Presidential Paper

I probably should have sought a clarification...or maybe I missed it, but I'm not sure if we're supposed to be thinking about the means of persuasion of the presidential candidate or our own means of persuasion for making an argument about the candidates' means of persuasion. I'm guessing the former. So here goes. I think I'd like to focus on "Prepon" or Appropriateness and Propriety. When I read this section I thought it applied very well to the campaign and saw lots of fodder for stylistic dissection. The concept of Opportunity I found the most interesting. "the speaker should preempt criticism; for something that seems true when the speaker does not conceal what he is doing" (211). There is this whole idea of transparency in the campaigns. Both candidates talk about it, but neither really sticks to their own rules. Of course, the most glaring example of this is Romney's tax returns. The question that his critics keep asking is "what are you hiding?" Of course, recently his accountant said that Romney hasn't paid less than (I think it was) 12% in federal income tax. But we all know that accountants lie, especially when they manage lots of money. Look at Enron. In any regard, I think this could be enough for a paper alone...analyzing all the different types of rhetoric that has swirled around this topic, including Harry Reid's "secret source" that supposedly told him that Romney didn't pay any taxes for a couple of years. Of course, there is also a line that the Obama campaign cannot cross in using Romney's inopportune actions against him. I think it will be important to look at what tactics Obama has used to keep the issue in the news and how he has used enthymeme to let Romeny dig his own hole. I'll try to get some quotes up here soon and analyze each one based on the stylistic tools Aristotle puts forth.