What's Not To Like About A Tyrant?

You'd think that this would be a closed case in a country founded as a reaction to tyranny, with a people whose very Constitution is based on a suspicion of government and trust in individuals and the choices of the people, where "freedom" and "liberty" are discussed and honored more often than just about any other concept. Yet, when you see not one, but two presidents applauded for promising to abuse and overstep executive authority in a State of the Union address, when you see government agencies and bureaucracies used to stifle dissent, and when you see massive surveillance of the press, opposition groups, and in fact the entire population, all of which happens without any public outrage, you start to wonder.

In the old rhetoric schools of Athens and Rome, one of the rhetorical exercises given to advanced students was to rhetorically "slay a tyrant" by using something called the "topos of a tyrant:" In a measured invective, the students would lay out the six vices of a tyrant to remind their audience what it meant to be free from tyranny as well as to move them to action against a budding tyrant or tyrannical tendencies in their society. The freedom they had to exhibit this exercise was a good indication of the actual freedom they actually enjoyed in their societies. Two rhetoricians, Secundus and Maternus, were put to death by Caligula and Domitian when they performed the topos of the tyrant as rhetorical exercises at a festival. I guess they did too good of a job, and the tyrants got a really good look at themselves. The topos of a tyrant is an exercise I think we could profitably adopt in our society, as a safeguard of liberty and a ready weapon against tyranny. In this post, I'll try to explain the exercise and give a model you can use and spread as you choose. So, here goes: Let's slay a tyrant!

First, a little bit of theoretical groundwork to define what I mean by tyranny. Paul Woodruff has the best description I have seen so far in his book First Democracy: "The idea of tyranny is among the greatest gifts we have from ancient Greece, because it nails down a vital way to think about freedom. The ancient Greeks realized that there is a kind of government that destroys people by dividing them, while it diminishes their leader by clouding his mind. The leader may be a person or a group, and tyranny may rise in what is nominally a democracy. Like a disease, tyranny is recognized by its symptoms. These symptoms are the features of political leadership that the ancient Greeks most feared. And the Greeks were right to fear them. If you observe any of these symptoms in your leaders, be wary. A plague could be on the way, and it could fatally weaken your freedoms:
1. A tyrant is afraid of losing his position, and his decisions are affected by this fear.
2. A tyrant tries to rise above the rule of law, though he may give lip service to the law.
3. A tyrant does not accept criticism.
4. A tyrant cannot be called to account for his actions.
5. A tyrant does not listen to advice from those who do not curry favor with him, even though they may be his friends.
6. A tyrant tries to prevent those who disagree with him from participating in politics" (66-7).

Any of these look familiar? Ask yourselves, when did the US last have a president who did not start campaigning for reelection from day 1 in office? When last did it have a president who followed the Constitution and refrained from fighting illegal wars? When last did a president voluntarily disclose and admit to a significant failure without being forced to do so? When was ever a president successfully impeached or held accountable for his actions? I'm not talking about losing an election or stepping down like Nixon, I mean impeached and prosecuted for crimes. Only two presidents (in over 200 years) have ever been impeached, and none have ever been convicted. And not because of lack of either crimes or evidence, I can assure you. Besides, the US president has what is called "sovereign immunity," and according to the US Attorney General's Office "The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions" (i.e. "ya can't touch him"). Concerning point 5 and 6, do I even need to list examples? Didn't think so.

So why is this so bad? Why does it matter for example if the NSA is spying on Americans (and the rest of the world for that matter)? I have had university students actually say "as long as you don't do anything wrong, what do you have to fear?" If that's your attitude, why bother with any restraint at all. Why even care about having checks and balances. Have we forgotten that almost everyone who has been given absolute power has actually used it? The results have not been pretty. The rhetoric schools outlined six vices of the tyrant to help people keep this in mind. They are cruelty, savagery, suspicion, arrogance, immorality, and avarice. The student would then explain and amplify those vices by giving descriptions, examples, and stories. I will provide a brief outline, but you can easily fill in examples of your own.

Suspicion: A tyrant can have no real friends, for he knows that his power is illegitimate and is only supported by force. As a result, he is constantly suspicious, even of those who want what is best for him. He believes the slightest rumor of a threat against him and sees every talented individual as a challenge to his power. As Euripides writes,
"When the people govern a country
They rejoice in the young citizens who are rising to power
Whereas a man who is king thinks them his enemy
And kills the best of them and any he finds
To be intelligent, because he fears for his power" (Woodruff 63).

Every tyrant has needed informants, secret police, and surveillance. In our days the thought police have taken the role of the bodyguard as the vanguard of tyranny. The ancients recognized that a tyrant first asks for a bodyguard because he knows he will need protection from his people and the power of force in order to carry out his crimes. In our days, the tyrant first seeks intelligence about dissenters and the ability to spread an atmosphere of fear and distrust among his subjects. It is always defended with a need for "security," but too late do the people realize that the security he was talking about was his, and the threat was them. This is a necessity, for a tyranny of one over many can only endure by the oppressive fear created by a police state, splintering everyone into their own shell of terror, never knowing who is watching or listening.

This is a scene from  the movie The Lives of Others portraying the real surveillance practices of the DDR.

Cruelty and savagery: A tyrant relies on terror to silence opposition, and the fear of the citizenry must be kept vivid by regular demonstrations of power and cruelty. Thus, it is not a question of whether or not a specific victim deserves this treatment because of any action on their part. Rather, display of cruelty in itself is a goal, and so-called crimes against the state are often mere pretenses in order to organize these displays. This is one subject which I believe the recent UN report on the North Korean prison camps makes vivid enough. To give a more historic example, Tacitus describes the murders committed by Emperor Tiberius after he had seized complete power: "Frenzied with bloodshed, the emperor now ordered the execution of all those arrested for complicity. It was a massacre. Without discrimination of sex or age . . . there they lay, strewn about - or in heaps. Relatives and friends were forbidden to stand by or lament them, or even gaze for long. Guards surrounded them, spying on their sorrow, and escorted the rotting bodies until, dragged into the Tiber, they floated away or grounded - with none to cremate or touch them. Terror had paralyzed human sympathy. The rising surge of brutality drove compassion away" (209). This is the goal of cruelty, to paralyze human sympathy and drive away compassion by terror and brutality. This is the hollow existence of a people living under tyranny.

Arrogance: Along with being a vice, arrogance in some ways is a necessity for a tyrant. How else can he defend asserting his will contrary to the wishes of his subjects? He needs to believe that he is above them. He needs to make himself in some ways a "superhuman," almost a god as the Roman emperors did. His reign serves as a sign of devotion to his massive ego. Raised on a throne of power above everyone else, he looks down upon the puny humans below him as little more than animals with haughty disgust. They are there for his enjoyment and use, and serve no higher purpose than that. The Greeks believed this frame of mind above all the other vices show tyranny for what it is: a disease of the mind. For under this self-delusion the tyrant has to hide his knowledge of his weaknesses, frailty, and guilt. Tacitus writes, "How truly the wisest of men used to assert that the souls of despots, if revealed, would show wounds and mutilations - weals left on the spirit, like lash-marks on a body, by cruelty, lust, and malevolence" (202). The tyrant seeks confirmation of his superiority over mankind, and finds it in abuses of power. He seeks confirmation of his superiority to divine law, and finds it by breaking every sacred bond and violating everything deemed inviolable.

Immorality and Avarice: These are the vices which a tyrant can exercise without restraint, and the very ability to do so constitute the lure and reward of tyranny. To have whatever one's eye lusts for, be it property, power, or people, this is the lure for the tyrant. The desire for absolute power would have little meaning for unscrupulous people if that power did not enable one to break all bonds which social position, morality, and laws would otherwise restrain. The Roman emperors would frequently display that power by taking the wives of men they had invited to the palace. Nero made it a hobby to display the most depraved behavior imaginable. Tiberius had his soldiers throw the richest man of Spain off a cliff so he could confiscate his money. There is no private property in a tyranny, nor is anything sacred. There is nothing where anyone can say, "this is mine" or "this is private." What is there then to live or hope for?
As the Athenian Euripides writes:
"Why should one acquire wealth and livelihood
For his children, if the struggle is only to enrich the tyrant further?
Why keep his young daughters virtuously at home,
To be the sweet delight of tyrants?
I'd rather die than have my daughters wed by violence" (Woodruff 63).

Yes, freedom from tyranny is worth fighting for. Cicero, who saw the death of the Roman Republic in his time sums it up like this in his The Republic: "As soon as a king takes the first step towards a more unjust regime, he at once becomes a tyrant. And that is the foulest and most repellent creature imaginable, and the most abhorrent to god and man alike. Although he has the outward appearance of a man, he outdoes the wildest beasts in the utter savagery of his behavior" (50). Remembering the first tyrant slayer of Rome, he writes that "he became the first in this state to show that, when it comes to preserving the people's freedom, no one is just a private citizen" (49).

It is the duty of every citizen to guard against tyranny and from becoming tyrants ourselves. A whole generation is growing up now which has never experienced the world before the Patriot Act. Massive surveillance which has never before been experienced in free societies is a fact of life. Throw off this yoke and destroy tyranny and all that resembles it. Nip it in the bud before it can grow any further. We do not want to progress down this road. Remember the words of Benjamin Franklin

Newtown, Gun Control, and the Importance of Kairos

On the 28th of March, President Obama assembled parents of the Newtown victims, along with ministers and policemen, to the East Room of the White House and made a passionate plea to the American people, trying to evoke the emotions the nation felt back in December after the Newtown shootings. Among other things, he said, "The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens, and we've moved on to other things -- that's not who we are. Less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we've forgotten."

"Don't get squishy because time has passed," he said.

But something has changed. Support for stricter gun control laws has dropped from 57% right after the shooting to 47% nationwide and from 78% to 66% among Democrats. The reply from many gun control advocates to the President's speech was, "Too little, too late." http://www.cantonrep.com/opinion/x766890477/Dana-Milbank-On-guns-too-little-too-late
Why does timing make a difference? Irrespective of which side you are on in the debate, this is a situation which shows the importance of a rhetorical principle called kairos.

The ancient Greeks had two main concepts of time: Kronos and Kairos. Kronos is the flow of time from one point to another, as you may recognize in words like "chronology." Kairos, on the other hand is "a concept based on the significance of the moment, the 'opportune moment' or proper time to act" (Hatch 39). It recognizes that in the midst of the flow of time there are decisive moments which have the potential to change the course of history, on a local or global level, such as your wedding day or the battle of Waterloo. "In archery, it (kairos) refers to an opening, or 'opportunity.' . . . Successful passage of a kairos requires . . . that the archer's arrow be fired not only accurately but with enough power for it to penetrate" (Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel 6).

Of course, this is not an unfamiliar concept. We often talk about it as being able to "strike while the iron is hot" or "seize the moment." Children often know intuitively that the right time to ask their parents for something is when they are in a particularly good mood. What we often don't recognize however, is that there is a life-cycle for every rhetorical situation, and there is a little opening of time and place where a little rhetorical action can make all the difference. Professor Hatch writes, "To argue effectively, you need to know how to craft a suitable response to the right people under the right circumstances. Knowing how to do this requires that you know something about how rhetorical situations change over time. Such situations are not static; they evolve" (46). A rhetorical situation goes through the stages of origin, maturity, deterioration, and disintegration.

At the point of origin, most people don't know about the issue, or have not made up their minds about it yet. During this stage people look for information to understand the issue. This builds up until the point of maturity. This is where most of the decision makers are engaged, they know what is going on and what is in the balance, they are getting ready to make a decision. This is usually kairos, the opportune moment to strike, the opening the archer has been waiting for, a crack in the armor. A little action, a well-crafted argument at this point can make all the difference. After this, the rhetorical situation enters the stage of deterioration, although the decision may not have been made yet, opinions have congealed, the battle-lines have been drawn, and it is very hard to make the decision makers change their minds. As far as they are concerned, they are now adequately informed to make their decision. The final stage is disintegration. At this point, the process of change has become practically irreversible. Decisions have been made and put into action, and most people have moved on to other issues.

Newtown was such a rhetorical moment with the opportunity for change, or at least it was made to be such a moment by the coverage it received, the way it was presented, and the many public statements which were made in connection to it calling for greater restriction of access to firearms. Although gun control has been a hot topic for decades, the shootings at Newtown shook the nation and made many people reconsider their opinions on gun control. It presented the origin of a new situation, and nobody knew quite how it would be resolved. Searches on terms relevant to the debate skyrocketed, old studies and arguments were brought out from the archives, people were hungry for information, they were open to be persuaded. All news channels ran stories on gun control, gun sales, and all shootings after Newtown received more media attention than they would have received before.

It is hard to say when this situation came to maturity, but my estimate would be sometime in late January or early February. New York and Connecticut were able to pass tough gun control legislations during this time, and won praise for it from the media and most of the public in those states. However, President Obama chose to send Joe Biden off to conduct a study, which had obvious outcomes and served only to delay time and give Biden time to make a few more awkward remarks. As Dana Millibank writes in The Washington Post, "White House press secretary Jay Carney said there was no hurry. He predicted that 'in a few weeks or a few months,' the pain from Newtown will 'still be incredibly intense.' Not intense enough, apparently."

For better or for worse I, and most other analysts, believe the moment has gone. The rhetorical situation is already in the process of deterioration. Harry Reid has already cancelled a vote on a renewed "Assault Weapons Ban" by Senator Feinstein, and does not have the votes or push from public opinion now to pass any significant changes except perhaps the expanded background checks. Public opinion in general has reverted back to the old battle-lines on the issue and the old arguments, with the conservative ones summed up in this 7 minute "State of the Union" address by "Virtual President" Bill Whittle.

One of the arguments he makes is that every person killed because they did not have guns to defend themselves is "just as precious, just as important, and just as irreplaceable as those little children killed at Newtown." On April 1st Gene Healy of the Cato Institute gave his rebuttal to the president in his article "Shame On Us If Newtown Panic Leads to Unwise Gun Laws" where he writes, "Fear and loathing were appropriate reactions to the Newtown atrocity, but they make for a spectacularly lousy mindset for evaluating legislation. Given some of the destructive proposals Congress has entertained post-Newtown, it's good that we've got a little distance on the horror and can bring sober judgment to bear."
http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/gene-healy-shame-on-us-if-newtown-panic-leads-to-unwise-gun-laws/article/2525972/?page=1&referrer=http://t.co/9E1YdSk7eq

Fair enough, but these arguments could not have been made effectively right after Newtown. The lives of those 20 children in the moment felt more precious to us, more vulnerable, and more innocent than the many thousands of children that die each year in the US or the millions of children that die each year around the world. Whether or not that is fair or makes logical sense, it was true that it set the nation in a different state of mind. Now, it has become a small part of a much larger statistic of violent deaths at a young age. By this summer, the rhetorical situation will probably be in disintegration, and new crises and partisan battles will dominate the news coverage and attention. It may be that Obama and his allies can mount an effective push to bring the issue back to a state of maturity, but I doubt if anything but a new Newtown could do that. It's kind of like driving past a car wreck: you slow down for a while, realize that could have been you, drive a bit more defensively for a while, perhaps even below the speed limit. Then, 10 miles later, you are back to normal speed and level of attention. The moment has passed into memory.

And perhaps that's good. If every crash had a life-changing effect on us, we probably wouldn't dare to leave the house after a while. The point is that there are moments of kairos in each of our lives, and in the lives of each family community, and nation, and "those who understand the power of language to shape and respond to significant moments in time (kairos) can gain some power over their circumstances and expand their individual freedom and influence. They become agents--those who can act--rather than those who are acted upon" (Hatch 50-51). 

Budget Negotiations and the Rhetoric of Leverage

In his The Republic, Cicero considered highest "knowledge of those arts which can make us useful to the State; for I consider this the noblest function of wisdom, and the highest duty of virtue as well as the best proof of its possession" (57). Of greatest importance he saw arts which can answer the question "why, in one State, we have almost reached the point where there are two senates and two separate peoples" (55). In a new year which has already seen vicious political battles on taxes and sequestration, one may well ask the same question about the United States of America, wondering whether the name has become a contradiction in terms.

I will attempt to answer the question about the divisiveness in the country in a later post, but right now I would like to share some insights I have gained recently that have helped me make sense out of the somewhat comical display going on right now about the sequester. It is my hope that this may be knowledge useful to the citizens of any democratic state.

First of all, a lot of political pundits have been scratching their head recently about the odd goings-on in DC. In the first three months of the year Republicans have conceded to raise taxes on the wealthiest in America (which has confused and angered many conservative pundits), sequestration, which Obama claimed would never happen, has happened, and there have been more speeches given almost than during the height of the 2012 campaigns. Also, even The Washington Post have been perplexed at some of the distortions and half-truths floating around about the sequestration, as shown below



and there have been some interesting choices for where a .5% cut in the government's spending has been aimed (tours of The White House cancelled, etc). To make things more confusing, an internal government email sent within the USDA instructed a civil servant: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So . . . you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.” Pretty much instructing government officials to inflict damage in order to make sure the government's words are verified. To any rational human being, such behavior seems counter-intuitive, but after my Essentials of Negotiation class this semester, they actually make sense.

The book I read for the class was Gain the Edge: Negotiating to Get What You Want by Martin E. Latz. He was a negotiator for the Clinton administration, and he knew many of the people currently advising the Obama administration on their negotiation strategy, including Jack Lew who negotiated the sequester and is the current Secretary of the Treasury. According to Latz, "Leverage, above all else, will improve my ability to get what I want" (68). Leverage trumps fair and objective standards and all logic external to the negotiation itself. Leverage is the determining force that will make or break just about any deal for you.

There are two main elements which determine leverage in any given situation: Needs and BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). The party which needs a deal most and has a bad alternative to striking a deal will almost always get a worse deal if the other party is aware of this difference. And the awareness or perception is what makes leverage rhetorical. As Latz writes, leverage is not set in stone, it is fluid, "Leverage is not static. Everyone's level of need likely will change during the negotiation. At the least, one party's perception of its level of need may change. This changes its leverage" (75). So how are the different parties in the legislative and executive using and manipulating leverage to shape the current events?

First, the main parties in the negotiation are the President and the Senate Democrats versus the Republican House of Representatives. By controlling the Presidency and the Senate, the Democrats have control of the most powerful policy-making bodies of government. However, as the main guardians of public expenditure, the Republican House have the ability to control funding. So the Senate can legislate all they want, but without funding all their initiatives would pretty much vanish. The Presidency is another question entirely, because of the power of the executive orders, which therefore have been used extensively, but even this branch is vulnerable to the budget control of the House, The executive needs money to run its operations.

Now we come to the Negotiation, and it has really only been one long negotiation with different stages. It started when the government expenditure exceeded their debt ceiling on May 16, 2011 requiring the Treasury to ask Congress to lift the debt ceiling. This was the first time the recently elected Republican Majority in the House had some real leverage on their side. President Obama urgently needed the increase (high need=loss of leverage) to avoid either government shutdown or massive cuts in government expenditure (bad BATNAs=low leverage). However, leverage is relative. Your leverage is only bad if the other party has little need and a good BATNA. What were the options for the House? They needed spending cuts to fulfill their promises to their electorate, but if the government defaults on its debt or there is a government shutdown the effects could be disastrous for the economy, and if the perception is that they are to blame then  it will also be bad for their reelection chances. Hence, Obama made it a priority to pin this on the House Republicans with a grand nationwide tour speaking against them and how they were "holding the nation hostage" (Biden went as far as to calling them "terrorists").

A deal with some reductions to future spending was finally reached on July 31st (reflecting the leverage advantage of the Republicans). Both parties took a blow in opinion polls, and the US lost its AAA credit rating with S&P. Everyone recognized that the deal was a half-measure, and it was a ticking bomb since a sequester (kind of working as a safety clause) was suggested by The White House and included in the deal as a mechanism to force agreement on spending and revenue before January 2013. By then, both were hoping the situation would be different. The Democrats hoped they would have taken back the House, and the Republicans hoped they would have taken back the Senate and/or Presidency.

Fast forward to January 2013, Obama has triumphed in the election and Republicans have gained no seats in either of the chambers. They decide to split the negotiations into two issues: taxes (fiscal cliff) and spending (sequestration), pushing the sequestration battle more than a month down the road. Now Obama holds the upper hand, since this is the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The default is that the taxes for all Americans goes up. Republicans have promised not to raise taxes and need to keep them down for their constituencies (high need=bad leverage) and the alternative to a deal with President Obama is that the Bush tax cuts expire and everyone pays higher taxes (bad BATNA=bad leverage). The President also wants a deal, since increased taxes for everyone may harm his party in 2014, but the default of having taxes go back to pre-Bush levels is a very acceptable alternative for Democrats since it means more government revenue for social programs (good BATNA=strong leverage). Besides, the President can use the power of the presidency to blame the Republicans and turn it into a political victory. They strike a deal with increased taxes for those earning over 400,000 and reinstatement of the normal payroll tax for everyone, reflecting the President's superior leverage. Jack Lew is given credit by many media outlets for setting up the framework for this negotiation victory already in 2011. Republicans are reviled by their conservative constituencies and may will face hard reelections to the House.

But not so fast, what about the spending? With sequestration looming ahead, Obama needs a deal (high need=weak leverage) to avoid cuts in social programs and government spending (bad BATNA=weak leverage). The default will bring automatic cuts, which would be a defeat for his chosen policies. The original intention was that higher automatic cuts in defense spending would make the BATNA equally bad for the Republicans, but the Republicans have reevaluated their situation. With a Democratic Senate and President Obama still in office, this may be their only chance of getting any real spending cuts before Congressional elections in 2014. Traditionally, they dislike spending cuts in the military, but the newer generation of Congressmen from the 2010 elections do not share the same priorities. In any case, they are much more worried about debt than they are of a weak military in the immediate future. Thus, they have little need (low need=strong leverage) and they can live with spending cuts to military as long as other areas are cut too (good BATNA=strong leverage).

The White House soon realized that they could win the battle but lose the war, and so a rather frenzied media campaign was initiated to scare the electorate of the "catastrophical" results a 0.5% cut in federal spending could lead to. They calculated the worst possible results that could come from the cuts in strategic areas of government work and publicly decried the Republicans for holding Americans hostage and being irresponsible. Even The Washington Post found their claims overstated, and there was little impact with the Republicans. Obama knew that his only hope for a good deal was to destroy the BATNA for the Republicans, make the sequester so poisonous to the public that anyone and anything related with accepting it as an option would be tainted. Obama himself had promised in the 2012 debates that the sequester would not happen, and The White House had suggested to have it as part of the deal struck in 2011.

It didn't stick in the short term. Republicans would not settle for a deal that brought them less benefit than the sequester, and Obama saw that his leverage was too weak to get a good deal for his party. The deadline came . . . and went. Both parties walked away from the negotiation. No deal. The sequester set in. The market, in general, responded positively.

So where does that leave the parties? The President, having power over the executive, refused to accept powers voted for him by the House Republicans to give him flexibility to choose which specific programs to cut. Bad enough to have to cut spending without also having to explain to different constituencies why he didn't prioritize them. All he can do now is to pin this on Republicans, and make it hurt. He has all the reason in the world to make these cuts as visible and painful as possible, or at least as painful as he said they would be if only to save face. Thus, on the 8th of March they announced that they will be suspending the tuition assistance program for US troops, The White House cancels all tours, the USDA is told to make sure the cuts have the consequences which The White House projected. This is not just pouting, this is setting a rhetorical precedent for the future. If cuts do not equal pain then the public is more likely to accept the Republican mantra of "smaller government," proving implicitly "wow, if they could cut that much without us noticing I wonder how much more wasted money there is in there." If the cuts hurt, then the impression will be that government is already as small and ill funded as it can be, and "smaller government" will make people wince and make Republicans seem out of touch with reality. The Republicans, if they can get away with it, will have effectively gained at least one victory in one of their major political goals. It will all depend on whether the public believes the short term pain is less dangerous than the long term debt, like this clip argues

Of course, this is only an interlude until the next budget ceiling crisis looming when the US government runs out of money on May 19th 2013. So, plenty to look forward to :(

Classical Rhetoric and the 2012 Presidential Debates

Well, now that the election is over, a rhetorician can finally show his face in public again ;) It is nice to be able to comment on rhetorical ability and strategies again without someone suspecting that you are trying to tip the scales in favor of a candidate.What I thought I would do is to take some observations about rhetoric made by classical rhetoricians like Aristotle, Cicero, and Isocrates, and show you what they would say about the 2012 Presidential Debates, which had a greater impact on an election than any debates maybe since Kennedy vs. Nixon.

One of the first rhetorical elements which became evident as I was watching the first debate was the concept of stasis, which can be roughly translated in English to "stance." Whenever you want to make an argument, you can only really take 4 stances, or stages where you debate the issue: 1. fact, 2. definition, 3, quality, and 4. place, appropriateness or procedure. To show how this works, let's take an example of an argument: Mr. X is missing, and you have been charged with his murder. You are looking for a way to defend yourself against this allegation, so here are your options.

1. Fact. You can argue that we don't actually know that Mr. X is dead, and therefore we cannot prove it is a fact that a murder has even been committed! There is no body, no witness which saw that he died, it is not a proven fact that Mr. X has indeed died.

2. Definition. But what if his body has been found? It makes no sense to deny that it is a fact that he has died, but is it murder? It could be an accident, and as such would not be murder but manslaughter. Perhaps it was actually suicide, and you just happened to be close by. Perhaps he was reaching for his gun, and you just got to yours first, so it was self-defense and not murder.

3. Quality. If it has been established that Mr. X did die, that you were the one who killed him, and it does in fact fit the definition of murder, then the next level is quality. How serious, important, good, or bad is it that Mr. X was murdered? Perhaps Mr. X was a horrible man, with the blood of many innocent people on his conscience? Was Mr. X in fact Hitler? Was the situation one where his death could prevent the death of many other people? Perhaps he was abusive, and you just couldn't take it anymore? This is one where some of the most interesting court room dramas plays out, since the law generally states that anyone who murders shall die or at least be severely punished, but human reality is more complicated than that. This is where the "insanity" or "temporary insanity" plea often comes in.

4. Place, appropriateness, or procedure. The former stases (plural of stasis) all argue within the same context or parastasis, but this one seeks to reframe and resituate the entire argument, to recast it in a new light if you will. This can be something as simple as a technicality (mistrial, wrong procedure, etc.) or something which moves the entire argument to another sphere. One example could be, "Yes, Mr. X was murdered, I murdered him, it was a terrible thing that he was murdered, but I have diplomatic immunity and as such cannot be convicted by this court." It could also be that Mr.X was a terrorist, and as such his death was a casualty of war and not punishable in criminal court. In fact, it is not even a crime. Perhaps you are guilty, but the procedure and punishment the prosecutor has asked for does not fit the crime (Cruel and Unusual Punishment).

Let's now see an example from the First Presidential Debate. The issue is Dodd-Frank, the Financial Regulation law which was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Obama.

Obama defines his argument with the rhetorical question "does anyone think we got into this mess because there was too much regulation of Wall Street?" By so doing he sets his stance (or stasis) on 3. Quality. His argument is "Regulation was urgent, necessary, and a good thing for America." Fact could argue whether or not he signed it, and it is well settled that he did, Definition could be what Dodd-Frank is, and one could say "a government take-over of the financial industry" vs. "government oversight of a reckless industry." However, Romney seeks to reset the argument. Rather than arguing against regulation, which was clearly what Obama expected, Romney takes his stance on 4. place, appropriateness, procedure: He argues that regulation is essential and needed, but that the procedure applied by Obama was flawed and not appropriate to address the issue. Suddenly, the issue is no longer regulation is good vs. regulation is bad. Rather the issue becomes whether Dodd-Frank was the right kind of regulation to address the challenges revealed by the economic meltdown. This of course is a different question altogether, and it clearly takes Obama by surprise.

Romney's approach to Obama's arguments by shifting the stasis of the argument is a common thread throughout the debate, and it is one of the reasons why Romney won that debate quite decisively. As Otto Alvin Loeb Dieter writes in "Stasis," "To mistake, or misjudge the category of the stasis might seriously jeopardize a representation from the beginning." Obama argued points Romney already had conceded, and so it was Romney who was able to make the points and take the stance that stuck. The Obama campaign later painted his comments (such as "regulation is essential for a marketplace") as a fundamental shift to the middle by Romney, and sought to paint him as a flip-flopper, but actually Romney was only echoing the stance he takes in his book, No Apology, which came out in 2009. Obama was expecting to meet the same talking points he had heard in the Republican Primary, but instead he met a more nuanced and pragmatic approach from Romney.

This debate reset the race to one which, if it hadn't been for hurricane Sandy, may have made Mitt Romney the next president of the United States. Almost overnight, the carefully cultivated advantage Obama had held since June in the polls slipped away.

OK, that's all for this blog post. More to come later!