Presidential Rhetoric, Before and After

Why does it matter that presidential and vice-presidential candidates demonstrate a crafted capacity to communicate clearly and convincingly? Because it is via that capacity that the candidates elected to lead our nation the next four years exercise leadership in office. Communication is not merely something effective leaders do; it is the means by which they are leaders. Indeed, it is the coin of their realm.

So it matters whether the candidates “spoke well” in the four debates that began at Old Miss the evening of September 26. That’s what the winning candidate will be doing at the White House – not just in press conferences and public speaking situations but behind the scenes in, e.g., meetings with advisers, and they aren’t likely to improve “on the job.” No “leader” can “lead” anyone anywhere anytime except through the medium of communication, most often oral rather than written. (That’s why I thought eight years ago that the Bush Administration would likely fail, due to the president’s inability to communicate effectively internally and externally, as Oliver Stone reminds us so well in his movie, “W.” On the former, read Bob Woodward’s books on the Iraq War; on the latter, just listen to the President at any press conference, or his last speech to the country.)

In these times, presidents must be able to communicate effectively with the America people and with the world. That means more than living up to the expectations of him or her, the false but common media standard for judging the debates and other forms of presidential rhetoric.

Rather, the respective presidential or vice presidential internal and external communications, whether of a candidate or the elected leader of our land, ought to measure up to the three-fold standards of public address, taught in Western society for more than 2,000 years:

• First: content must be truthful, internally consistent, and structured and worded to enable recipients to understand, if not believe and be moved by, it.
• Second, vocal and physical delivery must be appropriately animated but consistent with content.
• Third: appropriate moral standards must be used to ensure that mere effectiveness does not trump ethicality.

So, in listening to the speeches of the candidates and their remarks during the past election cycle, we ought to have evaluated their utterances with those criteria in mind.

Now that President-elect Barack Obama has become Communicator-in-Chief as well as Commander-in-Chief, we can apply those standards to his presidential rhetoric. If his brilliant Election Night speech to 175,000-plus persons in Grant Park in Chicago is any indication, we have elected an eloquent president, one of only four to occupy the White House since Professor Woodrow Wilson, former Princeton debate coach, won the right to do so in 1912. Can you name those four?