The jeremiad, based as it was on a cyclical view of history, provided a structure in which a speaker would document just how debauched his brethren had become, how much backsliding had taken hold of a new generation, only to turn around to a call for redemption — moving from decline to reawakening. The historian who did the most to explain this structure of speech, Sacvan Bercovitch, believed the jeremiad permeated public rhetoric to such a degree that speakers and listeners became unconscious of the genre and its inherent tensions. The jeremiad established a scaffolding for American public rhetoric, including political speech writing.