'Strong' Word(s)

Last time we'll discuss Bush's SOTU, promise, but I want to follow up on the point I made on 22 January about Bush not really comprehending that the authority of a speaker--his ethos--is derived from an audience's validation, their acceptance, of his credibility. My suspicion was that Bush's speech to the nation would miss the centrality of audience in effective rhetorical situations.*

What we actually heard was a better attempt, I'd say, at cultivating a genuine ethos than in the past five SOTUs, but it is still, I'll argue, an imperfect attempt. First, we have to recognize a subtle but signifcant fact about this particular rhetorical situation: the POTUS's speech is not to the American people, it is about the American people. The strict audience for the SOTU is the joint Congress; the "rite of custom" to which Bush refers is that enumerated in Article II, Section 3 of The Constitution, whereby the POTUS "shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Thus, we get passages like this, where we get the sense that they're talking about us while we're still in the room:

Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities.  Each of us is guided by our own convictions -- and to these we must stay faithful.  Yet we're all held to the same standards, and called to serve the same good purposes:  To extend this nation's prosperity; to spend the people's money wisely; to solve problems, not leave them to future generations; to guard America against all evil; and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to defend us.  [Underline emphasis added.] 

But since 1) legislators are the directly elected representatives of the people, and 2) the speech is broadcast, all at once, across every media outlet imaginable, the larger audience can be said to be every American. And, indeed, Bush recognizes the presence of this larger audience, and his speech is quick to include them, that is, us. Check out the transformation of the word 'us' in the above paragraph: when Bush claims that "each of us is guided by our own convictions" he is, of course referring to the ideological split between the members of the legislative and executive branches, and the partisan disagreements within the Congress. But that final "us" of the paragraph telescopes beyond just The Hill. Now "us" is all Americans, and soldiers are fighting to defend all of us.

But I'd argue that fast and dirty pronoun conflation isn't really an effective ethical strategy, not, at least, in the strictest rhetorical senses of the word. Moreover, he quickly microscopes the "us" in the follow paragraph back to just the country's leadership:

We're not the first to come here with a government divided and uncertainty in the air.  Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and achieve big things for the American people.  Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on -- as long as we're willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans, and to help them to build a future of hope and opportunity -- and this is the business before us tonight.

This paragraph marks, as I read it, Bush's first stab at ethos. Here we see him trying to shoehorn all three of Aristotle's ethical qualities--good sense, good moral character, and goodwill towards the audience--into a single movement. I suspect you can suss out the way he is trying to establish goodwill with the largely hostile Democratic Congress, and by extension the seven out of ten Americans who no longer trust him, by reaching across the aisle in order to enact "a future of hope and opportunity." And you can see him trying to (re)build his moral character by conceding the frustrations "our citizens" feel towards partisanism. And, finally, you can see him trying to showcase his good sense when he blueprints "our [their] job" and "the business before us tonight."

Then it's basically forty-five minutes of you've heard it all before, right?

I mean, of course you have. Like I said on 22 January, "What are the chances that he can postulate workable strategies during the eleventh hour of his presidency?" His credibility is shot. Even if he was masterful at constructing ethos, even if he could get us--the people and their representatives--to validate his authority, there's just no 'there' there anymore. If you want proof, listen to his previous five speeches where he told you right upfront, presenting it as if it were--I'm tempted to say scripture, but let's call it--fact, that America is "strong." (The Daily Show did a nice bit on this yesterday.) Last night,  however, that line is his closer:

In such courage and compassion, ladies and gentlemen, we see the spirit and character of America -- and these qualities are not in short supply.  This is a decent and honorable country -- and resilient, too. We've been through a lot together.  We've met challenges and faced dangers, and we know that more lie ahead.  Yet we can go forward with confidence -- because the State of our Union is strong, our cause in the world is right,  and tonight that cause goes on.  God bless. [Emphasis added].

His rhetorical strategy here has to stem from an awareness of those low, low popularity numbers, and the exigencies of facing a hostile majority. Because he's used up his trust equity, his ethos, with the American people, he can no longer frame the speech in terms of strong. This time he must build a case for America's strength. He must work, rhetorically speaking, towards a strong union, not starting from one. He must provide evidence, confirmation, and good sense. I'll leave it to you to decide just how strong we actually are, and whether or not what he outlined last night makes us stronger.

But I will say this: it strikes me as a bad sign when, in order to gain ethos, you have to quote your enemy. "Our enemies are quite explicit about their intentions," he begins:

They want to overthrow moderate governments, and establish safe havens from which to plan and carry out new attacks on our country.  By killing and terrorizing Americans, they want to force our country to retreat from the world and abandon the cause of liberty.  They would then be free to impose their will and spread their totalitarian ideology.  Listen to this warning from the late terrorist Zarqawi: 'We will sacrifice our blood and bodies to put an end to your dreams, and what is coming is even worse.'  Osama bin Laden declared: 'Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us.'

There is an odd sort of authority at play in the above lines. But it isn't Bush performing his own authority so much as harnessing that of Zarqawi and bin Laden. There is also, no doubt, a healthy dose of fearmongering being employed: their authority isn't rooted in Aristotelian goodwill, but rather the deadly actualization of the opposite. (True, even though Zaraqawi's been dead for months, and we have no idea about bin Laden.) Republican strategist, some might say diabolist, Frank Luntz agrees with me.  Luntz is the guy who invented the phrase "death tax" to replace estate tax and "healthy forests" to replace clearcutting, so he understands the power of words.

In that spirit, I found Bush's penultimate SOTU "healthy."

---
* Think of each instance of communication as a triangle, where the speaker (writer), the text (oral, verbal, visual), and the audience (real and imagined) compose the three points: each connecting to each. Without the presence of all three, the triangle is broken, i.e., communication is likely to breakdown.

Comments

[Mark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK11e8_pmBU&mode=user&search=