Burdened by consistently low approval ratings and evaporating support on Capitol Hill, what can President Bush accomplish through public words during the remaining year and a half of his tenure? Bush may find his rhetoric to be as important as his policies. After all, to exercise leadership and dominate the national and international agenda, a president must first have mastered the art of rhetoric.
That use of the past tense is deliberate. With the exception of leaders' first speeches in office, presidential orations are always judged by the public, press and international community in the context of a chief executive's conduct in office. The more firmly a president has created an impression in office, the less his capacity for surprise in any speech. Given his very eventful six and a half years in office, Bush is unlikely to surprise us much in his public remarks during his remaining time as president.
A president's rhetorical adeptness shapes the effectiveness of his public remarks. The great Aristotle, in his treatise "Rhetoric" -- required reading for any student or practitioner of politics -- defined rhetoric in terms of three central qualities: ethos, pathos and logos. Any political leader demonstrates, in speech and action, a presence or absence of these qualities during his time in office.
Perhaps the most effective rhetorical quality involves ethos, or appeals based on the character of the speaker. As Aristotle puts it, "persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible." That is the essence of ethos. If your character ensures the credibility of your speech, you are well on the way to persuading the crowd.
Bush's ethos has long rested in his personal bonhomie, the sort of quality that makes you want to have a drink with him instead of with his political opponents. This gave him an edge over Democratic rivals Al Gore in 2000 and John F. Kerry in 2004. But recent events have damaged Bush's ethos with the American public. Widespread complaints about his handling of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina have caused increasing numbers of Americans to question Bush's competence and credibility on vital matters of war, peace and public safety. No matter how affable Bush may be, we are much less likely to be persuaded by one whose competence we question. This, at present, is Bush's central leadership challenge.
Problems of ethos are far-reaching for a president. A poor character image makes presidential attempts at other forms of rhetoric less likely to succeed. Consider Aristotle's second rhetorical quality, pathos, which he defined as persuasion that "comes through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions." When increasing numbers in your audience doubt your competence and credibility, it is hard for a leader to forge the emotional bonds that can engender support.
In recent months, most of the pathos in public life has served to diminish the president. The stirring rhetoric and images of Sept. 11 have been replaced by an unending stream of casualties in Iraq, displayed endlessly on television and the Internet. No vivid rhetorical tropes by a president can rival the pathos those TV pictures produce. So it's hard to see how Bush can make pathos his reliable resource at this point in his presidency.
The third mode of rhetorical persuasion identified by Aristotle, logos, appeals to logic and reason. The speech itself, according to Aristotle, can prove persuasive "when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question." A president's use of logos is central to his exercise of the powers of office. Competence, let alone mastery, of basic government functions, can boost a president's personal reputation, his ethos.
Bush did once enjoy this quality. Immediately after Sept. 11, Bush was seen as a competent manager of the war on terror, an image further burnished by our military success in Afghanistan. But that changed after the Iraq invasion. Recall "Mission Accomplished," no WMD, Abu Ghraib and unending American military casualties, compounded by the mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina recovery along the Gulf Coast.
For a president, shortcomings in government management make pathos, the manipulation of emotions, and ethos, appeals to character, less rhetorically effective. That has been the story of Bush's weakening political position since his 2004 reelection.
The president needs to get some of his ethos back. Can he do it himself, rhetorically, in his speeches and remarks in the coming months? Probably not. Facts on the ground in Iraq will determine whether this president will again be as rhetorically effective as he was in the days following Sept. 11. Only proven success in Iraq will boost his ethos and make his use of pathos and logos more effective. Bush's own words will do little to determine the rhetorical effectiveness during the waning months of his presidency.
Steven E. Schier is Congdon professor of political science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and editor of "High Risk and Big Ambition: The Presidency of George W. Bush" (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).