America’s position toward the issue of Middle Eastern democracy has always been more nuanced than its rhetoric implies. The Arab uprisings that began in December 2010 added tensions to this dynamic as the Untied States government differentially emphasized democratic ideals and state interests for each of the Arab countries undergoing upheavals. Although analyses of U.S. policy in the region and anecdotal illustrations of its rhetoric abound, few research projects have systematically assessed U.S. public discourses with specific attention to the issue of Arab democratization—despite the steep upsurge of interest in the topic over the last decade. To address this gap, this paper provides a communication-based analysis of U.S. political discourse on Arab democratization since the end of the Cold War, revealing much about America’s consistent use of democratic rhetoric in the pursuit of sometimes inconsistent regional policy objectives. Specifically, I analyze and thematically classify more than two thousand texts over the past two decades, including presidential speeches, print and television news reports, and foreign policy journal articles. Three primary classifications of the discourse emerged over time, each of which is illustrated using contrasting themes that characterize the key perspectives within these debates. These are: (1) democratic rationales: realism and idealism, (2) democratic scrutiny: observation and proclamation, and (3) democratic expectations: optimism and pessimism. The paper closes with a discussion of the dominant patterns within the discourse organized according to three distinct rhetorical eras which I label: pragmatism (1991-2001), ideal internationalism (2002-2007), and pragmatic idealism (2008-2012). These eras represent the dominant governmental policies toward Arab democratization at a given time and are used to illustrate both the consistency and fluidity of key points of debate among politicians and pundits in the U.S public sphere. I conclude by discussing the mass media’s performance over the three eras and the issues of ideology and power prevalent in the discourse. Furthermore, I suggest some of the consequences caused by the strategic application of similar democratic language by different political actors pursing dissimilar objectives. Among these are an increased skepticism in the Middle East about U.S. democracy-promotion agendas and the creation of a particularly charged rhetorical environment through which current and future advocates of democracy in the region must now delicately tread.