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CHAPTER 1 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Rhetorical Politics and Political Rhetorics   S cholars in this volume address the initial classical canon of rhetoric, which the Greeks termed heuristic and the Romans called inventio, as they investigate the creation of presidential persuasions. The critics also acknowledge a classical practice, begun by Antiphon, generally accepted as one of the first Athenian logographers, that political rhetoric can be ghostwritten.

Franklin’s second rhetorical-political mistake was a metaphorical distinction, too clever by half, as he relied on figurative language that betrayed his true intentions. ”23 Lacking a clear political exigency and utilizing disingenuous rhetoric, Roosevelt inadvertently invited personal and political attacks that inexorably defeated him. ”24 To summarize these case studies, FDR’s political problems were concomitant rhetorical problems. He faced genuine political predicaments— the need to react to Japanese aggression, the exigency of a conservative Court, and the necessity for Democrats to be Democrats, albeit of the Rooseveltian genre.

He chose not to, but he could have discussed why conservative Southern    Democrats, who impeded the South’s economic growth, deserved to be attacked in the  primaries. The want of good reasons in his rhetoric invited counter, subversive metaphors. The court-packing and purge metaphors, coined by his opponents, contributed handily to his defeats, for these images appeared to be warranted in each case. As for the quarantine metaphor, the problem was real enough, but FDR used a vivid metaphor that he would not sustain politically.