Sarah Palin - Use of Logos

Moderator Gwen Ifill begins by asking vice president candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin “What promises, given the events of the week (the bailout plan), have your campaigns made to the American people that you are not going to be able to keep?” After a brief response by Biden, Palin is given the opportunity to prove herself to Americans. She opens with the statement, “The nice thing about running with John McCain is I can assure you he doesn’t tell one thing to one group and turn around and tell something else to a different group.” This is an attempt to show the audience that she and McCain, unlike Biden and Obama, will stick to their word; America will not have to worry about false promises within their campaign. Ideally for Palin, Americans will look at this contrast as a logical reason for favoring the McCain campaign. While this is an obvious logos appeal, Palin also appeals to the audience’s emotions with the use of pathos: she shows us that we, America, should never have to worry about false promises and with her and McCain in office, we are free of that worry.

Palin then launches in to a speech about an energy plan that Obama voted in favor of. This plan gave large oil companies big tax breaks. In response to this, Palin claims she “took on those oil companies and told them no way… that greed wasn’t going to happen in my state. I had to break up monopolies and say the people are going to come first, those tax breaks aren’t going to the big companies anymore – not when it adversely affects the people.” By these statements, Palin is attempting to show the audience, once again, the logic of voting in favor of the McCain campaign rather than the Obama campaign. She backs this idea up with the fact that Obama did indeed vote in favor of this particular plan. The audience can use their own reasoning to realize the obvious logic: under she and McCain, these tax breaks on large companies would not happen; the people would be more protected.

We can see another overlapping of rhetorical appears when Palin states that she had to break up companies “as governor of an energy-producing state, and undo (actions) in my own area of expertise: energy.” Here, Palin establishes her own authority, employing ethos, by mentioning her “area of expertise.” Still, her argument is rooted in logic. She continues to build on the idea, common in politics, that her side of the campaign is superior to the other (Obama and Biden). Palin closes her argument by stating “I don’t believe John McCain has made any promises that he would not be able to keep.” She leaves the obvious conclusion to the audience, once again. She has presented the facts about differences between her own campaign, alongside McCain, and Obama and Biden’s. The audience is to use this evidence to make their decision.