Blog 2 - The Power of Ethos

While both candidates used entirely different techniques of addressing their respective parties, Romney was more heavily focused on the ethos portion of his speech.  In my opinion, this was an incredibly intelligent move by the republican nominee.  Unlike Obama, who has been in the political spotlight for the last four years, Romney was a brand new presidential candidate.  A large portion of Americans, unfortunately, vote from their personal feelings towards the candidates, rather than about their views on the issues.  By allowing America to get a view into his personal life, Romney is greatly appealing to the voters that are still undecided in this upcoming election.  He knows he has secured the votes from the delegates of his party, so by presenting an ethos-based speech, he is able to target a whole new audience.  My personal belief is that his speech, while presented at the Republican National Convention, is wholly targeting voters that have yet to decide for whom to cast their vote.  He was able to do a great job of soliciting votes from people questioning Obama’s leadership, whether they supported him in 2008 or not.  Republicans are historically known for ‘having a backbone’ and, although Obama has tried to instill that quality in his campaign, I believe that Romney had shown that he is still the much tougher candidate.  He is purposely taking blatant jabs at Obama, which is only going to support people’s idea of the ‘tough republican’, and hopefully help people lean towards electing someone that can make the difficult decisions.  Overall, I think that Romney’s speech was well delivered and was able to help instill confidence in him as a leader.  Obama is very well known as an orator, but I believe that Romney did a far better job at attracting a specific target audience.