Rhetorical Presidency through Symbolic Actions: Thanksgiving Proclamations

• In Event: Presidents and the Public

Abstract

What can we learn about the rhetorical presidency from Thanksgiving Day proclamations? Though various scholars examined the use of proclamations as part of the president’s unilateral tool-chest, few assessed how specific executive directives impacted the presidency overall. In addition, existing works paid scant direct attention to track how the nature of presidential unilateral power have changed over time. Fewer still explored the importance of symbolic or ceremonial unilateral actions. We argue that the annual Thanksgiving Day Proclamation allows for an excellent opportunity to address these points. We use structural topic models to analyze the texts of all Thanksgiving Day proclamations from 1863 to 2020 and find that emphasis on various topics reflects changes in political and economic conditions and, more importantly, the evolution of Thanksgiving proclamations over time. Results have implications for the presidency literature and add to our understanding of executive proclamations and the evolution of the presidential office.

Author

• Yu Ouyang, Purdue University Northwest