The Essay Itself

Clinton and Eastwood: Metaphor, Appropriateness and Why the Audience Is God

I know that ethos, pathos and logos have become my favorite buzzword terms in the last few weeks, but I really do think that those are the best places to start when analyzing a speech. I have been particularly fond of pathos as an analytical tool, but today I think logos is the more important aspect of these speeches to the National Conventions by Clint Eastwood and Bill Clinton. The credentials of these two speakers are impressive, but the unspoken aspects they bring with them pack more of a punch. Clinton fails to even introduce himself, knowing that his constituents will know his character and position without even needing to say anything. Eastwood backs himself immediately with other conservative actors, only one of whom he names, as a method of legitimizing his appearance. Bill Clinton and Clint Eastwood chose to speak to their National Conventions for very different reasons, addressed very different topics and spoke to very different audiences, but their grasp of rhetorical strategies and neat execution made both speeches incredibly successful in their intended registers and widely known outside of them.

Audience.

Both Clinton and Eastwood addressed audiences that want to think of themselves a bi-partisan. They want to able to point fingers at the other party, to say, “they are the ones not doing their share. They are the one who don’t want internal peace.” Rhetorically, that made both crowds very easy to address; it does not take much stroking to sooth those ruffled feathers and a few quick words from Eastwood about his not always hating Obama and a longer speech from Clinton about his own bi-partisan work nicely fulfilled that desire. Sated, their audiences sat back to soak in rhetoric they already agreed with.
 The audience itself ranged from fellow politicians, to political donors, to party members from all walks of life. For Clinton, the unifying aspect of the audience was its belief in politics emphasizing equality and its desire to see President Obama re-elected. For Eastwood, every person to whom he was speaking wished to see Obama replaced as soon as possible. Their respective speeches played well to these aspects of their audience and Eastwood in particular seems content to stay there and ridicule his imaginary Obama all day. For his shorter, more comedic speech, nothing else was required. The audience contentedly listened to ten minutes of him grilling the “President,” cheered and laughed and then welcomed their next speaker. Clinton’s much longer speech focuses as much on the diversity of his audience as the similarities. He pays homage to his party line, to cheers from his audience, but he recognizes bi-partisan efforts that have been successful in the past and emphasizes that people from all walks of life are necessary to build a successful government.  The audience reacted to him with equal vigor, clapping so extensively that his speech ran nearly twenty minutes over time.
These audiences absorb their speakers rhetoric as factual recitation. In Clinton case, much of the speech was fact, delivered almost as sermon in his slow drawl, punctuated by heated tirades against the heartlessness of some Republican attacks and the goodness of Obama campaigns. Eastwood relies much, much more heavily on the pathos of his audience, asking them to place their emotions onto his delivery. His Invisible Obama has no speaking lines, only Eastwood’s telling reactions and the audiences imaginations. Their pathos, informed by his delivery, make Invisible Obama into a character for their own amusement. In a much less direct sense, the entire Republican party in the effigy Clinton mocks in his speech, never characterized by him, but brought to life by his audience, taking his words and spinning their own realities from them. Those realities are constructed by Clinton, but animated and populated by the audience and they take their power in equal parts from the power of Clinton’s argument and the audience’s emotion.

Dialect.

Eastwood approached his audience much more colloquially than Clinton did, largely due to the conversational nature of his speech. He wants to have a good old fashioned talk with the President and he also happens to be an old friend to every member of the audience. He greets them with familiarity and warmth and includes them in his open-forum styled speech. His entire speech functions to remind listeners that he is a man they welcome into their home every time they rent an old-timey Western. 

Clinton interacts with his audience, but he remains separate from them, an authority figure dispensing learned knowledge. His poise and delivery remind the audience that he served as President of the United States, that he is dispensing information to them and that this election is a time for professionalism and decorum. Even so, he dips into a Southern drawl once or twice, using familiar terms such as “y’all” and “aint” as a small, subversive reminder of his roots. This colloquialism gives him an additional credit to his unspoken ethos, his character. Now, he is not only a President and politician, he is one of the people and a friend to his audience. Like Eastwood, the audience welcomes him into their homes and he rewards that familiarity with his mannerisms and speech.

Speech Patterns/Style.

Aristotle tells us that, "dramatic ability is a natural gift, and can hardly be systematically taught" (Book III, Ch. 1). Both Eastwood and Clinton posses this ability in incredible quantity as an actor and a politician, respectively  They build their speeches as much around their ability to speak convincingly as the facts and figures within their speeches itself.

Clinton approached his speech with a style that would make any public speaking teacher swoon with envy. He spoke slowly and deliberately, laying heavy emphasis on the words and phrases he wanted his audience to focus on and accelerating at times when he knew the audiences patriotic enthusiasm would carry the meaning on the speech plenty well on their own. Their applause carried his speech and drive him to improvise for almost double the amount of time allotted to him. Clinton reeled off numbers and names with flawless accuracy, never missing a beat even when he deviated from his script, relying on the smooth, laconic pace of his speech to cover any hesitation of computation he needed to continue. In this manner, he resembles Book III, Ch. 7 of On Rhetoric, which references  speakers ability to adapt to the attitude of his listeners. Clinton allowed himself to be pulled into much longer presentation by the energy of his audience and proceeded to expand his speech by nearly 20 minutes of improvised speech. He fed off of his audience to expound upon the nature of the modern conservative party, the benefits of bi-partisanism and the challenges and benefits of the Obama presidency.

Eastwood spoke as though he were talking over the fence to a neighbor, friendly and very familiar. Even when he addressed the “President” (perhaps especially then) he remained colloquial. The effect was comedic, a juxtaposition of the President’s status and Eastwood’s treatment of that, but it resonated with his audience, who responded to their closeness to him and used that as their medium to conversational proximity to the “President.” His entire speech is an extended metaphor for a conversation with the President  He is the avatar through which the audience can verbally abuse the Commander-in-Chief and the chair is the effigy of President Obama. Aristotle exalts metaphors in which the metaphor itself reflects the dignity of the thing it references equally and appropriately. Eastwood's metaphor does neither, because he is above his audience in perceived class and standing and the chair is in no way reminiscent of any man.

Nevertheless, the audiences at the National Convention responded well to the stylistic aspects of these speeches, but they were responding well long before wither candidate began speaking. The reputation of both Eastwood and Clinton as public speakers set the audience up to expect the natural talent Aristotle exalts and, when that was delivered, to react with celebration and encouragement.

Content.

Both Clinton and Eastwood’s speeches were liberally sprinkled with mostly empty bi-partisanisms. The interspersed these comments between blatant attacks on their opposing political party. Going back to analysis of their audiences, these inclusions nodded, briefly, towards a shared desire for co-operation. In Eastwood’s case in particular, this desire to collaborate came heavily flavored with a dose of, “but do it our way, mostly.” The overall sense of his bi-partisan mentions was that Obama should step down and let Romney be the bi-partisan leader we need. We’ll be happy to compromise, he said, as long as it’s you, compromising with us.

Clinton addressed bills from both of the Presidents Bush that did good things for the entire nation and that they worked hand in hand with Democrats on. He acknowledged that he, and likely the whole party, wanted to stay in control of negotiations, but he made more serious insinuations that they might genuinely want those negotiations to happen. Eastwood directly criticized the President, going so far as to put words in his invisible, imaginary mouth so that he, Eastwood could respond to them. His audience responded very favorably to this tool, openly laughing and energetic enough to be willing to go along with any joke. President Clinton kept his critical remarks more ambiguous, rarely directly referencing Governor Romney and instead drawing heavily from the GOP party platform and their comportment over the last four years to form a case against the entire party.

In Conclusion

Eastwood over used and misused metaphor by creating a speech that related four unlike things, but by catering to the desires of his audience he successfully composed and delivered a speech that received a very warm welcome from the National Convention. Clinton also fed off of his audience, rising to the occasion presented to him and delivering a long speech that addressed topics his audience wanted to hear. Judging by the cacophonous cheers the National Conventions gave both speakers, good rhetoric or not, they did something right.