 (accessed April 15, 2004):
QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. You mentioned that 17 of the 26

NATO members providing some help on the ground in Iraq. But if you look
at the numbers 135,000 U.S. troops, 10,000 or 12,000 British troops. Then
the next largest, perhaps even the second-largest contingent of guns on the
ground are private contractors, literally hired guns. Your critics, including
your Democratic opponents, say thats proof to them your coalition is
window dressing. How would you answer those critics . . . ?
BUSH: Yes, John, my response is I dont think people ought to demean the
contributions of our friends into Iraq. People are sacrificing their lives in Iraq
from different countries. We ought to honor that, and we ought to welcome
that. . . . Im proud of the coalition that is there. . . . I think that one of the
things youre seeing is more involvement by the United Nations, in terms of
the political process. Thats helpful. Id like to get another U.N. Security
Council resolution out that will help other nations to decide to participate.
[124]
[125]
[126]
[127]
[128]
[129]
Ritter, 17.
Lewis, 296.
Lewis, 282.
Gunn, Refitting Fantasy, 4.
Lewis, 297.
Lewis, 282.

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Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 92, No. 4, November 2006, pp. 379 412

(Re)Enacting Frontier Justice: The Bush

380 M. West & C. Carey

382 M. West & C. Carey

384 M. West & C. Carey

386 M. West & C. Carey

388 M. West & C. Carey

390 M. West & C. Carey

In addition to his stump speeches to thousands of party faithful, President Bush

392 M. West & C. Carey

394 M. West & C. Carey

Disciplining the Posse

The symbolism alone is evidently an important diplomatic tool in itself.

With the ever-expanding reach of Hollywood abroad, and the increasing

396 M. West & C. Carey

defense of community. In this situation lays a poignancy, mystery, and perennial

398 M. West & C. Carey

may hint at other Bush administration priorities. Washington, long maligned as

400 M. West & C. Carey

especially in times of war*in the Bush administrations issuing of thousands of

Conclusion: The Courage of Ronald Reagan

402 M. West & C. Carey

404 M. West & C. Carey

406 M. West & C. Carey

408 M. West & C. Carey

Wearing boots doesnt make you a cowboy. She explains, Im in Midland

410 M. West & C. Carey

[104] See the discussion in Note 7.

Once these two senses of motive are understood, it becomes easier to

412 M. West & C. Carey

force of intertextuality, see Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to

QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. You mentioned that 17 of the 26

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