| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. By Mary E. Stuckey. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004. x, 413 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-7006-1349-8.)

When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences. By Eric Alterman. (New York: Viking, 2004. xvi, 447 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-670-03209-3.)

Using case studies to illustrate commonalities in presidential discourse, these books offer differing styles of evaluation, one cautious and the other more risk taking. One author shows how presidential oratory could define the mainstream and relegate others to the periphery. The second writer explores mendacity during five recent crucial U.S. dilemmas, arguing that presidents shamed the American legacy and caused policy problems for years to come. Mary E. Stuckey is guardedly innovative. Eric Alterman is boldly assertive or, some might argue, overly speculative.

Stuckey suggests that public rhetoric balances competing interests, is conditioned by how a president defines acceptable citizenship, and valorizes some while rendering others invisible. She concludes, "It is not all that useful, in this sense, to talk about inclusion in general terms. It makes more sense to place these discussions precisely within political, social, and economic contexts" (Stuckey, p. 12). Employing a lively running narrative, Alterman re-creates the Yalta accords of 1945, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the Gulf of Tonkin confrontation and resolution in 1964, early 1980s U.S. support of the El Salvador dictatorship, and the 1986 Iran-Contra scandal. He outlines policy failures and discusses an alternative future, had the presidents not lied.

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