Public opinion and American foreign policy: The case of illusory support for the Panama Canal treaties

1 August 1985

journal article
research article
Published by Taylor & Francis in Quarterly Journal of Speech

Vol. 71 (3) , 302-317
https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638509383738

Abstract

This essay examines the impact of arguments about public opinion on ratification of the Panama Canal treaties in 1978. By revealing how a “fictional” pro‐treaty public influenced the Senate, it demonstrates how a distorted but politically relevant portrait of public opinion may be constructed rhetorically from equivocal empirical data.

Keywords

This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:

The rhetoric of American foreign policy
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1984
The Polls: Polling on Panama-Si; Don't Know; Hell, No!
Public Opinion Quarterly, 1978
Lethal rhetoric: The selling of the China myths
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1975
An Approach to the Scientific Study of Past Public Opinion
Public Opinion Quarterly, 1967