Reagan and Mitterrand respond to international crisis: Creating versus transcending appearances

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Abstract
The argument of this essay is that the form and the function of presidential foreign policy rhetoric are grounded in a nation's acceptable images of political reality. To be successful a president may be expected to build certain images of the enemy or certain links to the values implicit in a nation's culture and history. The author examines the rhetorical responses of Presidents Reagan and Mitterrand to the terrorist bombing of peace‐keeping forces in Beirut and to the acts of military intervention by the U.S. and France in Grenada and Chad. Whereas Reagan wants to create the appearance of power in responding to a threatening enemy, Mitterrand attempts to transcend the appearance of military involvement by naming what he did as maintaining an “equilibrium” where respect, not power, is the political reality. These differing strategies are clearly related to what the people expect of their leaders.