In each speech, Bush and his staff design his words in order to target a specific audience, but must also carefully consider the effect his words will have on other peripheral groups. In his April 5 radio address, Bush's obvious primary audience is the American populace. However, the heterogeneous nature of his people means that the President must form his primary target group much more specifically than that. This choice reflects in the focus of his language. The audience that Bush most wants to connect with in this speech is the American who supports the war effort. This is evidenced by the attention paid by the radio address to detailing American and coalition accomplishments, and giving additional anecdotes that further paint a picture of Saddam's Iraqi army as an evil group, valuing their own lives over all else. One could imagine core Bush supporters eagerly ingesting every word the President speaks, and then using bits and pieces as they talk to their friends afterward. This kind of a warm reception is not guaranteed by all, however. Bush must also think of how his words will be received by other groups, such as Americans who have been moderately against the war. Though his speech would be unlikely to persuade those who have vehemently opposed America's entrance into Iraq, they could reach those who rest in more of a middle ground. This audience might also be considered to include others around the world, with similar distrust of American intentions. Many of the same messages apply to this group, however, the consideration of this peripheral audience may cause a change in approach. Bush's radio address is very straight forward, at least on the surface appearing free from rhetorical charge. It is safe to assume that Bush does not feel that he can elicit an emotional response from this audience, and that therefore he must appear to merely be conveying the facts of the war, and allowing the audience to judge them as they will. His only emotional appeals deal not with the war itself, but with the soldiers participating in it.
Unlike the radio address and its implied audiences, the April 10 address is officially targeted to the people of Iraq. In this speech the President's focus must be very different. Here he is faced with a much more delicate situation. Bush must assuage the fears of a country that is living in the middle of a war. Here his primary aim must be to connect with those who are in the middle ground of public opinion, unsure whether to welcome or despise the American troops. In this speech Bush focuses on benefits for the Iraqi people. He paints a picture of the freedoms to be had in a country without Saddam. His rhetoric is clearly not intended for Iraq alone. He must also consider the rest of the Arab world and how it views America's actions in the region. He must convince the nearby Arab populations that American interference is a better choice than continued control by Saddam. He lays out in grand terms what the Iraqi people have to gain. ``You will be free to build a better life,'' he says, ``instead of building more palaces for Saddam and his sons, free to pursue economic prosperity without the hardship of economic sanctions, free to travel and speak your mind, free to join in the political affairs of Iraq'' (Bush ``President's Message''). In this speech Bush's words paint him not as a strong military leader, but instead as a benevolent helping hand, one that simply enables the Iraqi people to do what they would choose on their own if they were able.
Though the art of rhetoric is nothing new, the world-wide dissemination of a message is uniquely modern. Before the dawn of the communications age, the thought of having to consider how words delivered to an American audience would influence the Arab world would be incomprehensible. At no point in history have such disparate groups simultaneously been melded into a single audience. The possibilities for differing interpretations of the speech broaden with each new mindset a listener brings. Sturken and Cartwright says that ``People often see an image differently from how it is intended to be seen, either because they bring experiences and associations to a particular image that were not anticipated by its producer, or because the meanings they derive are informed by the context (or setting) in which an image in seen'' (46). Though the speaker can assume different dominant meanings to which the audience will most likely be able to relate, he cannot fully be assured how the listener will receive his message. The process of trying to communicate meaning is a fluid one. Sturken and Cartwright liken it to ``a kind of bargaining over meaning that takes place among viewer, image, and context'' (57). The composition of the audience, and the context in which it comes to this bargaining table, play vital roles in determining how the message is to be received.
Clearly no speaker can fully understand the framework in which each listener will judge his speech. That is why the audience of a speech must be considered as ``peoples,'' and not as individual persons. Though this people may be thought of as a group of persons, it is not simply a plural rewording. Instead, a people is a group created by the rhetoric, existing as conceptions inside the message of the speech. As Michael McGee writes, the people has its identity established by the speaker. ``'The people','' he says, ``focus on the leader to establish a group identity ... he then adapts [his convictions] to his vision of what a 'people,' when created, will want to hear'' (McGee 241). In his rhetoric the speaker must craft groupings to which the listener will want to relate. In his radio address, Bush does this through his use of inclusive pronouns such as ``we'' and ``our.'' In the context of his speech these words do not simply mean the military, or even the people of the United States. Instead they grow to encompass a bigger conception of those who align themselves against Saddam. The people created by this identification is not permanent, it merely exists for the context of the speech. McGee says that this people is not imaginary, instead ``they are conjured into objective reality, remain so as long as the rhetoric which defined them has force, and in the end wilt away, becoming once again merely a collection of individuals'' (242). Bush creates a similar people in his message to Iraq, selling the idea of a popular ownership of the country, and connecting all Iraqi listeners into that idea.
The ideals presented in both speeches are those that are uniquely connected with the meta-narratives espoused by the United States. The freedoms Bush presents are very western in their origin. Bush presents the Iraqis with the chance to create a representative government, and to participate in the politics of their country. The people he creates as his audience is one for whom those things are a goal. He must then hope that the people who listen to the speech identify with that people and choose to associate themselves with it. If they do, his speech succeeds and public opinion may be swayed into more alignment with the American effort. If not, however, the advancement of our western meta-narrative into the region is stalled as the audience distances themselves from the ideals it upholds.
Public rhetoric today is a complicated system. There are multiple inputs, multiple outputs, and man variables that can influence the effectiveness of an attempt to convey a message. For someone like the President, the job of crafting a highly effective speech is too big of a job for any one man to do. A team of experts pore over Presidential speeches, hoping to strike the right mixture with every effort. The modern media ensures that each message is instantly available world-wide; a speech given in Pennsylvania or Iowa can be analyzed by audiences in Europe and Asia. The importance of world politics demands that an international figure such as President Bush give careful consideration to each word he says, looking at not only their immediate impact on the live audience in front of him, but also how the message will be produced by people approaching it from a very different context.