(Previously posted by Peter Loge on Medium.com) With the presidential nominating season lurching to a close (more or less-ish) pundit attention is turning to potential running mates. A dominant campaign theme this year is “they are screwing you,” with the “they” being a mix of bankers, political insiders, immigrants, minorities, foreign governments, and political hacks,…
Tag: president
“WE” Wins!
After the New Hampshire primary I wrote about a key difference between the victory speeches of Donald Trump and Senator Bernie Sanders on one hand, and Secretary Hillary Clinton on the other. In their speeches Trump and Sanders used the word “we” a lot, while Clinton relied on the word ‘I’. Trump and Sanders, like their…
We The People vs. I The Candidate
Rhetorical scholars are among those least surprised by the success of Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Trump and Sanders are doing what teachers as far back as Aristotle said successful speakers do: Make the audience believe the speaker is one of them. Consider this passage from the Christian scholar Saint Augustine in the fourth century AD:…
The Three Budget Debates
Since the mid-1990s I have dropped in and out of the federal budget debate, the politics of the federal budget, and citizen engagement in the federal budget. The substance of that debate is largely the same today as it was when President Clinton was in office (one notable difference being that the government was running…