Arrangement and Politics

Nowhere can Cicero's definition of peroration be demonstrated clearer than in politics. It seems to me that political ads, speeches, debates, etc are composed mainly of conclusions rather than any of the other parts of discourse. Just to refresh the definition according to Cicero (C&H, 310): "A rhetor may do three things in peroration:
1. Sum up her arguments
2. Cast anyone who disagrees with her in a negative light
3. Arouse sympathy for herself, her clients, or her case.

I'm mainly concerned at observing 2. With less than 2 weeks to go in this year's mid-term election, many of the political ads seen on television are created specifically with the goal of making the opponent look like an impostor, a 'socialist' or 'fascist', a Wall Street insider, un-patriotic, etc. The political strategy in the ads of recent years is that each candidate spends more time and money making their opponent look evil, rather than convincing the public why he/she should be elected. Not to reveal anything about my political affiliations, but it appears that Republican Pat Toomey has been employing this method since spring/summer of this year. When I think of recent negative attack ads, his commercials always tell the viewer/potential voter why Joe Sestak should not be elected. They go to great lengths even to convince people why Joe Sestak is the wrong man for the job. Here's an example of what I mean, he attacks Sestak but then does not say why we the voters should elect him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=9Eq2kDyPKs8

Now I'm sure Sestak has his share of negative attack ads but Toomey's stick out to me the most when thinking over the last few months of campaign ads. Here's a Sestak ad, which paints Toomey somewhat negatively, but at least Sestak explains what the differences are between the two candidates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVBl0p7lx5w&feature=player_embedded

In the section entitled Enhancing Ethos, Cicero mentions sixteen topics for arousing pity of the audience. The first and second topics made me think of politics again, "a rhetor can show in her peroration that the state of affairs she opposes is much worse than it used to be, that currently things are very bad, or that they will continue to be deplorable in the future," (C&H, 313). In 2008 when Obama and McCain were running, it was the strategy by Democratic candidates to paint the previous 8 years as a terrible time in the US and that by electing another Republican we would be committing ourselves to another 4 years of Bush-era politics. Even in the current elections Democrats are using the same strategy, 2 years later. The Republicans are now using the similar strategy to rally voters to recognize that "currently things are very bad" and that they will continue to worsen unless they vote for a Republican. They are using such rallying points as high unemployment, the current issues of Don't Ask/Don't Tell, the continued wars in Iraq/Afghanistan among others. Their strategy is trying to convince that if they elect a Republican, the economy will instantly improve and unemployment will drop down to levels seen during the Bush years.

This was a very informative chapter and I really liked how C & H created lists throughout the chapter to help understand the topics described.

I look forward to tonight's discussions.