Rhetorical Analysis Of Bill Clinton's Speech During The Vietnam War

It has always been known that in order to gain trust from voters and also sound credible political candidates need to assert both their personal and moral convictions. For example, John F. Kennedy confronted a religious issue in his Campaign Speech to the Houston Ministerial Association. On the other hand, Bill Clinton talked about his absence of experience on the military area and also stated his opposition towards the Vietnam War during his speech Address to the American Legion Convention. During the delivery of their speeches both candidates confronted a rhetorical obstacle; this obstacle was inertia, and structure and tone were the two strategies that served as key for the candidates to get through the obstacle.
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The tone that he uses is mainly patriotic and also shows his ideals, another strong point is how he is referring continuously to his audience. The patriotic tone can be seen when Clinton says his phrase, “For in this critical year, if all of us vote our hopes and not our fears; if we use this election to bring our country together instead of keeping it apart; if, in short, we all begin to behave like Americans again, then I know that the greatest country in human history will make itself greater still,” (1992, 25). By stating this Clinton is using words that sound patriotic but he also encourages change while he continuous to fight the problem. He makes questions and these serve as key to get the audience more involved. Clinton’s speech has a positive overtone and most of the time the statements are patriotic. One of the things that make this speech remarkable is the symbolism that is used, for example when Clinton states. “Just three months before a lot of America’s innocence died, when President Kennedy was assassinated, those warm and hopeful summer days, the American Legion taught me lessons I have tried to live by all my life,” (1992,13), with this examples Clinton’s audience successfully experience events that the speaker illustrates through mental images. In Kennedy’s speech structure helped him with his audience inertia, and in Clinton’s speech tone was the key to get through inertia, mainly because the audience was able to get rid of the prejudices created based on Clintons lack of military service. The inertia in Clinton’s audience was keeping them from voting for a candidate with no military experience, but thanks to the tone used on the speech Clinton’s audience was moved and they started seeing him as a reliable person. And in the end they decided to support instead of boycotting