Romney vs. Obama

     Michelle Obama and Ann Romney each gave a speech to convince voters to cast their vote for their husbands Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Each was full of a great deal of pathos, but varied in their approach towards to the audience. First, Ann Romney said she was there “to talk about love.”  Romney’s speech was very dedicated to talking about how genuine her husband was, and even opened her speech by asking the audience to think about the recent hurricane.  Quotes such as, “what Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage”, or “Mitt wasn’t handed success, he built it”, only add to her use of pathos. The audience clearly reacted to this pathos with chants throughout the speech praising Ann.  Logos was scattered scarcely throughout the speech with little reference to Mitt’s former work.

     Michelle Obama countered with her own genuine story about her family. Obama not only talked of her father being a pump operator, but  her husband’s mother being just as hard working, which is the reason why he is so set on helping the middle class. This added to pathos and well as her logos. Throughout the speech she said such things as “women can make their own choices”, and “doing the impossible is the history of America” that personally gave me chills. Michelle’s genuine story about her and Barack’s struggling to get through school, and to help the poor instead of join the reach added not only to her pathos, but also her ethos.  The crowd also went into chants with her inspiring words.

   Both speeches were full of emotional appeals, and being neutral it was easy to be unbiased. However, the tone and content of Romney’s speech made it easy to side with Obama. Michelle Obama was even able to bring the crowd to tears with her words, while, Romney seemed to say many “cliché” phrases to inspire the crowd. All of Romney’s appeals seemed to be by use of pathos with little logos; Obama seemed to be able to use logos, pathos, and ethos in her speech.