“My Administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

U.S. President Barack Obama felt compelled to speak these words to the leading U.S. bank CEOs at a White House gathering to which they had been summoned on April 9, 2009. Driven by the public’s anger at the financial crisis, the President employed a metaphor invoking 19th-century images of “peasants with pitchforks” and scythes rising up to demand better treatment from their overlords. That such revolutions regularly occurred from 1776 until 1917 in Europe, North America and South America added a modicum of historical weight to the implied threat. more »

Political Communication is both a field of study and a sport. Rapid media changes and pressing policy concerns are the core of the game, in which writing and verbal communication is the skill, and deciphering the intended message from the actual speech or press release is the talent.

According to George Washington University, Political Communication is “the study of the flow of information through political processes: The study of who knows what, when, where and how; and how people use their information to further political goals.” more »