{"id":13784,"date":"2019-08-08T21:06:11","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T01:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/?page_id=13784"},"modified":"2019-08-30T14:18:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T18:18:05","slug":"yeo","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/writingprogram\/journal\/past-issues\/issue-11\/yeo\/","title":{"rendered":"First Responders: The Evolution of Presidential Roles and Rhetoric in the Era of School Shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elinor Yeo<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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At 11:19 a.m. on April 20, 1999, two senior students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado opened fire on their classmates, ultimately killing twelve students and one teacher. From that point, the U.S. has faced fifty mass murders or mass murder attempts in schools (Pearle). As with at-home terrorism or foreign interference in elections, the threat of a school shooting is a relatively new phenomenon for U.S. leaders to address. It could be expected, then, that presidents would need to develop a new rhetorical structure and tradition for their oratorical responses to school shootings. Political analysts have even lauded President Clinton\u2019s response to Columbine as \u201cestablishing several precedents for presidential responses to mass shootings going forward\u201d (Troy). According to scholars of rhetoric, Carolyn Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, however, presidents adhere to a certain model when addressing the nation following a national tragedy. Campbell and Jamieson call these addresses \u201cnational eulogies\u201d and argue that each president uses the same four rhetorical tactics to deliver a sufficient response (80). Presidential responses to school shootings do not diverge from this core pattern. Despite the unique and unprecedented nature of the tragedies, they require a response from the president structurally similar to those of any other national tragedy or death. This being said, there are several ways in which Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump vary their adaptations and implementations of this core structure. These slight rhetorical variations expose the nuances in the roles each president assumes following a school shooting, and how the political climate of their presidency informs these roles.<\/p>\n

U.S. Political Climate Surrounding Gun Violence 1999\u20132018<\/span>
\nBefore examining specific presidential addresses following school shootings, it is necessary to have an understanding of the political climates that shaped these responses. According to political analysts and scholars of presidential rhetoric, Clinton\u2019s oration following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School marked the first public presidential response to a school shooting in American history. Before 1999, presidents did not respond to tragedies such as school shootings that they viewed as impacting local communities only (Troy). Columbine, with thirteen deaths and over twenty injuries, marked the deadliest mass shooting in a high school in American history, warranting a strong and unprecedented response from the president (Shultz 65). Recent innovations in communication technology and broadcasting also allowed for Clinton to nationalize the tragedy at Columbine and begin a new expectation for presidential responses to school shootings.<\/p>\n

The Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting that occurred in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut was and remains the second deadliest school shooting in American history behind the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 (Shultz 65). Though Sandy Hook presented a new and unparalleled challenge in many ways, President Obama had faced fourteen mass shootings already in his three-year-old presidency, giving him more preparation and examples to follow than Clinton had following Columbine. Due to the rapid influx of gun violence since Columbine, the issue of gun reform had developed significantly more prevalence in national politics by 2012. Even before Sandy Hook, Obama\u2019s early attempts at gun reform fell short as they faced the congressional gridlock surrounding the issue. With more and more of his reform propositions failing to pass, Obama\u2019s frustration with the NRA and the congressional system mounted, reaching a new level when six teachers and twenty children between the ages of six and seven were shot and killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.<\/p>\n

The 2016 election brought an increase in division and hostility to the American political climate. Trump\u2019s campaign unearthed deep feelings of resentment between different socioeconomic, ethnic, and political groups. This tension persisted into Trump\u2019s \u201cvictory\u201d and presidency, and quickly infiltrated the dialogue surrounding gun violence, making the issue of gun control more politicized than ever before. Almost exactly one year before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Trump repealed an Obama-era gun regulation improving background checks on potential gun purchasers. He also received $11.4 million from the National Rifle Association towards his 2016 campaign advertisements (Timmons). Trump\u2019s early affiliation with the NRA and allegiance to pro-gun laws during his presidency sparked public response, especially among students, following the Parkland shooting. This reaction culminated in the March for Our Lives, which I will analyze later as the first ever national youth-led anti-gun protest and a reflection of the people\u2019s demand for government action.<\/p>\n

Presidential Responses to School Shootings<\/span>
\nThroughout their careers, scholars of rhetoric Karlyn Campbell and Kathleen Jamieson have developed several rubrics for various genres of presidential oration. In their 2008 work, Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words, they identify a rubric for presidential responses to national tragedies. According to this rubric, presidents employ the same four rhetorical tactics in their addresses to the nation following a tragedy. They begin by using deeply emotional or religious rhetoric to adopt a pastoral role in comforting the public. They then provide an explanation for the tragedy, placing the event in the larger context of the nation\u2019s past and present, in order to provide some sort of greater reasoning for why the tragedy would occur. They offer this reasoning again by transforming the deaths that occurred into symbols of national resilience and unity. Lastly, each president offers some form of assurance that the tragedy will not be repeated (Campbell and Jamieson 80). This rubric continues to apply to presidential responses to school shootings, though Clinton, Obama, and Trump vary in their implementation of its core guidelines.<\/p>\n

The political climates in which Clinton, Obama, and Trump gave their responses have triggered the rhetorical variations between them. As aforementioned, political and rhetorical analysts widely view the Columbine High School shooting as the first of its kind, making Clinton\u2019s response to the event the first of its kind as well. On May 20, 1999, President Clinton delivered an address in Littleton, Colorado to a gymnasium filled with members of the Columbine High School Community. Analyst Tevi Troy refers to this address as \u201c\u2026a vintage Clinton performance\u2014feeling the pain of the audience, highlighting the importance of values, and trying to bring the nation together in a shared enterprise.\u201d Clinton\u2019s address upholds Campbell and Jamieson\u2019s standard for pastoral and unifying rhetoric in national eulogies. He quotes Scripture verses of St. Paul and enforces national unity and collective healing by telling the students, \u201cAll America has looked and listened with shared grief and enormous affection and admiration for you\u2026Take care of yourselves and your families first. Take care of the school next. But remember, you can help America heal, and in so doing you will speed the process of healing for yourselves\u201d (Clinton).<\/p>\n

In addition to rhetoric around healing and unity, Clinton continues to uphold Campbell and Jamieson\u2019s rubric in his use of those who died in the Columbine tragedy as symbols of national resilience and overcoming what Professor of English Craig Rood refers to as the \u201cwarrant of the dead\u201d (48). He tells the students that, in addition to helping each other and the nation heal, \u201c\u2026there is something else you can do, and something I believe that you should do for yourselves and your friends, to make sure they will be remembered. Every special one of them\u201d (Clinton). Although this call for remembrance and honoring the dead follows the traditional guidelines for national eulogies, the \u201csomething else\u201d Clinton notes goes beyond Campbell and Jamieson\u2019s rubric, and is more indicative of Clinton\u2019s position in history at the time of the address.<\/p>\n

As the first president to respond to a school shooting, Clinton sought to adopt a proactive role following Columbine, in the hope of thwarting the risk of another tragedy of its kind. When he tells the students there is something else they can do, he specifically calls for them to use their experience to promote change, in order to ensure that Columbine will go down in history as both the first and last school shooting of its caliber. He acknowledges this opportunity again when he tells the students, \u201cWe know somehow that what happened to you pierced the soul of America. And it gives you a chance to be heard in a way no one else can be heard, by the President and by ordinary people in every community in this country.\u201d He goes on to tell them, \u201c\u2026you have a unique chance \u2014 a chance \u2014 to make sure that the children of Columbine are never forgotten\u201d (Clinton). Clinton\u2019s address stands apart from the national eulogies that preceded it because it creates a new role for the president following school shootings specifically\u2014one that sets a precedent of both addressing these tragedies and using this specific tragedy to make significant headway in ending gun violence in America. Clinton\u2019s call to the students contains a level of optimism, motivation, and hope in the American people that they will respond to Columbine with enough heartbreak and anger to unite in creating \u201ca culture of values instead of a culture of violence\u2026to keep the guns out of the wrong hands\u2026to make sure kids who are in trouble \u2014 and there will always be some \u2014 are identified early and reached and helped\u201d (Clinton). In preaching unity, utilizing the \u201cwarrant of the dead,\u201d and inspiring hope and optimism that an event as tragic as Columbine will not be repeated, Clinton employs traditional rhetorical tactics as summarized by Campbell and Jamieson\u2019s rubric. He strengthens and alters this rubric, however, to match the unprecedented nature of his response to Columbine, and the unique opportunity in history he has to stop gun violence before it escalates.<\/p>\n

As we now know, Columbine did not go down in history as the last school shooting of its caliber. When Barack Obama spoke at a prayer vigil in Newtown, Connecticut, he had already grown frustrated with the onslaught of mass shootings that followed Columbine. In his responses to these earlier shootings of his presidency, Obama heavily adopted the pastoral role. According to author Andre E. Johnson, Obama\u2019s earlier national eulogies relied on \u201can action-oriented faith emphasizing love and the ethical treatment of one’s neighbor” (52). Obama continued to adhere to the traditional rubric for national eulogies in his response to Sandy Hook by quoting Corinthians, sharing his emotional response as a father to the horrible deaths of elementary-schoolers, and choosing a prayer vigil as the platform for his address. However, Sandy Hook marked a turning point in Obama\u2019s rhetoric following school shootings.<\/p>\n

Due to the onslaught of gun violence during his term, it is no surprise that, of the three presidents analyzed in this paper, Obama focuses on gun control and policy most immediately and forcefully in his responses to the major school shootings that occurred in his term. This urgent and explicit attention to policy diverges from Campbell and Jamieson\u2019s rubric as well as Clinton\u2019s response to Columbine, which only briefly alluded to policy reform and placed more emphasis on the emotional response. Obama adapts the traditional rubric to progress his policy goals and to fulfill his new role following Sandy Hook. He especially uses messages of unity and a collective response to the tragedy to bolster his policy objectives and generate national support. Like Clinton, Obama addresses his audience as part of the solution, in order to give \u201cthe impression that [he] is committed to rebuilding in the face of this tragedy and that he sees this process as a collective effort, one which requires the commitments and impartiality of all Americans in order to effect meaningful change\u201d (McWilliams 96). Author David Frank explains that, by holding the nation and immediate audience partially accountable for enacting change, he places gun violence \u201cwithin the reach of policy,\u201d providing hope that the tragedy will not be repeated if the nation takes the proper policy measures (670).<\/p>\n

Though Obama does follow traditional guidelines in his use of the \u201cwarrant of the dead\u201d to promote national unity towards change, he also contradicts the rubric by approaching this specific tragedy with a new level of cynicism. In his response at the prayer vigil, Obama states:<\/p>\n