From the Declaration of Independence to the Gettysburg Address, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy" speech to John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the ongoing American democratic revolution has been nourished by a rhetorical revolution of similar magnitude. The pioneering rhetorical scholar William Norwood Brigance noted in the early 1940s that American history has been driven by the power of rhetoric...