Research Note: “Comparing Traditional Presidential Rhetoric: Trump Versus Biden”

Abstract

Even though they both held the same office, Donald Trump and Joe Biden could not have presented themselves more differently. Biden presented himself as the restorer of tradition after Trump was the disruptor. In this research note, we examine seven sets of speeches that hold constant either the timing or the setting to see if their rhetoric contrasted as much as the way they presented themselves. We find that the words and emotions that they invoked were not nearly as systematically distinct from each other as we expected. We argue that this result demonstrates that the power of the presidency as an institution is sufficiently constraining that even the most unorthodox candidate’s rhetoric mirrors that of a traditionalist. When we do uncover some distinctions between them, those that exist are, for the most part, consistent with our expectations.