Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is interesting to see how different individuals and different societies go about it. America and Britain are, the the words of that most famous of statesmen, “divided by a common language”, and it is often instructive to note speeches that succeed in one country that would not have done in the other.
Take the following speech by John McCain, currently widely tipped to be the Republican nominee to succeed George Bush as President. An opinion-piece in today’s Washington Post noted his power as a politician and an orator to appeal to Democrats and undecided voters, despite holding firmly and uncompromisingly Republican views.
Americans should argue about this war. It has cost the lives of nearly 2500 of the best of us. It has taken innocent life. It has imposed an enormous financial burden on our economy. It has complicated our ability to respond to other looming threats. Should we lose this war, our defeat will further destabilize an already volatile region, strengthen the threat of terrorism, and unleash furies that will assail us for a very long time. I believe the benefits of success will justify the costs and risks we have incurred. But if an American feels the decision was unwise, then they should state their opposition, and argue for another course. It’s your right and your obligation. I respect you for it. But I ask that you consider the possibility that I, too, am trying to meet my responsibilities, to follow my conscience, to do my duty as best as I can, as God has given me light to see that duty.
That passage is masterful and, I’m quite sure, very powerful in an American setting. The use of religion at the end turns the passage from a piece that invites criticism to one that projects an absolute and divinely-backed confidence in the view that McCain has chosen to hold.
At the end of the full speech, too, what begins as a story about a remembered friend and opponent transforms smoothly into (in part) a parable with powerful themes of redemption and forgiveness, as well as clever commentary on American policies past, present and future. At one level, it is a purely personal and anecdotal speech, at another it defends the necessity of political debate, and yet it is also a speech which reaffirms McCain’s commitment to his beliefs.
It’s clever and powerful stuff. But I’m not at all sure that any politician outside America would say of political debate:
We were not always in the right, but we weren’t always in the wrong either, and we defended our beliefs as we had each been given the wisdom to defend them.
Many British politicians may be pious, spiritual people, but I have yet to hear any of them suggesting - even tentatively - that if they have made mistakes, then those mistakes have been divinely planned. Context is everything, which is why rhetoric remains an art, and not a science.