DescriptionThis dissertation research focuses on broad questions of democratic practice and institutional design by way of examining the origins and development of presidential rhetoric. I challenge some of the reigning assumptions about the rise of popular executive leadership in America by showing Twentieth Century practice not to be completely innovative, but to stem from the interest of the modern executive in a rhetorical defense of its interests, as anticipates in the executive theory of Machiavelli and Hobbes. I also make the argument for Twentieth Century continuity with earlier presidential behavior toward public opinion by a natural tension between constitutionalism and theories of partisanship that stretches from Bolingbroke to Jefferson, and beyond.