Page 64 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### January, 1994 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 2, Number 1, pp.64-68 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Center for Teaching and Technology, Academic Computer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 Additional support provided by the Center for Academic Computing, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 This article is archived as WALTERS IPCTV2N1 on LISTSERV@GUVM ---------------------------------------------------------------- CLINTON'S ETHOS: EXCHANGING IDEAS ON THE INTERNET Frank Walters Editor's Introduction: Exchanging notes on the Internet is a "great equalizer." People of all types, with all sorts of qualifications, are brought together in discussions. Presumably, this would mean we could concentrate on the message without "considering" the source. But people keep requesting credentials and asking for qualifications, and the issue of anonymity in contributions often becomes a real issue in the arguments. This concern about credentials and qualifications echoes in political affairs. Recent responses to President Clinton's programs have featured ad hominem attacks by various television commentators and comedians. Bemoaning this state of affairs, Frank Walters, a network contributor to the discussion list, Clinton@Marist, expressed these thoughts to members of the list: Let me begin by quoting something Gerry Phillips said about persuasion to members of the CLINTON@MARIST list: ". . .the sad part of persuasion is that people believe people, not evidence. . . . It is my fear that Mr. Clinton has been so sullied by character assassins and opportunistic late night comedians that he will never be able to recover enough ethos to push through anything constructive." Page 65 The first sentence reiterates an observation Aristotle makes in the Rhetoric: "We ought in fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts." However, due to what he calls "the defects of our hearers. . .the arts of language cannot help having a small but real importance" in overcoming our auditors' recalcitrance (III. 1404a4-9). This comment comes in the context of Aristotle's discussion of style. He's saying that facts will convince only if the language is fashioned in such a way as both please. Aristotle is admitting that, in rhetorical performances at least (as opposed to the strictly scientific demonstrations covered in the Organon), the kind of language used is at least as important in gaining conviction as the quality of the evidence and the reputation of the orator. One could summarize Aristotle's rhetorical theory as follows: style, how a thing is said, appeals to the listener's delight in beauty and propriety, and thus comes under the heading of "pathos"--an argument's appeal to the emotions. Second, the logic of the argument (for example, the facts Aristotle wishes would by themselves convince an auditor) appeals to the listener's rational faculties and comes under the heading of "logos." Logos is a notoriously multifaceted word in Greek thought. In this context it can be taken to mean the pattern of assumptions, premises, propositions, predications, and conclusions that place the argument within a framework of scientific, or pseudo-scientific, demonstration. Finally, there is the person, the orator, whose aim is to complement language and logic with evidence of his own good character and thereby find that common ground he and the audience can share. This comes under the heading of "ethos," which, in Aristotle, would mean reputation, or roughly how the audience perceives the orator. An orator can build her ethos within the words of the oration--say things, for example, which align her with the audience ("I am one with you in the belief that X is true"); or it might be that the orator has already established a reputation through past actions and can rely on this reputation as part of the overall proof structure of the oration. This being said, Clinton, as Phillips suggests, occupies a somewhat untenable position as an orator. Clinton's detractors have, in effect, stolen his ethos; they seem, indeed, to have stolen the very means by which he can construct an ethos. His studies at Oxford, which included a tour of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (not uncommon for Rhodes Scholars), have been converted into a string of dubious episodes touching on everything from marijuana experimentation to war resistance to aiding and abetting the enemy. His record as Governor of Arkansas has been so beclouded by misinformation, distortions, and outright lies, that one might reasonably question whether he Page 66 was ever Governor at all. His detractors have manufactured a man who is more fiction than real, which is difficult to endure for a man whose complexities are of a piece with the times yet form a politician different from any we have experienced before. Thus, Clinton is in an awkward position: there seem to be no rhetorical means by which he can win over the legions of people who consider him to be a liar, a coward, a traitor, or some combination of all three. Logic won't work, because the history of the facts of his past actions has been so sullied by the ad hominem attacks Phillips refers to, that any notion of a biographical reality gets lost in a welter of (mis)inter- pretation. Appeals to pathos are not, frankly, a part of Clinton's rhetorical style. In most of his speeches, the Rhodes Scholar supersedes the man of the people. Jokes about "I feel your pain" pretty much sum up what the comedians think of Clinton's connection with the emotional lives of people. This is ironic, of course, given his mastery of the one-on-one approach. Recall the episode in Des Moines, Iowa, when he greeted people at a water distribution site and was hugged by a woman overcome by the disaster unfolding around her. But when we look at his overall approach to dealing with the flood--at the meeting with the Midwestern governors, for example--his wonkishness tends to dominate, although I am certain that he does feel genuine concern for people in trouble. As to his rhetorical ethos: it was, in the recent budget vote, just strong enough to move no more than a sufficient majority of the members of his own party. The defection of so many democrats on the budget can be seen as a defiant expression of personal independence, a refusal to worry about what the President will think. Indeed, when Senator Kerry finally made up his mind to vote in favor of the budget, he was motivated solely by the desire not to ruin Clinton's ethos. And yet the fact remains that Clinton is probably the most accomplished and polished public speaker to occupy the presidency since Kennedy. Many of us on the Clinton@Marist list have expressed pleasure--and gratitude--for this, because we were tired of listening to the butchering of the English language by Presidents Reagan and Bush and Vice President Quayle. We have praised Clinton for speaking in complete sentences, for having a feel for the rhythms of the language and its literary possibilities. But we are a rare breed. We are, if you will, reverse Ciceronians who believe that good speaking implies a good man or woman. (Cicero, and later Quintilian, believed that education should aim to produce the good person who speaks well; they didn't necessarily assume that anyone who speaks well is also a good person.) We equate bad speaking--language that is ungrammatical, full of syntactical lapses, logical flaws, and stylistic infelicities--with badness in the person. Page 67 But in feeling this way about language we tend to run against the grain of most Americans' beliefs about language. We live in a country that is generally suspicious of eloquence, of stylistically self-conscious language, of well-constructed arguments, and so on. This is one element of the country's general anti-intellectualism. Fine speech is often equated with egg-headed elitism, an ivory-tower let-them-eat-cake attitude, empty verbiage, obscuration, not to mention an attempt to make a little idea seem great, and to make the false seem the true. Well-wrought speech obviously takes work, especially if you're conscious of the artistic and grammatical possibilities of language, and the assumption is in this country that if one has to labor to produce well-wrought speech, one has also labored to produce the thing that is not. The country prefers plain, unadorned speech, spontaneous speech that has not been worked on by the speaker (so as to fool the audience), but arises into being simultaneously with the thought expressed. Such speech, so it is believed, is honest, comes straight from the heart, and matches up with the direct, day-to-day speech of most people. After writing that last sentence, I sat for 30 seconds or so trying to figure out what to say next--and this clause I'm writing now was the result of 15 additional seconds or so, time I spent working out a style for presentation. Thinking before speaking (or writing)--as Clinton does so often--is not always, in the popular mind, a good thing, because you're obviously trying to think of something to say, and in a way that will fool people. In short (a well-known cliche to fall back on when one can't think of another way to announce the end of a text), Clinton's strength is also his weakness. What I hope to see is that the "facts" of his administration's policies will bear good fruit in the years to come, and that these facts, when combined with his oratorical skills, will be enough to overcome the defects of his hearers and produce an election victory in 1996. ---------------------------------------------------------------- BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: Frank D. Walters is an Assistant Professor of English at Auburn University, Alabama. He is currently the Associate Director of Composition, and his teaching duties include undergraduate course in freshman and advanced composition and technical writing, and graduate courses in rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy. He has published articles in _The Journal of Advanced Composition and Style_, and has articles forthcoming in _The Journal of Technical Writing and Communication_ and _Philosophy and Page 68 rhetoric_. He is currently working on book-length study examining the relationship between style and knowledge in the development of seventeeth-century English prose. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1994 Georgetown University. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by Georgetown University. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: Gerald Phillips, Editor IPCT-J GMP3@PSUVM.PSU.EDU