Rhetoric

I chose to write about John McCain's speech after winning the Florida primary. Politicians are gifted in art of persuasion, and McCain is also a good example. Six months ago people had counted McCain out of the presidential race all together, so this win was unexpected. McCain does not come close to comparing to MLK Jr but he does have an impressive way of appealing to the audience on many levels.

The first paragraph of the speech McCain thanked his supporters, which he does gracefully. This could be considered pathos since he is appealing to Floridians. He related to them by explaining his roots to the state and how the residents in Florida have affected him over the years. Although this was a victory speech and did not necessarily need to further persuade the Floridians, McCain knew that other Americans were listening to the speech and needed to emphasize his qualities to these other voters.

The most impressive part was the middle of the speech when he (again) graciously spoke of his competitors. I think that this was important because it says a lot about McCain's character to acknowledge that the win was not a "landslide" and that he truly does not have any right to brag.

The following paragraph was a blatant appeal to ethos. McCain speaks about his history as a soldier and then calls on Americans to act on Super Tuesday. He does this by using carefully chosen words such as "courage" and "good sense" and also bringing up Reagan-esque images. This would be persuasive to Republicans that do not reside in Florida, and are still deciding who they are going to vote for in the looming primaries.

I thought that this was a good example of a persuasive piece because politicians have to literally sell themselves to the American people. They have to be able to articulate their ideas and appeal to multitudes of people at a time. I think that McCain's emotion in this speech, and his emotion in a lot of his other speeches, was passionate (although his passion can not compare to MLK, it was better than the speakers that we had in class).


http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/400d362c-3db6-4318-85ba-a846fa32b98f.htm)