God Bless America! Appeals to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Romney's speech

Purpose: To persuade listeners that Romney’s Mormon faith will not make him a bad president

Romney uses ethos very effectively in his speech considering that one of the main purposes of the speech is to establish his ethos: his credibility or his ability to govern despite him being a minority faith. Another way that he uses ethos is that he cites the example of John F Kennedy, and says that he, Romney, is just like him: an American running for president, not a religion running for president. What this does is it draws a parallel between him and a beloved president who was a religion that was not necessarily liked in America’s protestant culture, so if Kennedy could be a good president, so can Romney. One other appeal he made to Ethos was that he was raised on American/Christian values, which shows that he is a moral person and not different from other religious people in America.

Some appeals that Romney made to pathos include his statement that liberty is a gift from God and Americans have sacrificed more for liberty than any other nation, and that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost to preserve freedom. What this does is that it evokes a sense of mourning for those America has lost, while at the same time uniting them in pride and patriotism. Another, very effective thing that Romney does is that he ends his speech with “God Bless America” which, as well as having religion as a closing comment, is a typical way for presidents to end speeches and it evokes a huge sense of unity and patriotism.  

Logos is the backbone of the argument, so many of the other appeals I’ve mentioned could also fall here under logos. Another one I noticed was that Romney makes the point that even though the specific beliefs of all the diverse creeds are different, there is still a common sense of morality that unites the people, the good old American values that are shared by every religion. Also, throughout the speech he makes appeals to different authorities mainly by quoting past presidents such as John Adams and Abraham Lincoln. This reminds listeners that our government has always been founded on faith, so Romney is really not that different after all.