Pigs (Two Different Ones)

Suffice it to say that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are two very different men. It follows that their speeches are just as different. While Biden speaks softly (and may or may not carry a big stick), Trump is combative and loud. It is clear that Biden’s speech was well-rehearsed; if he was reading off a teleprompter, he was doing an excellent job at concealing it. If you were to tell me that Trump did not have anything prepared in advance for his speech, I would believe you. He speaks off-the-cuff with a casual timbre and a fluid organization of his ideas. What is similar about these men is that they are both amazingly efficient public speakers. They understand what their target audience wants to hear, and their attempt to display themselves as leaders who emulate such ideals is successful. Say what you will about “Sleepy” Joe or Trump’s polarizing rhetoric, but they are both effective communicators who achieve their goals with flying colors.

Biden: Bleating and Babbling

As mentioned above, Biden speaks slowly and with great care. Each word is sent forth from him after careful consideration of what the following word shall be. Biden’s concept of an ideal president is a stolid one who is able to engage in reasoned, inside-voice discourse with the American people. His delivery inspires daydreaming, regardless of how well-written his speech was or how much you agree with his message. He enunciates slowly, giving his words time to land and sink into his audience. His speech was one of the most politician-y speeches you can find, which may fall on some deaf ears due to how similar it sounds to everything they’ve ever heard come out of a politician’s mouth. By no means is his speech poorly written or poorly delivered, but it can certainly be filed away under the “politicians saying politician things” folder. Fluff sentences with no substance are littered throughout his speech, for example, “We may disagree about how we move forward, but we must take the first steps.” Several times throughout his speech I have to refrain from screaming from the rooftops, “but he didn’t say anything!”

Biden spends a lot of time appealing to ethos, especially in his several references to Abraham Lincoln and the historic importance of Gettysburg. The name of the game is patriotism, and the more of it you espouse, the more likely people are to vote for you. Although Biden’s remarks on Lincoln are saccharine, the quotes and ideals of the assassinated president are apt given our increasingly polarized political climate. Lincoln’s famous remark about how a house divided can not stand is well-placed in Biden’s speech, especially because of his main emphasis: bringing the country together and putting partisanship aside. Biden’s take on repairing the divide is clear: “we can not, and will not walk away from our obligation” to fight racial injustice, political polarization, and COVID-19. One might argue that this mending of political division bleeds over into the pathos realm, and they’d be right. Hate and mistrust are both strong emotions that have risen to the surface of political debate over recent years. Arguing against hate and mistrust, Biden really tugs at the heartstrings when he brings up George Floyd’s daughter, and her quote: “Daddy changed the world.” Immediately after this, Biden continues with anecdotes about the experiences of black Americans, and how it must be hard for them to place trust in and love the United States considering its history of oppression and limiting of social mobility directed toward people of color. The employment of logos was unsurprisingly absent from both speeches for the most part. When Biden does dip his crusty old man toes into the logos lagoon, he utilizes the appeal to argue in support of a coordinated COVID-combating cadre dedicated to making informed decisions on how to effectively fight the virus. He goes on to claim that “wearing a mask isn’t a political statement, it’s a scientific recommendation.” While true, this claim is weak because it fails to address those who have made wearing masks political and what should be done to assure the American people that it is within their best interest to wear masks and listen to what educated scientific authorities have to say about the matter. This criticism is a microcosm of the entire speech: it is lukewarm and desultory.

Trump: Raving and Drooling

Regardless of the messages he is spreading, Trump has far more command over his audience than Biden. At one point, someone’s phone rings a few times during Biden’s speech, and besides applause at the end, that phone is the only (auditory) feedback received from his audience. Sometimes Trump can’t even control his crowd, as they force him into silence by sporadically breaking out into chants of “USA! USA!” or “four more years!” or “we love Trump!” His audience is electrified by his sharp diction, his acrimonious tone, and his constant engagement with the crowd. Trump is not speaking at his crowd, but speaking with his crowd. He asks them questions, expresses his love for them, and even calls up one of his friends in the audience to speak at the podium (strangely, the first thing he mentions about this friend is his dead wife). Trump’s command over his crowd is so great, that at one point he literally only says “Kamala Harris,” and the crowd erupts in boos and angry vocalizations. Just saying the name of one of his enemies is enough to make the crowd grimace and scream with fear and vindictiveness. Trump measures the success of a speech by the number of people who attend it, and how much he can get the crowd to react audibly to what he says. His face is smug and his lips curl into a grin while he basks in the cheers for himself and the scorn for his enemies.

Trump’s use of ethos extends far beyond Biden’s sentimental patriotism into full-blown nationalism. Although his championing of America can be found throughout his speech, his nationalism is most potent toward the end when he says “We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and restore patriotic education to our schools. We will teach our children to love our country and honor our history and always respect our great American flag, and we will live by the timeless words of our American motto, ‘In God We Trust.’” If there’s any appeal Trump utilizes to its fullest potential, it is pathos. He hurls insults at Biden and calls him names throughout the speech, rousing the crowd into audible anger just at the mentioning of Biden. He uses violent language to articulate his dislike of Biden, going as far as saying “Biden’s economic plan is a death sentence for Pennsylvania,” and that “Biden twisted the knife in the backs of Pennsylvania workers.” He calls his adversaries “swamp creatures,” his allies “warriors,” and even throws in a jab at “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” He may not come right out and support violence, but his choice of diction is dripping with the intent to inspire his crowd to take up arms against his enemies. The use of logos is few and far between in both speeches. When Trump does engage in this appeal, he does so to support his claims that “numbers are through the roof … bigger and better than before the plague came in.” He throws numbers out so quickly that they are for the most part missed by his audience, in part because of how nonchalantly Trump gives those numbers, and in part because the numbers aren’t important. The number of jobs Trump created is irrelevant, because the point is that he increased that number during his presidency. This is the Trump way: assault the senses with endless claims which support his worldview so that you don’t really have time to process any of them. He talks about fracking, then wanders over to talk about the so-called “China Virus,” the potential closing of local steel mills, the WHO, Biden’s plan to “quadruple” taxes, fake news and the “left-wing media,” and so on. The only way an audience member can withstand the constant whiplash between talking points is to swallow them up uncritically. If one was to think critically about each of his claims, they’d be driven to exhaustion before the speech was even over (speaking from experience).

At one point in the middle of his speech, he introduces “an expensive video” which contains clips of Biden stumbling over his words with menacing music underneath. While Biden is onscreen, the crowd boos and vocalizes their disdain for him. Parts of the video include Trump during the presidential debate criticizing Biden while the moderator attempts to regain control of the debate. The crowd goes wild for this. Although comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984 are passé at this point, I couldn’t help but think back to the famous Two Minutes Hate portion of the novel. Here is an excerpt:

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

As much as I wish this comparison was hyperbolic, as we saw on January 6 and in Charlottesville a few years ago, Trump’s encouragement of hate and refusal to take a hard stance against white supremacy and domestic terrorism only serves to facilitate violence.

Pigs on the Wing

Every person has certain traits they’d like their leader to have. Some are valued more than others, some are not valued at all. Biden’s supporters are looking for a leader who is compassionate; cool, calm, collected; willing to compromise and mend their polarized nation. Trump’s supporters are looking for someone aggressive, disputatious, and not willing to take no for an answer. Supporters of any political candidate want to vote for someone who represents their values. Although their methods of approach to this goal are wildly different, both Biden and Trump are efficient in their efforts to be what their target audience wants them to be. Through not just the contents of their speech, but also by the way they approach public speaking, Biden assured Americans that he will be everything Trump is not and Trump assured Americans that he will continue to be Trump.