Presidential Debate #2

The recent presidential debate was full of some poorly used rhetorical strategies, mostly on Mitt Romney's part. I watched the debate to keep up with the 2012 presidential electron, which is the context of the debate. The intended audience consisted of 200,000,000 able voters who can make a difference in the outcome of this year's election, and even though I can't vote, I was part of the audience who kept up with the election to maintain my role as a responsible and informed U.S. citizen, and if given the chance, I can say with confidence that I would vote for Barack Obama to stay our president for the next four years, and for Mitt Romney, I would argue that anyone else in the world would make a better president than him. In an attempt to build his persona (using the ethos strategy), Mitt Romney not only repeatedly undermined Obama's statements mid-sentence, he kept interrupting the debate moderator. Romney also spewed a string of incoherent and invalid statistics or "potential plans." My favorite incoherent Romney thought was when he stated, "I would give the children of illegal immigrants the chance to earn their citizenship through military service." Not only was this a close minded and rude statement, he undermined his authority to speak on the matter by ignoring the U.S. law that guarantees citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. Obama then effectively played off of that by using pathos to rally support for his opinion, which was that he realizes that illegal immigrants are not bad people, they're just coming to the U.S. for economic opportunity to "feed their families."  Obama was able to effectively implement logos into his argument, and not only was he good with the delivery of his attempts to win over the audience (and voters watching from all around the country), he was also good at listening with a keen ear so he could effectively argue against Romney's vague and unsupported claims.  He was able to pull at the loose ends of Romney's tax plans, and I found that Obama was the winner of the debate. Obama and Romney had the same purpose of winning America's votes, but Obama was the only one who effectively achieved his purpose.