Elvin T. Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of
The Anti-intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.
He named a five best list of books on presidential rhetoric for the
Wall Street Journal.
One title on his list:
The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents
by Colleen J. Shogan
Texas A&M, 2006
Some may think that moral rhetoric is just decorative speechifying, but in these nine wonderfully textured case studies of presidential moralizing, Colleen J. Shogan explains 
that there is method even in how little or how much moralizing occurs. She offers some illuminating surprises along the way. Lincoln's first inaugural address can be read as an extended moral equivocation, because the divisions within the Republican Party and between the states did not encourage the use of uncompromising moral pronouncements. "One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended," Lincoln said, without emphatically showing where his sympathies lay. Conversely, Lyndon Johnson was able to use moral rhetoric stridently because, even though his legislative agenda was complicated, it lent itself to simple, moral terms, such as the "war on poverty" -- who could oppose that? Shogan reminds us that rhetoric, even moral rhetoric, is seldom "mere" rhetoric.
Read about
Number One on Lim's list.
The Page 99 Test: Elvin T. Lim's The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.
--Marshal Zeringue
Elvin T. Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush.
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