This book analyses the rhetorical background and strategies of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) and those of Ronald Reagan in reference to the 1981 strike. Was firing 11,000 federal employees the only option, or the best option available? The work examines the applicable federal statute, which provided and encouraged more leeway than the administration exercised; the stormy relations between the controllers and the Federal Aviation Administration; and the development of the rhetorical persona of Ronald Reagan, a persona favoring epideictic over deliberative rhetoric.(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1993; revised with new preface, bibliography, and index)