Aristotle

This morning I did what is almost certainly my last turn as a guest on XM Radio’s P.O.T.U.S. ’08. While listeners might not have loved hearing Aristotelian analysis of Senator Obama’s infomercial at 7:45 this morning, I had a lot of fun talking about it. POTUS is the only radio program I have ever been on that encourages guests to use complete sentences and present complicated ideas. P.O.T.U.S. is well worth a listen.

Aristotle offers one way into last night’s 30-minute commercial for Barack Obama. In the speech Obama balances logos (facts) and pathos (emotion) and builds his ethos (credibility, perceived quality of his character). This last element, persuading voters that he is “presidential”, that he is a man of strength and prudence, was arguably the most important.

But that’s only one way to look at the speech. Another way, that I did not discuss this morning, is through the balancing of idealism and realism. Scholars have noted that successful persuasive efforts often mix appeals to soaring ideals with nearly mind-numbing details.

The appeals to idealism – hope, justice, honor, freedom, and so forth – provide a reason for us to care. They draw us into an Important Story that compels us to want to act. But on their own, they’re empty.

Appeals to realism, details, are the stuff of policy. They’re the wonk-speak, the strings of numbers and bullet-points of a plan. They tell us the person doing the speaking knows what they’re talking about. The content of details matters less than their existence – that Senator Obama claims his health care plan will save the average family $2,500 rather than $2,300 or $2,800 isn’t the point, the point is that there is a credible-sounding number next to his claim. Realism on its own is dull and uninspiring. Candidates who list plans or sound like technocrats don’t give us a reason to care.

It is when the two types of appeals are combined that they have the most power. And this is what Senator Obama did in his infomercial. He started with amber waves of grain, talked about the American dream and showed kids waving flags. Then he listed policies. Then back to pictures of families and towns, then back to the list. One then the other and back again over the course of 27 minutes. This construction gave his vision grounding and his details life.

Smart advocates use the same approach. Policy proposals that speak to higher ideals and have specific, doable steps to get there can be powerful. Too often advocates are either all Vision or all wonk. The best advocacy campaigns use both – they use the vision to get and keep the attention of policymakers and activists, and use the wonkiness to make the vision real and get policymakers to act. The best campaigns know that success relies on selling both the sizzle and steak.

Earlier in the week I drew on Aristotle to preview the debate. Aristotle said that persuasion relies on three proofs: ethos, the speaker’s character; pathos, the passion instilled in the audience; and logos, a reliance of facts or data. Presidential campaigns are not decided on logos, most voters most of the time don’t vote on facts. Instead we look to the character of a candidate, those with whom we feel a connection and those who inspire us – ethos and pathos.

Senator Obama clearly stirs passion in his supporters (pathos). But ethos continues to be a problem. Voters say they’re not sure “who he is”, what drives him. They know he’s smart, but don’t know about his judgment. That he doesn’t seem to rattle is, on one hand, good because he reflects calm under pressure; on the other hand, we want to see a bit of life, a bit of the passion in him that he inspires in others. Obama had to show he was up to the task of Commander in Chief, voters had to be able to picture him in the Oval Office addressing the nation during a time of crisis. He also had to show some of his internal emotion, we wanted to see him engage at more than an intellectual level.

A week ago Senator McCain was all ethos. But that began to unravel a bit when he injected himself in the negotiations over the financial bailout package and his threat to skip the debate, which combined with increasingly questionable choice of Sarah Palin, have led some to question his judgement. McCain had to remind voters that he is a principled maverick, not a reckless gambler. He also had to demonstrate a bit of pathos, he had to stir voters without Palin in the room. McCain had to reinforce his position as the experience adult in a race against a precocious but naïve challenger and make us want to get behind him.

Obama by and large accomplished his goals. He was calm, demonstrated a mastery of facts, directly scolded McCain, and by and large took the questions on directly. But he also missed some opportunities to demonstrate his pathos. The split-screen shots occasionally showed Obama frowning or scowling when McCain was speaking (good). But more often than not he was smiling and shaking his head, a nonverbal “there you go again” (bad). Frowning, showing a bit of anger, demonstrating some passion, is good. My unsolicited advice for Barack Obama for the next debate is to frown more and smile less when John McCain is talking.

McCain largely accomplished his goal as well, at least as far as ethos is concerned. He talked a lot about his direct foreign policy experience and legislative accomplishments, and repeatedly called Obama naïve and unprepared (and no one mentioned his mid-week stunt). But he failed to stir anything in voters, there was no call to a higher purpose, no sense that he or this campaign were part of something greater. The next debate will be tougher for McCain – the announced topic of last night’s encounter was foreign policy, his strength. The next is on the economy, his weakness. My unsolicited advice for John McCain is to talk about his approach to politics as a calling to a higher or greater good.

Something is persuasive, wrote Aristotle in The Rhetoric “because there is somebody whom it persuades.” (Book I, Chapter 2; in the Penguin Classic translation by H.C. Lawson-Tancred this is “Persuasiveness is persuasiveness for an individual”). For Aristotle, persuasion relies on three types of proofs - ethos, pathos and logos; appeals to the character of the speaker, appeals to emotion and appeals to logic.

Senators McCain and Obama need to persuade two audiences: their respective bases and the group of swing voters in the middle. These audiences sometimes need to hear different things from a candidate. Going into the conventions Senator McCain had a lot of ethos with the swing voters, he was seen as a trustworthy man of character. He didn’t generate a lot of pathos, and he didn’t have much ethos with some conservatives (something Palin helped solve, at least for the base – possibly at the risk of the swings). Senator Obama has tons of pathos which brought along the base and tempted the middle – but for many he has fallen short on ethos. This is an argument that McCain (and now Palin) have been making for a while, that Obama is may talk good but he doesn't have the substantive chops to lead the nation.

Presidential campaigns are not decided by logos. When we vote for a president we are not voting on the specific facts of a case. Aside from a relative handful of single-issue voters, Americans vote on an approach to facts rather than on facts themselves – we vote on a point of view on the role of government and on discussions of America’s place in the world.

Recently Obama has been trying to increase his ethos by speaking to smaller crowds, going into policy detail and so forth. He has also been attacking McCain’s ethos, asserting he will do anything to get elected. Obama is telling voters that McCain was once trustworthy but is no longer.

Which brings us to Friday’s debate.

McCain needs to demonstrate some pathos, he has to stir voters without Palin at his side. Primarily he needs to focus on ethos. He has to demonstrate that he can be trusted in trying times, that he “gets” most Americans - and he needs to do so in ways that speak to both the base and swing voters, a tricky task. He also needs to keep attacking Obama’s ethos, making the case that at some base level Americans can’t trust Obama.

Obama has to do the same. He needs to demonstrate that he is a man of character who can be trusted and to go after McCain’s ethos, arguing that McCain will say anything to get elected. At the same time he needs to tamper down the pathos, he needs to recognize that a debate is an intimate setting and not an arena – that he will be in our living rooms having a conversation, not on stage having a concert.