Abstract
Joseph Biden, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton were unique among 2007-2008 Democratic presidential candidates. They voted October 11, 2002 to authorize U.S. military use in Iraq and, with the exception of Edwards, voted on October 17, 2003 to authorize supplemental appropriations for the war. These votes presented an image problem for the candidates with Democratic primary voters who strongly opposed the war and favored its prompt end. Aside from Clinton, these candidates faded early in the contest. The current study analyzed attempts by Biden, Dodd and Edwards to repair, with voters, their respective images. Edwards' use of mortification and Biden's convincing use of transcendence are evaluated as the most effective image repair strategies. Implications for politicians, voters, and political communication scholars also are considered. Principal among these implications is the finding that political debates are an ideal context for the study of apologia.
Journal Title
Iowa Journal of Communication
Volume
46
Issue
2
First Page
159
Last Page
178
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Davis, Corey B. and Glantz, Mark J.
(2014)
"Resurrecting the Also-Rans: Image Repair Debate Strategies of Democrats Who Voted to Authorize the War in Iraq,"
Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 46:
No.
2, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol46/iss2/4
Copyright
©2014 Iowa Communication Association
