Now you expand your talk into politics and the world economy and the future of humanity. You show how this sort of manipulation helped found this imperfect, beautiful country of ours. And you leave your audience with a little homework.
YOU: Next time you disagree with someone, try to use your opponent’s beliefs and expectations and desires as a tool—as leverage to bring them along to your choice. Then ask yourself: Is the world worse off? Or better?
And end with this:
YOU: If you’re still worried about the ethics, then do this: after you manipulate someone, show just what you did. They probably won’t change their mind. And you’ll find that, even when they know the tools, they’ll appreciate your focus on their beliefs, their expectations. Sure, it’s manipulation. It’s also a wonderful act of sympathy.
The Tools
Poor Edward Everett. He delivered the real Gettysburg Address, and no one remembers him. But at the time, people considered Lincoln’s little 268-word opus a tad embarrassing. It was rather plain for its day, and Lincoln’s high, nasal voice failed to carry very far in a graveyard. Everett, on the other hand, was the main attraction. Daniel Webster’s heir apparent as the national orator, Everett could hold a crowd rapt for two hours—and did on that day. (His speech is worth reading. Its battle scenes are as good as a movie.) A dedicated Ciceronian like Webster, Everett consciously used the five canons. And so should you and I in any speech or presentation.
Invention. Dig up the materials for your speech. (“Invention” comes from the Latin invenire, “to find.”) Just about all the logical techniques you encounter in this book go here. You’ll find the specific logos tools in the appendices.
Arrangement. Introduction (lay on the ethos here), narration, division, proof, refutation (those four middle parts should be heavy on logos), conclusion (where you can get emotional).
Style. The five virtues of style are proper language, clearness, vividness, decorum, and ornament.
Memory. This is the canon hardest to adapt to modern speechifying. The ancients started their students on memory drills when they were small children, and as adults they constructed “memory villas” and filled the rooms with topics. Fortunately, we have PowerPoint, which works a lot like a memory villa.
Delivery. Here you actually act, in both the theatrical and active senses. Think about your voice—are you loud and confident enough for the room?—and gesture. Cicero included the eyes (both eye contact and expression) as an aspect of gesture. A confident voice and expressions that start with the eyes: those are the chief secrets of actio.
Inductive reasoning. When you’re crafting a TED-style talk, try putting the proof before the conclusion.
26. Capture Your Audience
THE TRUMP PERIOD
Steal the tricks of successful orators
I brought the house down. —MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
People who think grand oratory is dead should have been watching on July 27, 2004, when a man gave a speech that literally changed the course of history.
Persuasion Alert
I counter an opposing point of view, not by arguing against it, but by suggesting that people on the other side are merely clueless. If only they had my facts, why, they couldn’t help but agree!
“Barack who?” people asked when the Senate candidate with a strange name took the podium of the Democratic Party convention as its keynote speaker. As he waved to the audience, TV reporters read off their cheat sheets: three-term Illinois state senator, first African American president of Harvard Law Review, author of out-of-print book titled Dreams from My Father. Had made unsuccessful bid for a seat in U.S. House of Representatives four years before, couldn’t even get a VIP pass to 2000 convention. Recently won Democratic primary for U.S. Senate seat. Republican opponent dragged down by sex scandal. Barack Obama suddenly a rising star.
The last time a speech by a relative unknown led directly to the presidency was in 1860, when a hick lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln mesmerized an elite audience in New York City with his famous Cooper Union address. Lincoln had to convince a relatively small group of skeptics that he had the brains and savvy to be president. Obama had to prove he was a political rock star. Both of them succeeded.
Obama’s speech made his book a sudden bestseller and gained him thousands of adoring fans. He went from political novelty act to presidential contender overnight. The next time he addressed the convention, in 2008, he was accepting his party’s nomination.
I didn’t bother to watch Obama’s maiden speech at the time. Who wanted to sit through some nobody’s windy oration to a shrieking hall of silly-hatted Dems? My mistake. He showed how powerful rhetoric can be—in this case, rhetoric of the old-fashioned oratorical variety. This chapter will show you how Obama used demonstrative rhetoric to inspire millions of followers and project himself as a leader. Yes, Aristotle wanted political speech to be deliberative: dealing with choices, using the future tense, telling the audience what’s to their advantage. Most of this book is about deliberation—about arguments over a choice. But in a speech that seeks to bring people together, you want to get demonstrative. Learn demonstrative rhetoric, and not only will you know what to watch for—or criticize—in a speech, but you’ll become a better orator yourself.
So let’s start with Obama’s iconic speech, bring in some of his more recent oratory, and discover the demonstrative methods behind the magic. After Obama, we’ll take a look at a climactic tool called the period, invented thousands of years ago and used by Donald Trump to help propel him to the White House. No matter what you think of either man, there’s a lot to learn from both. This is rhetoric the way the ancients taught it. And clearly, it still works.
Copy Cicero’s Outline
You’d think Obama went to rhetoric school. He follows Cicero to a T, organizing the speech in the good old classical way: introduction, narration, division, proof, refutation, conclusion.
Introduction. Like a good Ciceronian, Obama establishes his character right at the beginning of his convention speech: “My presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.” Nice modesty ploy that provides a smooth segue into his narration.
Narration. He tells the story of parents—a goatherd who went on to study in America, a woman born “on the other side of the world, in Kansas”—and ends with a moral that links his character with the American way: “I stand here knowing that my story is a part of the larger American story,” he says. “This is the true genius of America, a faith in the simple dreams of its people.”
Division. The good orator uses the division to represent both sides—his own in the most glowing terms, and his opponents’…well, you don’t want to be too obvious about condemning the other side. Far better to sound disappointed in the opposition’s total wrongheadedness. That’s Obama’s tack: “I say to you tonight: we have more work to do.” What he really means is, After four years of Bush and Cheney, we have more work to do. Use the division to sound more reasonable than the other side, implying that you’re the nice one.
Proof. To back up his point about how much needs doing, Obama uses a classic rhetorical device, the catalogue: jobs being shipped overseas, oil companies holding America hostage, our liberties sacrificed in the name of safety, faith used “as a wedge to divide us,” and a badly run war.
Refutation. Here’s the fun part—the out-and-out attack on the opposing side. But Obama strays a bit from Cicero’s playbook. Instead of going after the Republicans directly, he attacks “the spin masters and negative ad peddlers” who seek to divide Americans. And then he delivers the biggest line of the night. Up till now he has kept his voice steady, reasonable, even clipped. Now it takes on the volume and cadence of a pulpit-thumping minister: “Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the
United States of America!” It became the sound bite heard ’round the world.
Conclusion. The end of a great speech does double duty as both a summary and a call to action: “In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?” (“Hope!” yell the delegates, happily answering a rhetorical question.) Having dealt with all the logos stuff, Obama can surf the waves of applause with a string of “ands.” He calls his audience to action by describing a happy future: “…and John Kerry will be sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness…” Each clause gives the audience another goose, and the crowd gets louder and louder until the hall becomes so deafening you have to read his lips for the obligatory “Thank you and God bless you.”
Although Kerry did not end up being sworn in as president, Obama’s speech was a smashing success—for Obama. Cicero would have been proud.
Use Demonstrative Rhetoric to Bring the Tribe Together
Let’s look at other great examples of Obama’s oratory, starting with his first inaugural speech. Remember, demonstrative rhetoric has to do with values. It focuses on the present tense, delineating what’s good and bad, right and wrong. And one of the best ways to talk about values is to contrast them with those of the enemy.
OBAMA: We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
You might see another tool in there: the prosopopoeia, which pretends to speak in another voice—or, in this case, pretends to speak to someone else. (The prosopopoeia is all about playing pretend.)
Nothing brings the tribe together better than a common foe, and the best way to portray yourself as leader of the good guys is to issue the bad guys a stern warning. Obama isn’t really talking to the enemy. He’s talking to voters. Instead of urging us to be patient—a tough thing to tell a notoriously impatient country—he brags about our resolve: we’ll outlast the enemy, because we’re tough!
Turn a Problem into Identity Rhetoric
Despite what far too many after-dinner speakers seem to think, you can’t make people eager for the tasks ahead by simply calling a problem an opportunity. Nor can you just call a problem a “challenge,” though even Obama was guilty of this cliché now and then. Instead, tell the audience that they’re being given a chance to prove themselves. That’s what he did in his first inaugural speech. He turned the horrible economy into a test of our character.
OBAMA: Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Keep in mind that his audience considers the men and women who fought World War II to be the “greatest generation.” I have friends who seem downright jealous that they didn’t live through that war. They missed the chance to prove that they, too, could be the greatest. People will do a lot to prove their virtue, even, at times, to the extent of risking their lives.
Admonish Your Audience by Flattering It
In Chapter 22, on screwing up, I urged you not to depend on an apology. Instead, say how you failed to live up to your high standards. The same technique works when you’re talking to others about their screw-up—or one you committed together. This is the best kind of demonstrative rhetoric to segue into a deliberative choice: boost the confidence of your audience while reminding them of the values you share.
OBAMA: America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.
Every rhetorically minded parent knows this technique. Instead of telling your little miscreant that she’s a bad girl for plastering the wall with baby food, you tell her that she’s acting out of character.
YOU: Oh, Sadie! You don’t do things like that. You’re a good girl.
Essentially, that’s what Obama did when, in his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention, he talked about America being “better” than the previous eight years. Except, of course, he was accusing his opponents, not his daughter, of flinging slop.
Use Movie Techniques to Ramp Up the Drama
This is pure enargeia, as the Greeks put it: make the scene appear before their very eyes.
OBAMA: One march was interrupted by police gunfire and tear gas, and when the smoke cleared, 280 had been arrested, 60 were wounded, and one 16-year-old boy lay dead.
While he’s talking about the past, Obama is using the story in the service of demonstrative rhetoric. This historical mini-narration captivated a labor convention when Obama was still a U.S. senator. Its secret lies in the cinematic order of events, as if the speech were a movie scene that began with a wide-angle shot and gradually zoomed in. First you see the march, and the cops on the move. Now we zoom in a bit to find heavy smoke and gunfire. Zoom in more, and the camera moves over anonymous bodies. Then a close-up to show the lifeless face of a teenage boy. Heartbreaking. And it brought the audience together by showing the labor movement as noble and dramatic. That’s demonstrative rhetoric.
Make the Complex Simple, with a Balancing Figure
In the spring of 2008, the Democratic presidential primary race had narrowed to a close match between Obama and Hillary Clinton. A scandal on either side could tip the balance. And that’s just when Obama’s former minister, Jeremiah Wright, appeared all over YouTube, calling damnation upon America. Up to that point, race hadn’t been much of an issue in the campaign; nobody could win from using it.
This time, Obama had no choice but to answer the preacher. But instead of just distancing himself from the loose canon, the senator audaciously took on the whole issue of race. It was as if he repaired a broken-down car by turning it into a rocket ship.
OBAMA: The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.
Obama attempted to show that the minister’s extremism was just one part of a very complicated story. But how do you tell a complicated story without getting too…complicated? With a figure of speech, the antithesis, that pairs contraries in succeeding clauses. The figure lets him show the brighter side of a tarnished coin by implying that the Reverend Wright actually blesses America—when he isn’t damning it.
So what’s Obama really doing here? He’s using demonstrative rhetoric to show that the values of black Americans—including this one church—match many of the values of America itself: struggles and successes, love and bias.
To Emphasize a Point, Start a New Sentence Before Finishing the One You’re On
OBAMA: Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends—honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism—these things are old.
Why didn’t he just say, “Those values…are old?” That would be more concise and even pretty. But by inserting another subject into the end of the sentence, Obama pauses for a beat, and then boldfaces each of those final words: “These. Things. Are. Old.” Notice also that the four words end a long, singsong list. The pressure builds and builds, phrase by phrase, until its release in that last clause. I’ve sat unmoved through a great many speeches, but this part gave me goosebumps.
I included this example to show how effective figures of speech can be in oratory. Review the chapter on figures; then see if you can spot them in other great speeches. When you�
�re writing your own speech or presentation, look for the dullest, flattest sentences and think about the figures you might employ to fix them up.
Connect Unalike Things with Alliteration
OBAMA: This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
Sacrificing together, meeting challenges—these are the themes of inaugural speeches, including Obama’s. There’s just one awkward thing about making a speech like that. All through the campaign he has pandered to us, claiming there really is such a thing as a free lunch. I’ll fix health care, build up the military, pour money into education, and lower your taxes! Not only will I defy the law of gravity, I’ll get Congress to change that law, too! Once Obama got safely past the election, he could remind us that there actually is a price to citizenship. But wait: the price and the glory, he says, are two of a kind. To help make the connection, Obama subtly uses sound-alike words.
Beware that a liberal allowance of like letters can leave us all loony. But a pair of p’s in the middle of a sentence can marry unlikely rhetorical cousins. Figures again. When you want to get demonstrative—or admire a speaker’s technique—look for figures.
Thank You for Arguing (Revised and Updated) Page 37