Political Speech: A More Perfect Union By Barack Obama

The political speech “A More Perfect Union” presented in Philadelphia by Barack Obama, discusses the issue of race as it has played a major role historically in the United States. He addresses the Reverend Wright argument and touches upon his own experiences as a black man. Obama’s objective was to persuade Americans to eliminate racial division for the good of all Americans. To obtain the interest of the audience, his speech consisted of rhetorical strategies. These strategies were emotional, ethical, and logical fallacies. To start off with, fallacies are errors in thinking or reasoning. According to Robert Gula, “it applies to conclusions that appear sound that are often convincing but are, in fact, incorrect.” As an example, Obama demonstrates
the fallacy of Red Herrings when he first addresses Reverend Wright’s comments. Red Herring is defined as “detailed or remark inserted into a discussion, either intentionally or unintentionally, that sidetracks the discussion.” Obama stated that the comments were “divisive at a time when we need unity…when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems. Two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, chronic health care crisis, and potentially devastating climate change.” These conflicts he stated as evidence to support his claim, he disrupts the importance of what Wright said and suggested that these issues are more serious and should therefore be the focus. In conclusion, he utilizes this rhetorical device well to his advantage. Secondly, Obama uses ethos by giving factual information, using historical references of the extent of his family tree in depth. This evidence provides credit and validity. He manipulates the audience by an emotional fallacy called Anaphora, which means “repetition of the first part of the sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect.” He uses this strategy to reiterate the fact that he wants to improve America in more than one way. In his speech, he repeats the word “more” to drive home the fact that he wants to change America for the better in multiple ways. He stresses, “This was one of the tasks we set forth of the beginning of this campaign-to continue the long match of those who come before us march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring, and more prosperous America.” In addition, an ethical fallacy seen throughout the speech was Circumstantial Ad Hominem.
This type of fallacy is common when “the author directly attacks someone’s character rather than focusing on the issue at hand, suggesting that because something is ‘wrong’ with this person, whatever he says must also be wrong.” However, Obama confronts the claim that his Reverend Wright is a man with backward views and statements. Although Obama admits that his pastor’s words were “incendiary,” he asserts that the general media who made the insulting claims about Wright and Obama’s still committed to the same church was simply out of self-interest. He lectured that it is easier to judge and critize only knowing one aspect of Wright. Obama then implies that the statements regarding Wright have no connection. Towards the end of the speech, Obama concludes that illegal immigrants have tuberculosis and leprosy. However this statement is not supported by evidence, it is used to scare the audience by associating the undocumented population with diseases. His statement, “all Mexicans are lepers” is a fallacy of hasty generalization and scare tactics. Hasty generalization refers to as “the drawing of a conclusion based on a small sample size, rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average
situation.” In conclusion, Obama’s speech on race was effective because he attracted the audience through emotional appeals. Even though there were many inductive arguments, many fallacies were noticeable. As mentioned earlier, some of the emotional, ethical, and logical fallacies were Red Herrings, anaphora, circumstantial ad hominem, hasty generalization, and scare tactics. Some of the devices were genuine arguments since they proved the conclusion by providing reasons to accept the point in question. All those rhetorical strategies helped reach Obama’s objective to eliminate racial division.