Gary Johnson Ethos Pathos Logos

The Gary Johnson Campaign has been trying to represent itself as the better option than the “lesser of two evils choice.” In order for this to work Johnson has been using appeal to logos as his primary appeal to voters. The intended effect is for voters to see that Johnson is using facts and data to backup his claims instead of the Clinton-Trump approach of appeal to pathos.

Almost all of Gary Johnson’s arguments have appeal to logos somewhere in them. This approach takes much more time to accomplish because of the amount of fact-checking that has to be done. But the intended effect of this appeal to logos is to convince people with facts that he is the opposite of the other candidates. During one of Gary Johnson’s first campaign video it states

Johnson is trying to explain to voters how he will base his presidency off of facts, while also solving many complex issues. Johnson does this by saying “As Governor of a state with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature, Gary Johnson stood up to excess spending, vetoed 750 bills and literally thousands of budget line items … and balanced the state’s budget.” (No excuses. No games. A REAL balanced budget.) The entire point of this quote is to show voters that he isn’t going to be like Trump or Clinton his campaign and presidency will be based on facts and will convince voters by using appeals to logos.

Johnson also needs to go on the offensive and even uses and appeal to logos to do so. In this quote he is talking about Immigration Reform and other candidates stances on it. “Candidates who say they want to militarize the border, build fences, and impose punitive measures on good people, ground their position in popular rhetoric, not practical solutions.” (Practical Reform. No Walls. Incentivize Assimilation.) Johnson yet again uses an appeal to logos but this time is using it to discredit Trump and explain that based on logic the wall isn’t