• Meet Baylor’s nationally recognized expert on presidential rhetoric

    Dr. Martin Medhurst

    With Election Day fast approaching, millions of Americans are focused on what the presidential candidates have to say — but few are listening with as much insight as Baylor professor Martin Medhurst.

    Dr. Medhurst is widely considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on presidential rhetoric. After teaching at UC-Davis and Texas A&M, Medhurst came to Baylor in 2003 as Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric & Communication and Professor of Political Science. He has written or edited 13 books, with topics ranging from the top 100 American speeches of the 20th century to the rhetoric of the Cold War era, and has contributed more than 100 published articles in scholarly journals. Medhurst even founded his own interdisciplinary journal on public discourse, Rhetoric & Public Affairs.

    News organizations ranging from CBS Evening News to Wired and Yahoo! to The Dallas Morning News have sought out Medhurst’s expertise to better understand the 2016 election, particularly given the contrasting styles of this year’s candidates.

    Why make the words presidents and politicians use the focus of one’s life work? Medhurst gives a simple reason: It matters. “I believe that politics is consequential — it has effects on real people — and that makes it worthy of study, in my book,” he says. “The President of the United States is the single most powerful individual in the world. Surely it is important to understand one of the main sources of that power.”

    Sic ’em, Dr. Medhurst!