The lion and the lamb: Demythologizing Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats

• Main Author: LIM, Elvin T.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2003
• Subjects: American Politics; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2815; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4072/viewcontent/RPA__1_.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We are accustomed to a characterization of Franklin Roosevelt’s legendary Fireside Chats as intimate exchanges between the president and the people. This essay argues that the Fireside Chats were a harsher, more castigatory rhetorical genre than such a characterization would allow. A content analysis of the 27 Fireside Chats recorded in FDR’s Public Papers suggests that the Fireside Chats were, on a number of indices, far less intimate than have traditionally been supposed, and in fact among the more vitriolic and declamatory utterances of the 32nd president. The essay proceeds with a discussion of how this illusion of intimacy was created and perpetuated, and explores the implications of these findings for the nature of presidential oratory.