Assignment: Rhetorically analyze a commercial promoting a presidential candidate.

The presidential ad I chose to analyze was from Barack Obama. In the ad it shows Barack Obama and some good things that he has been doing. It shows unity among Americans and pulling the country back together. The ad uses all three of the rhetorical appeals. The first one I am going to recognize is the pathos appeal. The presidential ad starts out with a very nice appeal to emotion, stating “what if” questions aimed toward the viewer. It starts out with statements dealing with America being together and not being divided with each other. This is an appeal to emotion because it addresses the emotions of people who think America is being divided in the present day. It goes to also talk about benefits for Americans that Obama supports; this is an appeal to pathos because it gives the viewers what they want done and what they want to hear. The ad also mentions how he was not for the war in Iraq even before it started, that is going to appeal to the people who are against the war in Iraq. Another appeal in this ad was the appeal to trust in authority, or just ethos for short. The ad mentions that he was a successful state legislator. It helps the viewer know that he had some kind of background in politics. The ad also appeals to logos, or the trust in logic. It not only tells you what the objectives are in the presidential ad, it also has the key phrases of what is being said typed on the bottom of the screen. In the text it has resources from where this information is from and emphasizes the numbers that they are trying to stretch. I picked this ad because I thought the ad was well rounded and was not too absurd such as some of the other ads out there for the candidates. Another thing I found interesting upon doing this assignment is that Microsoft Word did not recognize “Barack Obama” and tried to turn the “Obama” into “Osama”.