Richard Nixon The Greatest Silent Majority Rhetorical Analysis

What is the broader cultural context that motivated the delivery of the speech?: Richard Nixon cause to action for the deliverance of this speech came about due to the division within America over the Vietnam War.

In Richard Nixon’s 1952 “Checkers” speech, Nixon attempts to defend himself against critics who claim that he used $18,000 of contribution from his supporters and for his own profit. Nixon used his speech to reach his goal of persuading the American public to see his side of the situation. The speech is effective because of the use of the rhetorical techniques logos, pathos, and ethos that Nixon uses to effectively sway over his audience. However, because of the fallacies and possible bias in Nixon’s speech the validity is put into question.

Nixon’s presidency is considered very controversial and people have widely different opinions about whether or not he was a good president. During his regime he established many important policies and political reforms, some of which still affect the U.S. today. However, at some point the seriousness and amount of his mistakes outweighed his accomplishments, leading him to be the first and so far only president to resign from office. After years and with the information that has been made available for public today, become all Nixon’s hidden and less hidden fails as clear as the countryside sky.

Kennedy.4 The Vietnam War was by far the most protested war event of the late 20th century, often drawing crowds and social gatherings to protest. Some propaganda even went as far as to draw on sex appeal of men with signs that read, “Girls say yes to boys who say no.” In fact, some citizens voted for Richard Nixon in the presidential election of 1968 solely due to his anti-Vietnam War platform. High profile celebrity Muhammad Ali himself took part in the anti-Vietnam War movements, declaring that he would refuse to fight for equality in another country, citing that African Americans and other minorities had not yet gained equality in America. (Document F) In addition to general exhaustion from war, the American people wanted to focus on domestic equality before moving forward with global equality and democracy. Anti-Vietnam War protests were not necessarily unwarranted, as the anti-democracy Tet Offensive of North Vietnam resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, with the vast majority of states reporting over 100 war casualties in 1968 alone. (Document E) Economically, the Vietnam War was challenging to manage, as the department of defense budget once again rose to today’s equivalent of 450 billion dollars, adding to an already quickly growing, massive national debt. (Document G)

First, Martin Luther King Jr. uses emotional appeals to persuade his audience that the Vietnam War is unjust because it is unfairly killing the poor and its destroying the country. King uses emotional words and descriptions to capture the audience’s attention and convey the injustices caused by the Vietnam War. For example, in paragraph 7, King discusses the harsh reality of the war. He states, “ … repeatedly

The thirty seventh president’s tone throughout the speech was genuine and anguished. He stated frequently his regret towards his resignation; when this passage is read aloud, it is stressed heavily on pathos and that Nixon defended his decision with the selflessness of his own emotions and did what is better for the country (“American”). In his speech, Richard Nixon establishes his credibility and then goes on to show the logic of why he is resigning along with sparking the reader’s emotions in defense of him through the use of frequent fallacies and rhetorical devices. Nixon goes on to speak of his accomplishments and the tasks he hopes the American people will achieve with a new president, but those ideas are shadowed by the steady reminders by Nixon himself of the circumstances that are causing him to resign the Presidency that overall make Nixon’s arguments to logic and his credibility seem

President Nixon is one of the most famous Presidents in American history for being the first one to resign from office. While Nixon is famous for doing such an unthinkable act, he is also the one that gave one of the best and most well known speeches in political history, The Checkers Speech. The speech was given by (Senator at the time) President Nixon when he was running for Vice President on General Eisenhower’s Presidential ticket. A newspaper, the New York Post, had a front page with the headline "Secret Rich Men's Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary"; the article alleged that people were donating to a secret fund that Nixon had for his personal benefit in trade for political favors. This scandal caused many Americans and Republican politicians to push Eisenhower to remove Nixon as his running mate and to question Nixon’s integrity. In rebuttal to the scandal, Nixon took the bull by the horns and defended himself by going on live national television and addressed the nation by giving the famous Checkers speech. The soon to be Vice-President articulated his speech with a perfect combination of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos to turn the tables from making everyone hate him to making the American People and Republican Politicians love him.

“I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it” - George McGovern. There are numerous controversial topics dispersed among the subject of American history due to the amount of unethical decisions that have been made in order to improve the lives of the people or keep America out of the clutches of war. Throughout American history, historians have debated the ethical impact that the Vietnam war had on the United States. Although some people may believe that the Vietnam War achieved the goal of avoiding communism and protecting the people, the overarching idea is that it was an unjust war because of the countless lives that were lost from the participating countries, the

In 1968, President Richard Nixon was elected because he made promises that he would stop the Vietnam war(PUBLISHED). During the first year of his presidency America’s involvement in the Vietnam war seemed to be winding down(PUBLISHED). Though

The Vietnam war had been nicknamed ‘Johnson’s war’, which automatically put Nixon at an advantage over Humphrey, who was Johnson’s Vice President and still supported the war. This influenced Nixon’s election as many democrats turned away from Humphrey and used Nixon as an anti-war alternative. Humphrey’s stance led Nixon’s popularity to increase nationwide as, although relatively anti-civil rights, Nixon appealed to Afro-Americans like Martin Luther King, who had clashed with Johnson over the war. Nixon’s anti-war policies caused him to gain support from many unlikely areas of the USA, along with those in the silent majority that he originally targeted, leading him to be elected as President in

This investigation will assess the effectiveness of Nixon 's Vietnamization Policy of the Vietnam war to end U.S. involvement. The scope of my research will assess the effectiveness of Nixon’s Vietnamization Policy to end the U.S. involvement during the Vietnam war, as well as the involvement of the women in the military, Nixon’s Doctrine, and the new economic policy that caused the end of the U.S. involvement of the Vietnam war between 1945-1975. The methods to be used in this investigation will be primary and secondary sources historical textbook in search of Nixon, 1972. This investigation will evaluate the effectiveness of the new economic policy In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry. As well as Nixon’s

In Martin Luther King Jr's passionate speech about America's involvement in Vietnam, he manages to create a strong and compelling argument that America's involvement in unjust . He does this by appealing to certain issues the public see as important, using irony, and using diction and tone in persuasive ways.

Nixon wanted to end the war just like every other American. He had many plans for this war and one of them was called Vietnamization. Vietnamization was a policy that would replace U.S. troops with South Vietnamese troops and supply them with supplies and weapons (Rubel 182). It was a way to retreat U.S. troops and end involvement in the war. Even though he ended involvement in the Vietnam War by withdrawing U.S. troops, he decided to bomb enemy forces in Cambodia (Lillegard 71). People were saying that his decision to bomb Cambodia was not ending the war, it was making it worse. Many people protested against Nixon’s decisions during the Vietnam War and it did not end well. At Kent State University four students were killed guardsmen because the were protesting against the Vietnam War. On January 27, 1973 the Paris Peace Accords made an end to the Vietnam War and all U.S. military involvement (“Nixon Declares Vietnam”). North Vietnam ended up winning and the United States and South Vietnam lost. His decisions angered the people of America and it led to an American

The infamous checkers speech came as the result of an accusation of corruption, foreshadowing President Richard Nixon’s lengthy struggle with candor. 20 years prior to the scandal that changed the way the American people viewed the federal government, Nixon had the ability to utilize the modes of persuasion to his advantage, with few attempts being made at uncovering any discrepancies. This essay will explore his application of ethos and pathos in the first part of the checkers speech and how it enabled the American people to resonate with his narrative, with logos being far less of a factor.

Nixon used the war to his advantage. He promised to find a way to end the Vietnam War, pledging America would have “peace with honor”. Now he had to uphold this promise and implement a plan, but it didn’t work. By 1975 South Vietnam had fallen under the control of the communist government. America’s longest war was over, but it took more than 58,000 American