Rhetoric & Politics

For our first unit of the Art of Rhetoric, we focused on the basics. The difference between rhetoric and platonic arguments, the different appeals like ethos, pathos, and logos, and directing the parts of the rhetorical situation. Throughout the unit we analyzed speeches throughout history like the 1960 Presidential Debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, along with the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey's attempt to keep the peace during a BLM protest, shortly following the death of George Floyd.  For our first action project, we had to pick a political leader that is currently running for re-election, play as a member of their team, and write debate response based around the rhetorical situation. I chose to tackle the assignment as someone who was on Senator Dick Durbin's team to formulate a response to a question about how he plans to support small & local business owners during the Covid-19 pandemic based off of actions he took during the 2008 financial crisis.