Originally posted by drewhiggins:[..]
Good points and you can't really...if you get something wrong, don't expect a crowd to connect with you on those grounds. They can support what you think, but they don't have to, if it's wrong, go with it entirely.
Essentially, it's the wrong point being made in the end and that surely can't make anyone comfortable. Especially not coming from someone who's in power in one of the biggest political powerhouses in the world.
[..]
That's the part I'd be lost on. You don't use rhetoric in politics. The whole political stage is a rhetoric...like that, why re-use it?
Rhetoric exists everywhere, even in politics. In fact, one of the styles of rhetoric itself is called political rhetoric, specifically dealing with using persuasion/promises in language to convey points and gain support. Plato was of the notion that rhetoric was unreliable and a "knack", not something that you should base an argument on- I'm with him, and from it sounds like, you. Especially in a political system, you should be arguing or advocating based on fact, not how you can use language to your advantage. Fact of the matter though is that rhetoric does exist and is still a large factor in politics, however unfortunate that may be, so it can't necessarily be ignored when assessing a speech like that.
Pretty sure you and I are in that same school of Plato though, that rhetoric is the "chicken soup to sickness"...you may use it because you THINK it's making you better, but its really not physically making you better. It's just soothing.
I remember last year, backwards names and Paul McG/Noel Gallager? avatars