WASHINGTON, June 27 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama has already revealed the secret political weapon most likely to make his presidency a success: his bully pulpit.

The bully pulpit is the term Theodore Roosevelt used more than a century ago to describe his activist use of rhetoric during the nearly eight years he successfully served as president of the United States.

The use of rhetoric to command and maintain national leadership has been formally studied since the days of the great Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago. The Founding Fathers of the United States were steeped in Aristotle's teachings and in the formal use of rhetoric as well.

However, in the 36 years between the end of the 1861-65 Civil War and TR's accession to the presidency in 1901, successive, mainly Republican presidents, had been low-key, cautious and reassuring. Bold rhetorical leadership went out of fashion.

TR changed that. Ironically, his most successful successors in the use of rhetoric as a tool of presidential leadership were Democrats -- Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. It took Ronald Reagan to show that a conservative Republican president could again command powerful, inspiring rhetoric as well as liberal Democratic ones.