The Green Celebration

After introducing the reader to the seven fallacies he identifies, Heinrichs starts to explain what problems in logic actually mean and the problems that can happen in rhetoric as a whole. Fallacies can be bad for persuasion as their proofs don't connect with their conclusions, but if you achieve your goal of persuasion, perhaps because no one noticed the fallacies, can be good. The author points out that in rhetoric there is no right or wrong, or good or bad, there are choices, some better than others. Heinrichs says that you can have flaws in your arguments but that you can never argue the inarguable. He identifies seven out-of-bound areas of persuasion: using the wrong tense, being inflexible, humiliation, innuendo, threats, nasty language and utter stupidity. Arguments don't have to be perfect as most of the time people simply will not notice. Two years ago, during the Colombian presidential campaigns, many people had become fanatics of Antanas Mockus, but I believe that stepping into the out-of-bounds area in one of the most important speeches he made, deterred his image a lot.

I had liked Mockus so far, even though I didn't have a really strong opinion about the elections, since his arguments showed that he was serious and wise. How I perceived it was that he was not a typical politician as he did things for ideas and not power and he would be a president who made intelligent decisions. In May 30th, 2012 his defeat/victory(?) speech made me think that he was nuts and all his movement just crazy and fanatic. First, Mockus gave his whole speech in present and past tense. Unless he was blaming or talking about values, he should have used the future tense as, I assume, he wanted to talk about what should be done. The whole mood of his speech or ceremony was inconsistent with the situation. As the Al Jazeera reporter says on the video (below) that there was disappointment, all I could see and hear was people excited and proud. They could have chosen a side, either victory or defeat, to make something out of it, but his speech was just ambiguous. Mockus talked about the new nationality that his movement had started and that he did not think the ending justifies the means. His ideas were well-thought and could have been very persuasive had he phrased them some other way. Instead of talking about what should be done or what he would do to win the elections, Mockus talked about random unpersuasive things.

The second mistake he made was making an absurd celebration. Jaime Bayly made a video (below) commenting on Mockus' autogoles or self defeats, and he focused a lot on this speech. I remember watching the speech on TV and thinking that the whole green scene along his beard made it look like a St. Patricks celebration, but the I realized I was wrong as I heard them yelling, "Tu vida es sagrada."It was actually a hippie religious sect. He stepped into the "utter stupidity" out-of-bounds zone as he joined his followers in shouting phrases like "Si se puede," "Si se pudo"(really, what?), "Que no todo vale,""Su conciencia vale mas que un tamal," and many others. In rhetorics there is usually no right or wrong, especially in politics where it's good if it gets you votes, but when you break the few rules of rhetorics, it is catastrophic.

The Al Jazeera report on the elections shows the results neutrally, while you hear Mockus' celebration. 

Jaime Bayly mocks Mockus' speech in this video (it's in Spanish but you can put English subtitles).

Is it a thing?

Rhetorics can abstract techniques of persuasion that you hint or encounter through communication, but it can also be the dull formal logic Greeks used to run their civilization. Chapter thirteen of Thank You for Arguing started boring and unexciting, as the author introduced what he accurately describes as a "torturous device," syllogisms, but as he deepened the explanation of the rhetorical device, I started finding it more interesting and relatable to actual life. No one actually uses rhetorics in daily life to prove that Socrates is mortal, we're all well aware that he's dead, but that kind of simple deductions and inductions are used a lot for persuading people.

As I read the chapter, especially the part about premises, I thought about the unsuccessful campaigns adults do to prevent teenagers from drinking. They have very good intentions, the most reasonable conclusions and beliefs, as well as great examples to prove their points, but they lack a premise or a commonplace that they can share with teenagers. It starts very simple, if you put anti-alcohol campaigns in a syllogism, it would probably go like this:

Drinking is bad for everyone. 

You want to take care of yourself.

Therefore, you shouldn't drink.

It sounds reasonable but the commonplace it uses often doesn't work with teenagers. As part of deductive logic, it uses a supposed fact to reach a rational solution. Nevertheless, this supposed fact does not get into many teens' minds. They might not be sure they want the best for themselves and if they do, they have a very blurry idea of getting that. Most of these campaigns go ahead and use enthymemes, and skip obvious commonplaces. The resulting syllogism is also very simple but it still doesn't work:

Drinking is bad for everyone.

Therefore, you shouldn't drink.

Probably the age difference between teens and those that campaign against alcohol makes it difficult to form a premise the works for many ages. Perhaps more pathos, getting to teenagers' feelings so that they decide to stop drinking, might work better because logos without logic doesn't work a lot. Even though syllogism were as boring as the author of the book indicated, if you actually analyze rhetorics with that structure you can see that a simple lack of consensus in a premise can make persuasion unsuccessful. 

__________

Vocabulary:

• Syllogism: Form of reasoning used to reach a conclusion. As part of formal logic it's a very technical way to move someone to a thought. 
• Enthymeme: Basically a syllogism that doesn't include obvious things like that Socrates is a man. It uses commonplaces, or things in people's minds, to build conclusions upon them. 
• Deductive logic: Rhetorics that use commonplaces or premises to reach a conclusion, usually about beliefs or values. 
• Examples: Proof from cases of real life. It is used in deductive logic to lead to a conclusion. 
• Premise: Part of deductive logic, something that people know or believe. 
• Inductive logic: (Opposite of deductive logic). It uses examples and specific points to move towards a general idea or belief. Uses circumstances to form ideas. 
• Paradigm: means a typical or perfect example of something. A"set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles" in my computer's dictionary. It's basically what you use for examples in deductive logic. 

Rhetorics All Over

Commonplace
Perhaps the simplest, most successful and most seen commonplace in Colombians' lives is the constant use of the word "peace." There has not been peace in Colombia pretty much since it has humans living on it and some televised negotiations in Cuba or Norway won't do anything about it. They might be very successful in ending a war between the government and a specific terrorist or guerrilla organization, but peace is irrelevant. Heinrichs describes commonplaces as terms people can use to get ideas into others' minds. They make you relate an argument to a basic idea you're familiar with, even though they don't have anything correlation. The proceso de paz or peace process is just a commonplace-wording for dissolving a group if it even happens. The government and FARC are negotiation to see if they stop shooting each other and if FARC transforms into some political body. Unfortunately, neither of them has the superpower of creating peace. They do, however, have the power to get into people's minds. Colombia is all optimistic about the upcoming peace. It helps the government's image, people's confidence and the idea that Colombia is doing so great. Having mentioned "optimistic," political figures use this commonplace to show everyone that something good is happening, although they might not know what that thing is. The media and politicians use this commonplace to convince people that things are better. If an average Colombian read that FARC and the government were going to meet to discuss the possibility of further negotiation to see if by some chance they agree in a solution out of this conflict, the news wouldn't be as popular. I personally am optimistic about the dialogues with FARC and think that using the word "peace" might help get into people's brains for good.

If you search for the word "peace" at this page, you get thirty-nine matches.

Term Changing

Apple went pretty much straight forward with this one. The company was visionary and saw that computers were becoming a popular thing (this ad was released in 1998). To grow big, they needed to appeal to the consuming crowds, not the geeky computer programmers. So they went ahead and said it in the ad. Apple wanted to change their image from being just another complex machine to the trendy and simple tool everyone wants (including me). Heinrichs' shows term changing as, "Don't accept the terms your opponent uses. Insert your own." Apple does that almost exactly. They wanted to create a new reputation so they literally inserted a new one. 

Redefinition

I owe redefinition my life. While I wasn't brutally bullied in middle school, I did have rivalries with a lot of people and didn't integrate quite well with my grade. I certainly wasn't popular, and even though I was sort of a loser, people envied my academic success. A lot of kids responded to their jealousy and immatureness using a commonplace. "Why are you such a nerd?" they would say. Oh no! They're calling me "nerd," a huge insult with a terrible connotation. They'd expect most people to respond to the commonplace insult like that, and even though I did for a while, my brain was functional enough to realize I could redefine that term when being part of dumb preteen face-offs. "I'm a nerd because my parents raised me this way and because I can be one. You're futureless idiot with no skill at all. You're not a nerd because you can't be one," became my last resource argument for middle school survival. Heinrichs defines redefinition as using what your opponents call you in your favor. In this case I could have gone with definition jujitsu and accepted the bad connotation for nerd, but I attempted to make a new one. Looking back it was pointless to insult some people that way, but for my rhetorical purposes of that time, crushing their arguments and self-esteem, I was very successful. I've learned that accepting others critiques about you (or insults) is just a step to get to know yourself and destroy them better.

Definition Jujitsu

I don't think "Colombia es pasión" or the new toucan Colombia logo (in the marketing way) have been very successful to deal with the horrible reputation the country has basically everywhere, but the catch phrase you often see in Colombian airports (shown below) has indeed helped. While uninformative advertisings like saying that Colombia is passion or using a well-designed colorful bird for the brand don't mean anything to a tourist arriving here or some random European being targeted by the Colombian country brand, the image below shows a marketing strategy with rhetorical tools behind it. The motto acknowledges what people outside Colombia think, that it's dangerous and many people get kidnapped, so it accepts it and turns it into a positive thing. Through this definition jujitsu, people see that their term of Colombia, a dangerous place, is actually different. Its kind of amusing so it catches people's attention, but since it uses rhetorics, the ad achieves much more than abstract mottos about passion or biodiversity.

Definition Judo

As the presidential elections are closer, my grandmother gets passionate about her hatred for socialism. After living in the US for most of her life, she has become very interested in American politics and even excited to vote against Obama. I went to visit her today because she is leaving to Florida for a couple of weeks, to visit friends and family, but mostly to submit her Republican ballot in the good old fashioned way. My father tried to convince her that Obama was not that bad, and that things like health and welfare needed to be improved to prevent the US from decaying. After having heard the phrases (commonplaces) public good, universal health and social improvement, my grandmother attacked back with civil liberties, communist (which can have a horrible connotation for many crowds), terrorism and public debt. While she does point out things that she thinks Romney will do to help the country, during this discussion she just used commonplaces that contrasted to my dad's and made Obama sound like an awful tax collector. Like I see when my grandmother talks about the elections, politics has a lot of definition judo, where each party takes the other's terms and contrasts them.

Local Rhetoric

As I read “Win Their Trust,” a chapter about ethos in Thank You for Arguing, I constantly kept remembering one of those dull MUN debates where all I could think about was how unpersuasive everyone was. Local rhetorics are not famous. Colombians have pretty much failed to have consensus in anything (really), and it can be reflected in most Colombians’ persuasion techniques. Some people have reasonable logos and are quite good at getting at your emotions through pathos, but when winning your trust or building up their ethos, they fail. While I do see great rhetoricians in MUN, all of which believe they’re going to be presidents, many MUNers don’t do what Heinrichs says in chapter eight of his book. 

The first strategy to get people to trust you Heinrichs talks about is to sound as if you were decided on something because the evidence is simply too good. This is one of the most seen rhetorical tools in MUN, as people just say that their country is right because it’s just that way. While they could insist that statistics show that biofuel are terrible for world hunger or that Iran must have nuclear weapons, many people use this strategy as if it was my country is right because it is. I’ve heard, “Legalizing prostitution is bad,” “The US is right about the Middle East,” “GMOs have helped so much that we have to use them!” among many other arguments that could be strengthened a lot. Many MUN delegates try to sound as if they were simply right because it makes sense, which could work if they developed their ideas, but they end just insisting that their country’s side is the only one. 

Chapter eight of Thank You for Arguing also says that acting like you didn’t care much about something helps you persuade others to support it. In the last MUN conference I went, as president of the committee I got a lot of personal complaints from students part of a debate society. More than expecting them not to care about their seating assignments, I expected them to sound reasonable. I decided to separate two people from sitting together because they wouldn’t stop talking. One of them came to me and made a huge deal about it. By making it notable that she cared so much about sitting next to that boy, I decided that they couldn’t be together or they wouldn’t shut up. Telling me that, “Why are you like that? [Ay! ¿por qué eres así?]” or, “I refuse to sit there,” only made her less persuasive. Had she told me she was willing to change seats but that she wanted to discuss something with him at sometime, I would’ve considered not giving her a warning. 

The last strategy for getting people to trust you, according to Heinrichs, is dubitatio. By showing doubt in your rhetorical skill, you build up your ethos and people like you. Many  people in MUN find it more amusing to just act confident and yell at everyone rather than acting as a compromiser. People jump ahead to their arguments assuming that confidence and strength get people to fall for your ideas. The radical Iran delegate often has no supporters by the time delegates must write working papers. Thinking that being extremist will get them an award often excludes them for an activity essential for that. 

MUN is a school activity where people arrive with no rhetorical skill whatsoever and hopefully might learn some by the time they graduate. I shouldn't expect any MUN delegate to be a great rhetorician or to even care about being one, but MUN does show that rhetorics is not Colombia’s strength. People in politics are often obsessed with being correct and try to act so confident that they scare voters away. Candidates that are attacked by the media often win because they’re not intimidating. MUN is not a microcosmos of Colombia but it is a good place to see why Colombian nature, with “such a great country” has not allowed progress. While Colombians don’t try rhetorical tools as acting not to care a lot, conflicts will exist. This blog entry might even be seen as a confident complaint, typical of Colombians. 

The Magnificent Leadership Academy

For people to build up their ethos it is essential to show practical wisdom. Jay Heinrichs explains the importance of leadership and revealing it when being persuasive. One may use other tools like pathos or logos, but without leadership, rhetorics don’ work. Just as the world is once again giving importance to rhetorics or persuasion, leadership education is now part of the world’s most recognized institutions. I can best relate this to my school’s leadership program, designed to make the leaders of Colombia’s future. 

Colombia is one of those places, mostly around the equator, in need of true, tough and efficient leaders. Our geographical disadvantages are a fact, on we must deal with. Colegio Nueva Granada is well aware of this. For this third world garbage to get better, we need leaders, and a leadership programs is just the solution. As shown in Thank You for Arguing, leadership is made up of three elements: showing off your experiences, bending the rules and appearing to take the middle course. The leadership program at the school took it seriously and so the Colombian society awaits the leaders. 

Ubaté: The valley of ethos

Living right between the uncivilized Central American countries and the vast Amazon jungle, Colombians are prone to receive wilderness survival books from people like my aunt. These guides, written by adventurous American expats, intend to be the solution for getting along in lousy South America, yet the words are not merely enough. CNG’s leadership program believes you must learn by doing. The leaders of our school are sent once a year to Ubaté, Cundinamarca camping as they experience the type of things crucial to Colombian lifestyle. As Heinrichs says, showing off experiences is one of the keys to leadership. Young CNGers get to go drive three hours from Bogota to camp in a complex that, guess what, only has four showers per sex. Once the students are accustomed to such harsh living, as they should to prepare for the future, they get to deepen their leadership abilities through life-challenging activities. Beginners face a blinded obstacle course while expert leaders are dared to drink fresh cow milk. The Ubaté retreat exemplifies the exceptional formation leadership students get. Thirty years from now, as I’ll hear my classmates on political debates on TV or follow their instructions as their employee, I’ll think, “Having climbed a mountain, walked on mud and milking a cow made these street-smarts the people to follow.”

Monday

Experience in a bottle

Having gone through such difficult tasks of simulated Colombian life, leadership students are sassy enough to make their own decisions. The movers and shakers of CNG student life know what to do, and they even bend the rules if necessary. When instructed to help in activities such as the seventy fifth anniversary of the school, the leaders have a savvy nature that allows them to do what’s right. That day they were great at painting little kids’ faces. As true leaders, they were able to bend the rules for better. Some even dared to draw things other than an elephant on the children’s cheeks. Leadership skills extend past school boundaries. Some of these students are even part of unsupported student organizations, like the Fashion Show Committee. The activity, shunned by the school authorities, shows the ability leaders have to make decisions. Many of them, as Heinrichs says, demonstrate their leadership skills by going beyond the rules (they make the parties bigger, come up with super crazy themes that no one expected and make it clear that the school will not limit them, you name it).  Perhaps the best example of leadership students’ ability to bend rules is the first aid training. Another activity planned for them to have experience in what you need to survive Colombia, the training forces the leaders to take quick decisions. When simulating the exam that checks whether someone is seriously injured, some students went beyond the instructions and used their Grey’s Anatomy skills to diagnose the fake patients. “This is an easy one, he’s suffering form an idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis. It’s no accident, just like O’Malley and Karev’s case,” some would dare to say.

The final element of leadership, according to Jay Heinrichs, is appearing to take the middle course. Often seen as the good student-bad student strategy, this leadership characteristic is certainly present in leadership students. When asking teachers to sign their prearranged forms of absence, in order to go to their rural getaway, the leaders have it sort out. You can observe as the first student asking permission claims they shouldn’t have to study for the test on Tuesdays while camping. The second student to ask for the signature comes with a balanced, middle-course solution, “We’ll do the test on after school.” Gosh, they’re creative. 

After carefully analyzing CNG’s leadership program and how it fulfills the basics of leadership in rhetoric, it is no mystery why Colombia is moving forward. This program captivates the really need in Colombian society. The nuns and monks were wrong to teach us philosophy, we must experience what Colombian life is. Surely mountain life survival skills are part of the leadership package, but what makes a leader a true one is his or her certificate. Experience is useful for yourself, but for it to be persuasive and build up one’s ethos, one needs a badge. So far i’ve explained how CNG’s leadership program builds character and therefore leadership, but what really makes the difference is the industrial system in which students get certificated as the leaders. They will get into good colleges, get recruited by great companies and, someday, use their lactose tolerance to lead the world of tomorrow. 

Companies Are All Better

Heinrichs in Thank You for Arguing focuses the chapters about ethos in politics, probably the subject where the most persuasion is needed, but almost every aspect of modern life has rhetorics involved. Although business runs partly on the committed demand of consumers, a huge part of selling is made by persuading consumers into buying products. After politics, marketing is probably the subject with the most rhetoric involved. 

Politicians have people willing to listen at what they say and get many hours, especially if they have the self-confidence of Chavez or Castro, to give their speeches. Businesses, however, don't have people desperate to hear what they want to say. Aristotle called humans political animals, showing that naturally we want to get involved in politics. Sadly for business, we're not quite consuming animals, so they need to get people to buy their things. Through rhetorics in marketing, businesses make people into shopaholics and consuming animals.

Businesses use all, logos, pathos and ethos, but what they tend to focus on the most is their ethos or reputation. As the market keeps becoming more competitive, companies must make themselves somehow different and attractive to consumers, so they go for marketing their brands and presenting themselves as better than the others. Companies take advantage of the superficial human mind and make consumers believe that their brands are the best. By their use of rhetorics, businesses are able to make their character more important than their products, and consequently, sell more. 

In Thank You for Arguing the author tackles the issue of lacking an attentive audience in the chapter "Make Them Listen." Heinrichs describes what one should do to get, well, people to listen. The rhetorical tools he covers on the chapter are bragging, getting others to brag for you, revealing a tactical flaw, and changing your position. Marketing follows those steps almost word by word. 

The image above shows and advertisement from BMW in which they basically brag. They use logos in way, as they state as facts the prizes that Audi and BMW won, in order to show the company's reputation. BMW is bragging themselves as they say they were the winners of the World Car of 2006, but since they use someone else's authority, they are also getting someone else to brag for them. They obviously think they're great, but since they got awarded something by who you think might be an unbiased jury, you believe they're great. The company also reveals a tactical flaw in a way. They give some credit to Audi as they BMW didn't win the South Africa prize, but they only do so to further brag. 

Like BMW does, Samsung also focuses on building a reputation through rhetorical tools. The advertisement below compares the iPhone 5 with the Samsung Galaxy SIII, and uses logos and pathos for the final purpose of ethos. Companies do want to use logos and pathos, but since these are instantaneous rhetorical tools, they rather develop a reputation that will last for long. This ad shows Samsung bragging about their great new phone as they hint a tactical flaw. Many consumers are aware of the recent lawsuit Apple won against Samsung, so through the Galaxy's advertisement, Samsung hints that they're "mistake," or coping the iPhone, was actually for good and now it's simply better for consumers. The advertisement doesn't show it but Samsung has also switched side because they basically copied Apple. While they tried to have creative and original phones at first, they gradually started copying what actually sold. Unluckily for them, Apple noticed. 

Heinrichs in Thank You for Arguing so far has explained rhetorics in a political or personal scenario, but persuasion influences many other aspects of life like business. Economics has developed a lot from just supply and demand. Once relatively unbiased consumers are now obsessed with consuming specific brands and products. Marketing uses rhetorics to get to people's minds and, for the most, establish a company's reputation to create a demand. Especially in places like the US, rhetorics has made the economy become all about consuming. 

Show Business

On the thirds presidential debate last monday Barack Obama and Mitt Romney got the world to think they debated about US foreign policy. After only talking about national security and focusing only on the Middle East, the candidates made voters analyze who will lead the country better in the international community. For the world, or Americans at least, it was a debate about the policies each of them would establish if they were elected, but for them it was merely an act. They talked with their advisors and defined strategies to stage an argument that will get those undecided voters to like them. To give them credit, though, they manipulated people by rhetoric, not tamales.
All issues regarding the elections are either relating t decisions of the past, conflicts of the present or choices of the future, so the Obama and Romney, as skilled rhetoricians, used the corresponding verb tenses to argue about a topic.

Both candidates are dying to blame the other in any way they can. If they dream of something at night, it's probably not that they win but that the other loses. Throughout the debate they were constantly blaming each other and telling the audience what the other candidate did wrong in the past, also mentioning occasionally the good things they've each has done. Obama went out of the topic of the debate just to exploit one of Romney's defects. Obama said, "First of all, Governor Romney talks about small businesses, but Governor, when you were in Massachusetts, small businesses' development ranked about 48, I think, out of 50 states." By having the verbs in past tense, uses forensic rhetoric to blame Romney for something. Whose fault is it that small businesses are doing badly? Romney did something wrong. Obama avoids actually responding to questions by simply blaming Romney for something. Later in the debate, Obama said, " When you were asked about reduced class sizes, you said class sizes don't make a difference." As he was discussing the economic problems and the need for improving education, Obama blames Romney for saying something bad. What Romney said could have been out of context and even if it wasn't, it doesn't mean that it's Romney's fault that the US has problems. However, the audience just hears "Romney, education, bad."

Another decisive topic of the campaign is the values of the candidates. People want to know what they do in the present, how they think and how they behave, so the candidates respond by using present tense rhetorics. Obama choses to use present tense, even though he might be talking about the past, to attack his opponent's values. He said, "The policies that you're promoting actually don't help small businesses. And the way you define small businesses include folks at the very top." While referring to Romney's governorship, which ended in 2007, Obama talks in present tense to attack Romney's way of thinking and ethics. The audience might think that Romney is still doing those things and hurting entrepreneurs, but even though he might in the future, he is not actually doing that now. 
In another point of the debate, Obama said, "But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s." Ouch, that hurts. Obama attacks Romney's values by saying that his policies are outdated. This example shows that the present tense is necessary to attack values. 

The presidential campaigns are, after all, about the future. The candidates manipulate voters by shifting to the present and past tense, but what mostly matter is the future tense: what will each do if he wins? Talking about the debate on my Macroeconomics class, I heard someone say that he had liked Romney more because he had a plan and stated his policies. I don't think he actually did, Romney just spoke in future tense as he said abstract ideas that relate to improvement, making the viewers believe that he was talking about an actual plan. Romney said, "I will get America working again and see rising take- home pay again. And I'll do it with five simple steps." He later said that America will become energy independent, more trade, better education, a balanced budget and improvement in small businesses. If you vote for Romney you will get these great things, if you don't you might not, or at least that's how some people get it. Had he said, "We need energy independence, more trade, better education, a balanced budget and improvement in small businesses," it would have not sound like a plan. As Romney used the future tense, the audience might believe he has a plan. 

 As Romney and Obama used verb tenses for persuasion, they also used logos, pathos and ethos to reach consensus with the voter (meaning that the voters agree to vote for one of them). Romney says, "First of all, 30,000 people being killed by their government is a humanitarian disaster. Secondly, Syria's an opportunity for us because Syria plays an important role in the Middle East, particularly right now. Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea. It's the route for them to arm Hezbollah in Lebanon, which threatens, of course, our ally Israel." As he describes the situation of Syria and Iran, Romney turns opinions and speculations into facts, or logos. He makes things sound like arguments that support his opinion towards the Middle East. Nobody actually knows how many people have died so far in Syria, Iran has other allies, Iran has coasts in two seas, and they don't need Syria to help Hezbollah if they do. With his confidence to make these things sound like facts, Romney gets people to support him.

Pathos is necessary for politicians to get any support from voters. Obama clearly uses pathos to get people to like him when he talks about 911. He says, "You know, after we killed bin Laden, I was at Ground Zero for a memorial and talked to a -- a -- a young woman who was 4 years old when 9/11 happened. And the last conversation she had with her father was him calling from the twin towers, saying, Peyton (sp), I love you, and I will always watch over you. And for the next decade she was haunted by that conversation. And she said to me, you know, by finally getting bin Laden, that brought some closure to me. And when we do things like that, when we bring those who have harmed us to justice, that sends a message to the world, and it tells Peyton (sp) that we did not forget her father." It is a tragic story as part of the event that traumatized many Americans, but it's also a manipulative tool of his persuasion. People get emotional with 911 and Obama knows that. 

As he made people sentimental about 911, Obama also built up his ethos and made the audience see him like a leader or a hero. Referring to the same thing he says, " And -- and I make that point because that's the kind of clarity of leadership -- and those decisions are not always popular." By revealing a tactical flaw, people see him as trustworthy, and having mentioned it, as a leader. 

The third presidential debate, as any other political scenario, was the perfect place to see rhetorics in action. Both candidates have good ideas as well as bad ideas, but what I've like the most about them is the lecture on persuasion they're teaching me. Four years ago I surely didn't try to analyze candidates' strategies because I thought they were speaking from their hearts. This year, however, I've been able to see how their performances get them votes. 

Now see how they can be everything people like (aggressive, confident, nice, charismatic...):