Vice Presidential Debate

This week's article is a close look at the Vice Presidential Debate and both Obama and Romney's intended foreign policies. Matt Zeller, a writer for the Huffington Post and former Afghanistan veteran, not only commends Joe Biden's passionate and informed responses, but also regard's Paul Ryan's performance as shameful and oblivious. He focuses on the candidates' responses to the situation in Afghanistan. The purpose of this text is to not only inform of the candidates' performances and campaigning platforms on Afghanistan, but to emphasize the future implications of a continued Afghanistan War. He states somberly that to maintain peace in Afghanistan comes at a cost of keeping troops and more military spending for the next 10 years. He wants these ideas to be known to anyone keeping up with the presidential campaign; he educates the audience so they can make a careful choice in the upcoming election. One rhetorical element that he used is parallelism, a strategy that linked the Bush administration to what the Romney administration could be, which he finds as frightfully arrogant and essentially ineffective. The rhetorical element succeeded in giving the author the persona of being a democrat, and also showing the Romney administration as inadequate. He also uses pathos throughout the text, making the audience fear the loss of American lives in different situations, such as the Afghanistan War and Libyan attack on the U.S. embassy. These strategies were effective and helped to achieve the purpose of making the foreign policy an immediate concern for the audience.