Barack Obama’s September 9, 2009 Healthcare Speech to Congress

Abstract

This chapter analyzes Barack Obama’s major healthcare speech to Congress. It situates it in the political context of an increasingly powerful conservative ideology of limited government which was successfully introduced by Ronald Reagan, which remained influential during the presidency of Bill Clinton, and became well entrenched during the presidency of George W. Bush. It pays particular attention to the place of the “middle class” in Obama’s rhetoric and to the significance of the phrase “middle class” as an idealized American signifier. It illustrates what rhetorical strategies are used to demonstrate his concern for the middle class, including strategies of moralization, moral muting, and historical temporality. It notes the importance of conciliation, compromise, and bipartisanship in his rhetoric, and the way in which he is deliberately cautious about expressing an overtly liberal ethos, favoring instead an implicit ethos that does not advocate social and economic rights in a broad manner. He couples moral arguments for expanded health insurance with pragmatic ones based on economics and principles of efficiency. Like Clinton, he uses the rhetorical strategy of personalization to advance the ethos of his proposed healthcare reforms. It notes that low-income and working-class Americans are largely excluded from his rhetoric and, consequently, from the social imaginary and moral order to which he refers and which his rhetoric constructs.