Persuasion, speech making and rhetoric -- Metaphor in political discourse -- Winston Churchill : metaphor and heroic myth -- Martin Luther King : messianic myth -- Enoch Powell : the myth of the oracle -- Ronald Reagan and romantic myth : 'from the swamp to the stars' -- Margaret Thatcher and the myth of Boudicca -- Clinton and the rhetoric of image restoration -- Tony Blair and conviction rhetoric -- George Bush and the rhetoric of moral accounting -- Barack Obama and the myth of the American dream -- Myth, metaphor and leadership