Persuading the Public : University Press of Kansas : 9780700634347 : 0700634347 : 20 Mar 2023 : In Persuading the Public, Anne Pluta rethinks the established narrative of presidential communication and offers a bold new way of thinking about how presidents have reached the American public. Most presidential scholars claim that the ?rhetorical presidency? in which presidents seek to engage directly with the public and appeal to the nation as the basis for governance emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, shifting away from the constitutional norms of the nineteenth century when presidential communication was purely ceremonial and exceedingly rare. Pluta challenges this head-on by arguing that even the earliest presidents understood their unique relationship with the public and sought to leverage this connection through popular communication. Pluta offers up this alternative theory of opportunistic communication in this comprehensive assessment of the popular communication pract