Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Really Matter? Part 3 of 3

Posted on October 29, 2012 by DanielSchafer

Last time I argued that Fox News’ ethos was damaged following the Democratic National Convention for criticizing President Obama’s never using the word “God” in his keynote address, and therefore not appealing to Christian voters, even though he quoted a passage from the Bible. But Fox News isn’t running for President of the United States, and this race may therefore not be affected by faith-related credibility issues discussed by news networks. President Obama, however, may have taken a credibly hit during the convention where dozens spoke on stage in support of his campaign. One such supporter was Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who was widely critiqued (and justifiably so, it would seem) for being a “flip-flopper” on important issues during his 2004 presidential campaign.

Figure 3: John Kerry calling for Mitt Romney to seek consistency on major issues campaign.

If not merely ironic, John Kerry’s 2012 DNC Speech comes with little situated ethos, and ultimately because the speech occurred at the Democratic National Convention, it harms President Obama, who is the ranking member of the Democratic Party. Just as Fox News’ comments about President Obama’s lack of “God” references sheds doubt on the networks credibility, comments like Kerry’s call in to question whether or not the public can trust what representatives of the Democratic Party have to say.

But will diminished credibility have an impact on the election at large? It’s hard to say.

In 2008 I found Senator Clinton’s support of then-Senator Obama odd, though I wasn’t surprised by it. Judging by Obama’s landslide victory, Clinton’s credibility was not harmed by several debates worth of disagreement with the candidate. In general Clinton certainly agreed with Obama’s platform much more so than McCain’s. As such, the two-party system engenders a stance that requires individuals to vote for the candidate they disagree with less, not necessarily the one they agree with the most.

So what is the role of ethos in a nation-wide election? Does credibility really matter as long as the candidate eventually says or does “the right thing” in the eyes of the voting public? It didn’t harm President Obama when Hillary Clinton supported him even after months of strong, public disagreement on key issues. In a country where a significant portion of voters care whether or not a candidate goes to church, will claims by conservative media outlets that President Obama doesn’t support Christian ideals harm Governor Romney’s campaign if it comes to light that these criticisms are unfounded? Will having an accused “flip-flopper” deride Governor Romney of changing his platform damage President Obama’s re-election campaign? I don’t think so. And rhetoricians who put stock in ethos may just find this troubling.

Series References

ABS News. Transcript: President Obama’s DNC speech. September 6, 2012. Retrieved from: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/transcript-president-obamas democraticconvention-speech/story?id=17175575&singlePage=true#.UE1P27KPV-8%29

Boston Globe. Anti-Mormon bias facing Mitt Romney is as strong as what his father faced in1967, poll shows. June 21, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/06/21/anti-mormon-bias-facing-mittromney-strong-what-his-father-faced-pollshows/L5j6dCabnhjQvarTu4WOCK/story.html

Meet the Press. Sepbember 9: Mitt Rmney, Ann Romney, Julian Castro, Peggy Noonan, E.J. Dionne, Bill Bennett, Chuck Todd. September 9, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48959273/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/september-mittromney-ann-romney-julian-castro-peggy-noonan-ej-dionne-bill-bennett-chucktodd/% 29.#.UE4CZJYmV8E

Politico. John Kerry DNC speech (text). September 6, 2012. Retrieved from: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=2B54C58E-0840-DBFA-16F527C6553BF562

The Daily Show. Hope and change 2 – last week this week. September 7, 2012. Retrieved
from: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/fri-september-7-2012/hope-and-change-2– lastweek-this-week

The Huffington Post. Robert Jeffress, southern Baptist pastor who called Mormonism a ‘Cult,’ endorses Mitt Romney. April 17, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/robert-jeffress-mitt-romneyendorsement_
n_1433215.html?

The New York Times. John Kerry’s DNC Full Speech – Elections 2012. September 6, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8WtLqKJcTk

The New York Times. Presidential map. December 9, 2008. Retrieved from: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html

Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Really Matter? Part 2 of 3

Posted on October 25, 2012 by DanielSchafer

Criticism of Obama in this regard is also interesting given Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. In an interview with David Gregory that aired on Meet the Press on September 9th, Romney describes his faith as “Judeo Christian” (Meet the Press, 2012).

Figure 2: David Gregory’s interview with the Romneys on Meet the Press.

In the same interview Gregory describes Romney as “private” about his faith, and there almost seems to be an unspoken rule in the campaign not to talk about the fact that he is a part of the Mormon Church despite ample references to his church and its community. From the Obama perspective Romney’s faith is likely a non-issue. President Obama, for example, is certainly in favor of freedom of religion. Interestingly, though, some non-Mormon Christian conservatives, which one could argue there are certainly many of, have expressed concern over Romney’s faith. Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress famously called the Mormon Church a cult, though he now endorses Romney (The Huffington Post, 2012). (You can see Jeffress’ comments here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aF2Cnhr5jQ) However, according to one poll, “only 57 percent of Americans even know that Romney is a Mormon” (Boston Globe, 2012). But given Romney’s regular references to “church” and “God” it is curious that Fox News criticizes Obama for a lack of such language given significant differences many see between the God of many conservative Christians and the God of the Mormon faith. In short, one could argue that President Obama’s rhetorical approach aligns better with the conservative Christian base than Mitt Romney’s. Yet, Obama is criticized by Fox News for not appealing to Christian voters. For me such duplicity damages Fox News’ ethos.

References

Boston Globe. Anti-Mormon bias facing Mitt Romney is as strong as what his father faced in 1967, poll shows. June 21, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.boston.com/politicalintelligence/2012/06/21/anti-mormon-bias-facing-mittromney-strong-what-his-father-faced-poll-shows/L5j6dCabnhjQvarTu4WOCK/story.html

Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Matter? Part 1 of 3

Posted on October 15, 2012 by DanielSchafer

I remember watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama debate several times in 2008. To me that was the election. At the time much of the country was so displeased with President Bush that it seemed impossible for a Republican to get elected. Indeed, President Obama ended up defeating Senator John McCain with 365 electoral votes, nearly one hundred more than the 270 needed to win (The New York Times, 2008).

Figure 1: President Obama handily defeated Senator McCain in 2008.

But more than having a good idea that the winner of the Democratic primary would go on to be the nation’s next president, the debates themselves were educational and downright entertaining. For several weeks two passionate candidates who agreed on much sparred on topics they disagreed on with great enthusiasm (and at times, even exasperation). Despite these disagreements, though, Senator Clinton, as expected, jumped to support Senator Obama once he earned the party’s nomination. She gave this support despite their, apparently many, disagreements. Did Americans take Clinton’s support of her former adversary seriously? For the most part, they did. But shouldn’t Clinton’s ethos be damaged by such a turn?

Following President Obama’s keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Fox News anchors made the comment that the Democratic Platform never mentions “God.” (See Jon Stewart’s take for a useful mashup of relevant clips) However in his DNC keynote address President Obama uses the word “scripture,” and even quotes a passage from the book of Jeremiah when he says “There is hope in your future” (ABS News, 2012). Criticism of Obama’s lack of God references is essentially an observation that he fails to position the United States as a Christian nation. But even phrases like “In God we trust” and “One nation under God” can refer to deities in multiple religions. Meanwhile, quoting a passage from the Bible is squarely Christian and, one could argue, establishing that particular faith as normative. So why did Fox News deride the President for not mentioning “God”? Shouldn’t such a glaring mistruth damage the network’s credibility among viewers?

References

ABS News. Transcript: President Obama’s DNC speech. September 6, 2012. Retrieved from: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/transcript-president-obamas-democraticconvention-speech/story?id=17175575&singlePage=true#.UE1P27KPV-8%29

The Daily Show. Hope and change 2 – last week this week. September 7, 2012. Retrieved from: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/fri-september-7-2012/hope-and-change-2—lastweek-this-week

The New York Times. Presidential map. December 9, 2008. Retrieved from: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html

GoonSwarm, Sadly, In the News

Posted on September 15, 2012 by Ben

A sobering footnote to the piece Matt Howard and I wrote for the issue #7 of Harlot on the rhetorical practices of GoonSwarm, a group of players in the EVE Online MMO: One of the casualties in the recent violent outbreak in Benghazi, Sean “Vile Rat” Smith, was a central member of GoonSwarm. The GoonSwarm community has been mentioned in news coverage of the event by several outlets, as guild members were among the first to confirm Smith’s identity as one of the State Department casualties. See The Huffington Post‘s coverage of the story here.

Water Snake is related to Water Fish.

Posted on August 26, 2012 by

I present Common Sense from Chet Tiffany. Common sense-you know, sound judgment, prudence, or wisdom. Try reading it aloud because it’s fun and sort of flows poetically. And then think about “common sense” and how a lotta times it depends on audience and values to be common and/or sense. I like Chet, but his/her sense ain’t really common…to me. What I mean is I imagine Chet Tiffany is like me and suffered a lot with regards to “common sense.” What I mean is “common sense” is a big assumption that’s rarely common and not always the only sense.

My dad often asked me if I had “common sense” or would strongly suggest I use my “common sense.” It got me worried about what he meant and I felt like I was under common-sense surveillance a lot. Before acting I would think, “is this common sense?” or “would this be common sense?” An audience of Dad meant I’d rarely get it right or be common sensical.

Anyway here are some examples of “common” and “uncommon” sense that are in no way like Chet’s. I don’t know how to imitate his artistry.

Common sense: Turn off the air conditioner in your car to get more power—it’s common sense. Value=speed
Uncommon sense: Use air conditioner and feel cool and get less power—it’s common sense. Value=comfort
Common sense: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—it’s common sense.
Value=money
Uncommon sense: It ain’t broke, but it ain’t pretty. So I’m gonna fix it—it’s common sense. Value=visual aesthetics
Common sense: If there’s snow on the ground wear your shoes to class—it’s common sense. Value=comfort
Uncommon sense: If there’s snow on the ground don’t wear your shoes to class—it’s common sense. Value=coolness…I mean fashionable in reckless behavior.
Common sense: If a chicken doesn’t fit into a microwave to be defrosted, rig the microwave so it’ll operate with the door open—it’s common sense.
Value=problem solving to make squares pegs fit round holes.
Uncommon sense: If a chicken doesn’t fit into a microwave to be defrosted, defrost it in the sink with warm water—it’s common sense.
Value=problem solving to try a different mode. Thanks for some of the great examples, Mary Bendel-Simso!

Water Snake is related to Water Fish.

It’s common sense people!

Language Intelligence: A Non-Academic’s Take on Rhetoric

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Ben

Not really a book review (because I haven’t read it, duh!), but more of a heads-up: political blogger Joe Romm (from ThinkProgress) has just released his book Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion From Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga. As you can tell from the subtitle, it’s more or less a pop take on rhetoric, partly a “what to look for” and partly a “how to” manual… Romm delves into politics (naturally), but also into areas like scientific discourse and popular culture. I’ve glanced at some blog posts about the book, and from what I can glean, it delves heavily into matters relating to style (lots of references to “the figures of speech”) and oratorical performance. Maybe worth a read?

Hungry Man Chicken Dinner and Love

Posted on August 10, 2012 by

Okay, this is half-baked, baked-half, and most likely under theorized but then, again, I’m shorting, so I think it’s okay.

Cluck-cluck.

It’s really just a parallel I’ve noticed between rhetoric and conditioning (the non-hair follicular kind). There’s a trope called metonymy and in rhetoric it means that you are making an association between things through their contiguity (Burbules, 1997). So, for instance, say you’re advertising for a Hungry Man chicken dinner and you want that dinner to be associated with something abstract like “love.” You could make an advertisement where you surround that chicken dinner with metonymic images of “love” (e.g. hearts, puppies, and Ted Nugent). And if you repeat this imagery enough “love” might rub off enough from the images on to a Hungry Man chicken dinner to remind a lot of people about “love.” Eating a Hungry Man chicken dinner might become a metonym for “love.” Instead of “I heart you” we might say, “I Hungry Man chicken dinner you.”

Conditioning (that behavioral kind) seems to be doing something similar, don’t it? Say you have a chicken that you want to train to cluck when it sees an image of “love” (i.e. if it sees hearts, puppies, or Ted Nugent). What you’d do is shape the behavior. You’d have a cue (e.g. the pictures). And you’d have a reinforcement (e.g. a treat like a piece of bread or a Hungry Man!). Then you’d have the behavior you wanted (i.e. a cluck when the chicken sees the pictures). Every time there is a cluck when an appropriate picture is shown, you’d provide a treat. You’d do this until you associated clucking with the pictures and the treat so much so that once the chicken sees the picture, she doesn’t even need the treat. It’s automatic. Seeing those pictures results in a cluck without the treat. In a sense, the chicken is part of a metonymical move. What I mean is, the imagery is associated with “love.”

Rhetors do similar things. Instead of food, they associate an image with other images to make an association and make that association automatic. Conditioning and metonymying aint’ exactly alike but, then again, they ain’t exactly different. I was thinkin’ that maybe what rhetors do should be called “metonymic conditioning.” Whatcha think?

Watch this vid on Conditioning Chickens

Last thing and I swear it’s funny! A Prof. of Psych told me about something her dad did when he was a college student. In a class of his, the students conducted a conditioning experiment on their teacher (teacher wasn’t in on the experiment). Every time the teacher stood in a certain part of the room, the class would participate in discussion. Everywhere else, there was no discussion. From my understanding, it worked and the teacher began spending a lot of time in that part of the room. The teacher got Hungry Manned!

Chet Tiffany – Genre Trendsetter

Posted on July 18, 2012 by

What you are about to read is a ________________about a lot of things. I don’t know what it is. In fact, “I” think this piece reads sort of like the experience of walking through those parking lot markets where acrylic mink blankets with the likes of Bieber, pit bulls, Pink Floyd and, of course, unicorns are being sold. It’s corny with a hint of cheese and alotta kitsch.

Click to enlarge!

I don’t agree much with the content, but, man, Chet Tiffany is writing in a way I’ve never seen. What is it exactly? What “is” this style? What would you call it? What genres are being mixed?

My friend, Vanessa, discovered Chet Tiffany in the Giant Nickel classifieds newspaper. Thank you, Vanessa, for recognizing something many of us have never thought we wanted to see before. And, Chet Tiffany, thank you for deciding to publish your work.

Birth of Two Suspicions

Posted on July 8, 2012 by

“Language—in any case, language in the Indo-European cultures—has always given birth to two kinds of suspicions:

First of all, the suspicion that language does not mean exactly what it says. The meaning that one grasps, and that is immediately manifest, is perhaps in reality only a lesser meaning that protects, confines, and yet in spite of everything transmits another meaning, the latter one being at once the stronger meaning and the ‘underlying’ meaning.

On the other hand, language gives birth to this other suspicion: It exceeds its merely verbal form in some way, and there are indeed other things in the world which speak and which are not language. After all, it could that nature, the sea, the rustling of trees, animals, faces, masks, crossed swords, all of these speak; perhaps there is a language that articulate itself in a manner that is not verbal.

These two suspicions, which one sees already appearing with the Greeks, have not disappeared, and they are still with us, since we have once again begun to believe, specifically since the nineteenth century, that mute gestures, that illnesses, that all the tumult around us can also speak; and more than ever we are listening in on all this possible language, trying to intercept, beneath the words, a discourse that would be essential.”

+ Michel Foucault, excerpted from the essay, “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx”

Harlot

A revealing look at the arts of persuasion

Recommended Reads: Politrick-or-Treat Edition

Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Really Matter? Part 3 of 3

Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Really Matter? Part 2 of 3

Ethos in Presidential Campaign Politics: Does Credibility Matter? Part 1 of 3

GoonSwarm, Sadly, In the News

Water Snake is related to Water Fish.

Language Intelligence: A Non-Academic’s Take on Rhetoric

Hungry Man Chicken Dinner and Love

Chet Tiffany – Genre Trendsetter

Birth of Two Suspicions