Purposeful Avoidance of Toulmin

I'm working on a book report right now, and I'm reading David Zarefsky's President Johnson's War on Poverty. It's an interesting case study for a few different reasons, especially in relation to the work we're doing in the Arguing Differently.

First off, the title itself plays into our Argument Culture discussions. The book unpacks the 'War on Poverty' language, and shows how the policies of this program forward this structural metaphor into the popular subconscious of the nation. Johnson's use of this metaphor is expansive, making popular speeches that include 'waging the war', 'full-frontal attack', and 'weapons and tactics'. Zarefsky even extends his analysis to examine the impact it had on the military at this time. I haven't gotten too far into it, but I hope to see how a Rhetorical scholar approaches these issues.
Not only that, but I've never given much thought to how Rhetoric plays into public policy debates, how Rhetoric can influence the policy decisions of America, and how Presidential language impacts all of those things as well. For example, even though this was a Congressional program to be deliberated by members of the legislature, the president enacted the legislation, led a program of popular appeals to get it passed, and then celebrated the success of his program. These rhetorical acts impacted public policy, and I hope to see how those arguments are connected.

It's a new form of argument for me, a form of arguing differently. I'll keep you updated on how it's going, heck, I may even do a presentation on it one of these days :)

In other news: Toulmin. More on that later.