| Abstract: | This essay explores the aesthetic and rhetorical implications of prudent and imprudent presidential performance fragments embodied in photo‐opportunities, thereby addressing presidential rhetoric's “visual turn. “Assembled as a critical rhetoric text, this essay posits that presidential performance fragments privilege the dominant ideology and its power relationships. In addition, this project argues that prudent presidential performances signal a chief executive's consubstantiality with the mythic presidency, centralized authority, and active political leadership. Imprudent photo‐opportunity performances, by contrast, impact negatively a president's image, agenda, credibility, and authority. The essay concludes with a discussion of how political images symbolically affect the citizenry and democratic processes, and advances foundational issues for the critic. |
