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If you have listened closely to any of George W. Bush’s
national addresses during his tenure in the White House, you
probably know how the president feels about mixing religion
and politics: he digs it.
Since Bush entered office, and particularly since the
attacks of September 11, religion has had a new prominence
in the political arena, especially noticeable in the president’s
use of religious language. Indeed, Bush has made what theologian
Martin E. Marty has termed “God talk” a cornerstone
of his discourse—most evident in his oft-repeated claim that
“freedom is not America’s gift to the world, it is the Almighty
God’s gift to every man and woman in this world.” Such language
has triggered a heated public debate over the nature of
the president’s religious discourse. Some argue that Bush’s
rhetoric exceeds that of past presidents while others side with
Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic journal
First Things, who claims that Bush’s frequent references
to a divine being are “as American as apple pie.”
If Bush is serving only “apple pie,” he is serving considerably
more of it than did his predecessors. Analysis of presidents’
inaugural and State of the Union addresses since
Franklin Roosevelt entered office in 1933 reveals that Bush
has referenced God far more frequently than have other modern
presidents. Bush’s average of 5.8 references to God per
address is rivaled only by Ronald Reagan—like Bush, a
favorite of the Religious Right —who averaged 5.3 references
per address. Other modern presidents known for their
religiosity referenced God far less frequently than did Bush:
Dwight Eisenhower averaged 2.7 references per address,
Lyndon Johnson averaged 1.5, and self-proclaimed
“born again” Christian Jimmy
Carter had only two references total in his
four major addresses while in office.
Explicit references to God are only half
of Bush’s political/religious rhetorical arsenal.
Bush also packs his speeches with subtler
religious references. In his January 2003
State of the Union address, for instance,
Bush recalled a Christian hymn by referring
to the “wonder-working power” of the
American people. Similarly, in his second
inaugural address, Bush said we could all
feel proud when “the unjust encounter justice, and the captives
are set free”—an allusion to the Bible’s book of Isaiah
(among other passages). Such references are a regular part of
the president’s addresses. Even the term “evil,” which
marked much of Bush’s rhetoric following September 11,
calls to mind a Manichaean struggle between God and Satan.
B u s h ’s decision to saturate his public discourse with religious
rhetoric is important because modern presidents—far
more than those who preceded Roosevelt—are able to circulate
their messages widely through mass media and have significant
power to shape political policy. In such an environment,
presidents are well-positioned to insert religious ideology into
political decision-making, thereby threatening Thomas Jeff e rs
o n ’s vision of “awall of separation between church and state.”
For his part, Bush has never thought too highly of Jefferson’s
notion. Within days of taking office in 2001, the president
spoke with reporters not of a wall of separation, but of an
“important bridge between church and state.” In truth, the
relationship between religion and politics has throughout
American history generally resembled a bridge rather than a
wall. For example, in 1954 the Knights of Columbus, a
Catholic fraternal org a n i z ation,
successfully lobbied
Congress and President
Eisenhower to have the
words “under God” inserted
into the Pledge of Allegiance
as a means of distinguishing
Americans from “Godless
communists.” And, to this
day, several states have constitutions
that bar from public
o ffice those who refuse to
profess a belief in the existence
of a divine being.
Bush, however, has taken
this common American practice
of mixing religion and
politics to heights previously
unseen in the modern presidency.
It would be comforting
to think that the president’s
elevated use of religious
language was mere
political posturing, ultimately
of little consequence in terms of determining policy. Unfortunately,
this is not case.
Bolstered by religious conservatives’ ascendancy in the
political sphere, Bush has moved God to the center of his language
and his political decision-making. The Bush administ
r a t i o n ’s pursuit of “faith-based” initiatives, the rise of a
voucher systemthat provides government funds to pay for stud
e n t s ’ tuition at religious schools, the push for a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage, and the Manifest-
Destiny-like invasion and occupation of Iraq all smack of religious
motivations finding their way into governmental policy.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of all of this is that the
president is unabashed in admitting that his religious beliefs
shape his policies.Bushmade this clear during
the final presidential debate of the 2004 campaign,
saying: “I believe that God wants
everybody to be free. T h a t ’s what I believe.
And that’s part of my foreign policy. In
Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there
is a gift from the A l m i g h t y.”
This statement alone should be enough to
raise the hackles of citizens interested in preserving
some semblance of American separation
of church and state. Although Bush’s
fondness for sermonizing may be due in part
to his underlying worldview, it is also a strategy
aimed at pleasing the substantial voting block of religious
conservatives—a strategy that appears to have paid off for the
president during his narrow reelection last November. Ultimately,
it matters little whether Bush is a “true believer,” a
callous strategist, or some combination of the two. The outcome
of this conflation of religion and politics is what matters,
and the outcome is clear. When our president bases policy
decisions as much upon divine guidance as upon the will
of the electorate, only one conclusion can be drawn: we are
living in a theocracy. Pundits’ frequent bickering about the
risks of theocracy in the Middle East creates an unfortunate
irony: dead-set on promoting a particular vision of democracy
abroad, we are sliding toward theocracy at home.
It is a dangerous situation, one with which all of us,
regardless of our individual political and religious beliefs,
should be concerned. Confusing the abstract realm of the
metaphysical with the concrete goals of the state leads to a
place where political leaders’ untoward acts are easily
excused because they are thought to serve a higher purpose.
In the current political climate, this is a place that America
can ill afford to go.

Anarcho-syndicalism combines movement for political liberty with the movement for economic liberty. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that formal democracy is not enough. Citizenship rights do not mean much when elections can be bought by wealthy campaign contributors and the media is controlled by large corporations. Nor does democracy
exist when communities and even
national governments are held hostage to
l a rge monopolistic corporations that
threaten to withhold investments or runaway
to other countries unless laws are
“business friendly”. Local communities
and workers should make the decisions
that affect their economic livelihood.
Anarcho-syndicalists believe that
democracy can only be achieved through
the abolition of wage slavery. Wage slavery
exists wherever workers must give
up their rights in order to earn a living.
Workers should be involved in decisions
about wages, working conditions, safety,
and economic planning to the extent that
these decisions concern them. Just as citizens
in our country believe there should
be “no taxation without representation”,
neither should there be work without
representation. The highest authority in
any workplace should be the general
assembly of the workers themselves. No
managerial duties should be delegated
except by election of the workers. Managers
should have limited powers and be
subject to recall.
In order to abolish wage slavery it
will be necessary for workers and local
communities to take ownership over the
means of production and distribution.
Any workplace that
is not currently
owned by those
who work it would
be turned into a
democratic cooperative.
Small businesses
would function
as before with
the exception of
those employing
workers outside the
family. Local communities
would
provide essential
public services like
health care, transportation,
utilities, elementary education
and so forth, by making contractual
agreements with workers in those fields,
and paid for by a tax on the cooperatives.
Banking and investment would be a joint
arrangement between the worker cooperatives
and the communities. Activities
beyond the scope of a single community
or single industry would be organized by
federations of multiple communities and
industries. These federations would be
accountable to their members.
The way anarcho-syndicalists will
bring this about is by organizing workers
into worker-run unions. Anarcho-syndicalists
call this “building the new society
within the shell of the old.” To realize its
true potential the labor movement needs
to function the same way as the future
society. Union officers should be limited
in their powers, and accountable to the
members. T h e
assembly of all
union members
must be the highest
authority in any
union local or
branch. W h e n
w o r k e r-run unions
represent the
majority of the
labor force, they
will be in a position
to shut down the
autocratic side of
the economy and
start up again in a
democratic and
cooperative way.
Anarcho-syndicalism has had some
success in practice. The labor movements
of many countries have unions
that are influenced by anarcho-syndicalist
ideas. The Industrial Workers of the
World is such a union in the United
States. So far the peak of the anarchosyndicalist
movement was achieved in
Spain, when during the Spanish Civil
War many industries within Republican
Spain were under the control of worker
collectives, until the rebel military junta
aided by Hitler and Mussolini crushed
the loyalists. There are more recent
examples of labor movements producing
sweeping social changes. In the 1980s
the Soviet Union was undermined by the
Polish Solidarity movement, which
deserves more of the credit for “winning
the Cold War” than does Ronald Reagan.
During the same period, the labor movement
of South Africa played a similar
role in ending the apartheid regime. Currently
there is a growing workers’movement
in Argentina that has begun a series
of takeovers of factories that were threatened
with shutdowns by their owners.
To find out more about anarcho-syndicalism
there are some websites you can
visit. The Industrial Workers of the
World can be reached at www.iww.org
and the magazine Anarcho-Syndicalist
Review, can be found at www.syndicalist.
org. Perhaps the best known anarchosyndicalist
in the United States is Noam
C h o m s k y, who has written numerous
books on media and foreign policy
issues. The best introduction to anarchosyndicalism
is The American Labor
Movement: A New Beginning by Sam
Dolgoff, available thorough the Anarcho-
Syndicalist review. Other books
written by Dolgoff, such as The Anarchist
Collectives and Bakunin on Anarchism
are also recommended.
B. Salt lives in Champaign-Urbana
and has been active in the IWW, and the
labor movement for several years.

Anyone who is capable of getting
themselves made President should on
no account be allowed to do the job.”
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy
“The United States is a nation of laws:
badly written and randomly enforced.”
– Frank Zappa

As you read this article, there is a decent chance
legal challenges are delaying the final results of the presidential
election, assuming the outcomes said legal challenges
might affect the final electoral balance. Analysis
of the pre-election electoral landscape of my home state,
Florida, leads some to believe that we are indeed likely
to see another delay in the final results from there and
possibly Ohio. With 20 electoral votes, an Ohio delay
will likely lead to a similar situation we saw in 2000: a
contested election days or even weeks after voting.
The Democrats have recruited as many as 20,000
lawyers that will be rapidly deployed in case of legal
challenges, and the Republicans have a similar number.
Lawyers for both sides will be at polling stations, prepared
to head-off any problems as they develop. “There
are people who felt that the Democrats didn’t fight hard
enough [in 2000]. That’s not going to happen [this
time],” said DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe, in
response to RNC accusations that Democrats intend to
circumvent the electoral process through the courts.
The major parties have been planning for post-2004
election legal campaigns well before primary races were
completed. The Bush and Kerry Campaigns already have
well funded legal accounts, raising an important question
about the scope of campaign finance laws as they relate
to this type money. One could make the case that if a
candidate was unable to “buy” the election through the
normal electoral process, the status of legal-challenge
fundraising could allow them to “buy” the election
through the court system.
Al Gore was vilified by partisans as a “poor loser”
when he decided to pursue legal remedy (at least halfheartedly)
in the 2000 election to force ballots in Florida
to be counted. In this election, we are likely to see most
legal-challenge initiations made by Democrats, as we
saw in 2000. Is this because Democrats are poor electoral
sports? Ralph Nader might believe such, given the
difficulty he’s had surmounting Democratic legal challenges
to ballot access in many states (despite circumstantial
Republican help).
While I certainly wouldn’t defend ballot access challenges,
Democrats may be more likely to pursue legal
action after the election because of the make-up of the
party’s constituency. Minorities, the poor, and inexperienced
voters are disproportionately more likely to identify
as Democrats. These are also segments of the electorate
that are most likely to be disenfranchised in some
way. (We didn’t hear about the disenfranchisement of the
religious right or CEOs in 2000, did we?). These groups
are also likely to be geographically concentrated,
increasing the chances that polling problems in certain
communities might constitute the basis for legitimate
equal protection violation claims.
The fact that elections are being decided in the court
system may be troubling to you. It may seem as if, somehow,
elections have gotten “worse” starting with 2000. I
disagree. Before 2000, ballots were lost in elections.
Votes were miscounted. And yes, like in the 2000 election
in Florida, poor and minority voters were systematically
disenfranchised. These problems have always
been.
Polls indicate that a majority of Americans believe the
election will be decided in the courts. The fact that elections
now have an assumed judicial component is not a
problem in itself, but rather an indication of a greater ill
in the American electoral system.
If anything, court challenges may be the best development
for American democracy since the barring of poll
taxes. While having the President chosen by the courts is
not ideal democracy, it makes it difficult to ignore problems
of unequal ballot access, election irregularities,
equal representation disasters, and the general malaise of
U.S. democracy. Addressing these problems require both
institutional reform and practical changes in the way
elections are run. And, hopefully, enough people will
become sick of appointed judges deciding the outcomes
of elections to initiate some meaningful change in how
citizens in the U.S. choose their government.
As you read this, however, it may also be the case that
there was a clear winner on Nov. 2, and there were little
or no legal challenges. Remember, though, just because
there were no challenges based on racial discrimination,
improper election management, or uncounted ballots
doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It surely did. Now lets do
something about it.
If you are interested in working towards electoral
reform, contact the author at sedward1@uiuc.edu

Senator Kerry used anaphora, a rhetorical strategy in
which the same word or phrase is repeated at the beginning
of a phrase, clause, or sentence, throughout the
debate to emphasize his points about the failures of the
Bush presidency. One example is from the third debate,
when Kerry stated, “he’s the only president in history to
do this. He’s also the only president in
72 years to lose jobs – 1.6 million jobs
lost. He’s the only president to have
incomes of families to go down for the
last three years, the only president to see
exports go down, the only president to
see the lowest level of business investment
in our country as it is today.”
Kerry wants Americans to know that the president is
“the only” president to preside in this way, stressing the
fact that Bush has been a horrible leader and that he has
worked on behalf of the wealthy instead of ordinary people.
Using anaphora, Kerry powerfully suggests that
Bush’s failures as president are not just appalling but
unique to U.S. history.

In regurgitated statements against Kerry, Republicans
often included zingers like “flip-flop.” Democrats often
referenced the line “consistency when wrong is no
virtue.” Although it would be easy to dismiss these
words as political posturing by biased individuals, a
more interesting rhetorical complexity is that conservatives
tend to argue in terms of principles while liberals
argue in terms of practical circumstances. Borrowing
from Richard Weaver’s The Ethics of Rhetoric, I contend
this year’s candidates are making two very different
kinds of arguments couched within two very different
political and rhetorical styles.
Bush utilizes what Weaver has called “argument from
principle.” Individuals using this argument style often
employ “axiomatic definition” and argue from “fundamental
sources.” For example, in the third debate President
Bush addressed the issue of jobs and taxes. His
basic argument was to keep government out of the lives
of individuals as much as possible and to let them decide
how to spend their money. He concluded his answer with
the following: “I believe the role of government is to
stand side by side with our citizens to help them realize
their dreams, not tell citizens how to live their lives.”
Bush is clearly arguing from a principle, that government
should absolutely not dictate how citizens should
live their lives through tax policy.
Kerry, unlike Bush, used “argument from circumstance.”
This argument style is “the nearest of all arguments
to purest expediency.” It is one based on “facts
standing around.” Thus, if the facts of a
case change, one could also change her
mind about it. For example, just before
Bush talked about jobs and taxes, Kerry
talked about how we need to restore
some of the tax policies of previous generations.
He concluded by saying:
“Restore fiscal discipline, we’ll do a lot
better.” For Kerry, tax policies and jobs were put into a
comparative frame. This frame allowed Kerry to argue
for something that is “better” for the times and not necessarily
“right” at all times.

Much emphasis has been placed on Kerry’s military
service record. The ubiquitous and sometimes satirized
recount of his three Purple Hearts may come to mind.
Kerry is using this strategy as a form of rhetorical identification.
That is, in order to persuade an audience, he is
establishing common ground. Using language that
appeals to average American patriotism, Kerry attempts
to build rapport with the public through common values.
Bush relentlessly attacks this identification with another
pervasive phrase: “Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong
Time.” In an attempt to destroy the common ground that
Kerry is building, Bush tries to discredit Kerry’s military
prowess by referring to this comment Kerry made about
the Iraq war. It is, however, remarkable that Bush’s military
service is rarely recalled, especially with the emphasis
that he places on military power and dominance.

Although the President cultivates the image of a
plainspoken Texan, and despite his oft-criticized ineloquence,
Bush frequently has a sense of what is appropriate
to say in a given situation; however, his actual execution
may veer slightly—sometimes grossly—off track.
Rhetorical scholars have a term for this problem, anesis,
or when a concluding remark diminishes the overall
impact of what has been previously said. For Bush, this
frequent slip of tongue makes him look insincere,
uncompassionate, or just plain pompous. Whether Bush
means to convey what his anesic comments say is irrelevant,
for in communication message effects are more
easily discernible than a speaker’s intent.
Throughout his tenure, Bush has given us many
examples of anesis, but one statement during the first
Presidential Debate raised heckles. When asked to justify
the number of American causalities in Iraq since the
official end of combat, Bush replied that
every life is precious and acknowledged
that he had difficulty with the decision
to put soldiers in harm’s way. T h i s
seemed to be an appropriate response,
but then he launched into a narrative
about Missy Johnson, whose husband
P.J. was killed while serving in Iraq. At
the end of this narrative, Bush said, “You know, it’s hard
work to try to love her as best as I can, knowing full well
that the decision I made caused her loved one to be in
harm’s way.” I watched the first debate on campus in a
crowded auditorium. When Bush said this, there were
audible groans of disgust. While the idea of “hard work”
was a repeated theme for Bush in this first debate, it
should not be “hard work” to show compassion to someone
who has suffered because of a decision he made.
Whether Bush meant to say those exact words is not
important—image is rarely formed solely on a speaker’s
intent. In this instance, Bush only succeeded in giving
his enemies more ammunition for claims that he is
insensitive to troops and doesn’t understand the impact
of his decisions.

Clichés are generally thought of as overused or trite
expressions, like “every cloud has a silver lining” or
“nobody is perfect,” and hence given scant attention. Yet
many clichés are what Richard Rorty calls “dead
metaphors,” once new and provocative turns of phrase
that have become commonplace. In the debates, President
Bush was especially fond of using clichés. During
the first debate, he used the phrase “it’s hard work” (or
some variation of it) at least 11 times. This cliché was
important for two reasons. First, it acted as a stand-in for
a well-articulated answer to questions, because instead
of detailing his plan for victory, the President said, “it’s
hard work.” Second, clichés work because they connect
with an audience. In a nation populated by citizens heavily indebted to the Protestant Ethic, which values work
and assures the beleaguered that if they work hard success
will be theirs, suggesting hard work is an effective
persuasive strategy. Indeed, clichés call for audiences to
make a psychological transformation: because they
value hard work in their lives, they will also value it in
Iraq; and because they know that it is a sin not to work
hard, to turn away from the President’s challenges that
the U.S. must work hard is to sin. The cliché of “hard
work” is therefore powerful because it is nearly impossible
to rebut clichés. The most effective strategy is to
counter a cliché with another, but then the quality of the
debate deteriorates to sound-bites and platitudes.

Escalation is a trope that attempts to create a sense of
crisis by predicting future calamity. We’ve seen this
trope repeatedly during the Presidential Debates; the
most glaring example was Vice-President Cheney’s
claim that if Senator Kerry were elected, the United
States would experience another 9/11. President Bush
has used this strategy to argue that if Senator Kerry were
elected, he would, as a liberal politician, raise taxes,
legalize gay marriage, and turn the control of the United
States’ armed forces over to the United Nations (thus
turning Senator Kerry’s “global test”
back upon him). Senator Kerry, with his
recent suggestions of a “January Surprise”
if President Bush is elected, has
also used this strategy; indeed, he has
claimed that if the President is reelected,
he will reinstate the draft and continue
to slash taxes for the upper classes.
The problem with this trope is that it is impossible to predict
the future. By creating a sense of crisis, escalation
calls on citizens to make uninformed, uncritical decisions
based on the fear of future consequences rather
than on who has a better solution to current problems.

In the final debate, President Bush claimed, “God
wants everybody to be free,” reiterating a theme that has
been a staple of his discourse—and foreign policy—
since January 2003. For Bush, such rhetoric is politically
invaluable: it speaks directly to the large block of conservative
Christian voters the administration hopes to mobilize,
while speaking indirectly to the segment of the
American electorate that considers faith in a Christian
god a necessary quality for a president to possess. Bush’s
explicit claims about God’s designs for freedom have
fundamentally reshaped modern presidential discourse.
Indeed, since Franklin Roosevelt took
office seventy years ago such claims
have been nearly nonexistent in major
presidential addresses. Bush makes
them in every major speech he gives,
forcing Kerry to elevate his religious
rhetoric just to keep pace. Regardless of
one’s individual religious beliefs, all
people should be wary of the president making such
claims because they leave the world in a horrifying position:
two leaders are fighting an endless simulated holy
war, both claiming loudly that god is on their side, and
both holding firm to the belief that no end will suffice
save total annihilation of the other.

Both presidential candidates committed logical fallacies
during the debates. Bush, for instance, repeatedly
made use of the red herring fallacy, otherwise known as
changing the subject. Ask Bush where he stands on affirmative
action policies and why, and he discusses his support
for small businesses. Ask him about the lack of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he commits a tu
quoquo fallacy along the lines of “yeah, but he did it
too.” Bush claimed that he might have thought there
were WMD in Iraq, but so did Kerry, so their mistakes
cancel each other out. This line of reasoning overlooks
the fact that Bush and Kerry were in very different positions
of power when the U.S. invaded Iraq, and Kerry
might have responded differently if his statements and
decisions represented those of the entire country.
Kerry’s main fallacious tactic involved appealing to
authority. He attempted to build up his own credibility
by listing well-known public figures that he admires and
with whom he hopes to be compared. He repeatedly
mentioned former presidents Theodore Roosevelt, John
F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and their various
achievements. Clearly, Kerry attempted to appeal to
wavering swing voters who are critical of Bush but tend
to align themselves with Republicans. Yet, dropping a
name says little about the person who dropped it, and it
could be argued that Kerry’s comparison of himself to
other political figures is a false analogy.
By the third debate, Kerry stooped to Bush’s level by
appealing to the fallacy of self-evident truth. Bush
repeatedly made claims about “knowing how the world
works” and “feeling” other people’s prayers for him and
his family. It is all but impossible to refute these claims
because there is no logic supporting them. In the second
and third debates, Kerry began to back up his own statements
by claiming he too “felt it in his gut,” therefore
countering Bush’s self-evident truths with his own. Both
candidates would be better served to trade in fallacious
reasoning for well-reasoned, clear arg u m e n t a t i v e
appeals.

In the first two debates, President Bush delivered at
least five versions of the following argument about the
Iraq War:
BUSH: I don’t see how you can lead this country to
succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong
place. What message does that send our troops? What
message does that send to our allies? What message does
that send the Iraqis?
Post-debate spin made much of Bush’s clumsy repetition
of the phrase, “wrong war, wrong time, wrong
place.” But I am interested in a different feature of this
argument. I submit that this argument illustrates in perfect
microcosm Bush’s political philosophy, one that
treats criticism as the primary threat to success.
We may classify this argument as an e n t h y m e m e,
defined by Aristotle as an argument with a missing
premise to be filled in by the audience with its own
knowledge or beliefs. For example, if I said, “Susan is a
great teacher; her classes always fill up
first,” the audience would fill in the
missing premise that “the classes of
great teachers tend to fill first.” For A r i stotle,
the enthymeme was the most powerful
form of persuasion because it is
grounded in the beliefs of the audience.
H o w e v e r, it is also a risky form of persuasion
because the speaker is always gambling that the
audience will “fill in the blank” with the “right answer. ”
Let’s see how the enthymeme works in a composite
version of Bush’s arguments about Kerry’s criticism of
the war:
PREMISE 1: John Kerry has criticized decision-making
about the war.
PREMISE 2 (MISSING – ASSUMED/FILLED IN
BYAUDIENCE): People who criticize decision-making
about war can’t be successful at conducting war.
CONCLUSION: John Kerry can’t lead us to success
in Iraq.
This argument is only successful for Bush if audience
members share Bush’s belief that criticism is a pervasive
threat to the higher values of “consistency,” “certainty,”
and “success.” But such a belief is not necessarily selfevident
in an American political system that was in fact
founded on the opposite view: criticism is vital to a
healthy democracy.
The fear of criticism has been a central focus of the
administration’s re-election campaign, as illustrated by
the risky enthymeme Bush sets forth (The Onion
acknowledged this when it recently announced on its
front page that the Bush administration had declared a
“War on Criticism”). For Bush, criticism creates uncert
a i n t y, uncertainty creates weakness, and weakness
wreaks havoc. Here are Bush’s own words from his closing
remarks at the Sept. 30 debate: “If America shows
uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will
drift toward tragedy. That’s not going to happen, so long
as I’m your president.”

Especially during presidential campaigns, and
political
debates, citizens often hear candidates and pundits claiming, with an
air of dismissal, that “it’s merely rhetoric”—implying that statements
are untrue, policies are unrealistic, goals are unattainable,
arguers not trustworthy. The suggestion is that there is a disjuncture
between language and reality, between rhetoric and truth. In this
2004 election season, rhetoric was particularly important, for it was
largely through outright lies (about WMDs and an Iraq-Al Qaeda
connection) that we find ourselves within our current situation.
However, the academic pursuit of studying rhetoric goes far beyond uncovering
truths and lies. Scholars of rhetoric pay attention to argumentative strategies, discursive
patterns, and details of spoken and written communication that indicate how
and why a given text is persuasive. Rhetoric and politics are closely connected
because politicians rely on available rhetorical resources to make their cases to the
public, because healthy public discourse relies on the proliferation of multiple opinions,
and because American democracy entails the right to free speech. Those of us
who are rhetorically-minded hope to contribute to public discourse by providing language-
based analyses that inform, educate, and provide the critical tools necessary
for distinguishing between sound, ethical, logical argument and “mere rhetoric.”
To that end, I invited several fellow U of I critics, including undergraduates, grad
students, and professors, to contribute short rhetorical analyses of the 2004 Presidential
Debates in order to inform the C-U community of the styles, arguments, and
strategies employed not only by Kerry and Bush but also by Edwards, Cheney, and
other candidates running for federal, state, and local offices. Informed citizens must
look at a candidate’s rhetorical style as well as the details of her platform before
making voting decisions or engaging in political arguments, whether in this season
or the future. Each contributor to project is a model for analysis and exemplar of
such skills, for each contributor examines in detail the rhetoric of Election 2004 and
offers a unique rhetorical perspective that goes beyond truth and lies, identifying discursive
patterns and revealing the gaps in logic that underlie the rhetoric of politics.
For transcripts of the debates, see www.CSPAN.org; for a handy searchable list of
rhetorical tropes and figures, see Silva Rhetoricae at http://rhetoric.byu.edu; see also
Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (1985), Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and Richard
Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (1992).