Abstract
This study examines the narrative strategies used by Bill Clinton in his 1992 and 1996 campaign biography videos. Both videos address similar themes, utilize similar aesthetic strategies, and even repeat key rhetorical structures. In 1996, Clinton substitutes America for Hope as the key organizing symbol of his biography, thereby undermining the liberal Democratic perspective central to The Man From Hope. Instead he offers an image of America that foregrounds traditional Republican values and only makes oblique references to values typically held by Democrats. In doing so, the video biography re-presents Clinton as a moderate, in a creatively ambiguous treatment of the president that seems designed to appeal to a politically diverse America.
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