Whether writing from the perspective of rhetoric or political science, scholars of presidential communication often assume that the ultimate meaning of presidential rhetoric lies in whether it achieves policy success. In this book, David Ryfe argues that presidential rhetoric has many meanings, but that one of the most important is how it rhetorically constructs the practice of presidential communication itself. Drawing upon an examination of presidential rhetoric across the twentieth century, from Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton, Ryfe surveys the shifting meaning of presidential communication. In so doing, he shows that what is often called the "public" or "rhetorical" presidency is not one fixed entity, but rather a continuously negotiated discursive construct.