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An essay is presented which offers an analysis of presidential nomination acceptance addresses in the U.S. from 1960 to 1976. It explains the significance of acceptance speeches based on a comparison of their form and function with the Puritan jeremiad sermon, a genre of ritualistic rhetoric in the U.S. It discusses the cultural functions that are expected to be fulfilled by acceptance speeches and tackles the rhetorical functions of the jeremiad.

Studies the rhetoric of public relations politics, using former United States President Ronald Reagan as a contemporary case study. Reagan's thirty-five Republican appeal on a nationwide television broadcast on October 27, 1964, less than a week before the presidential election; Reagan's opening of his unannounced campaign for governor with an expansion of his Goldwater television address; Reagan's sudden rise from a Republican convert who had never held a public office to an important political figure.