Case study “no rhetoric needed”

Joe Biden delivered a wonderfully crafted speech on the acceptance of his nomination to be the Democratic party’s candidate in the 2020 US Presidential Election (ABC News, YouTube), but when politicians craft speeches they sometimes include a line or two to deny that any craft is at work. To convey a lack of art implies a lack of artifice and helps to produce an impression of sincerity. Biden prefaced his long, thoroughly crafted, and intensely rhetorical speech, with the disclaimer “No rhetoric is needed”. This was followed immediately by the highly rhetorical line: “Just judge this president on the facts”, in which we have the alliteration of “Just judge” and the rhetorical, anonymised allusion to Trump as “this president”. It follows that Biden’s statement “No rhetoric needed” was an exemplary instance of rhetorical irony, for he pretended to eschew rhetoric in the very act of performing rhetorically. Biden’s talk of judging Trump on “the facts”, which followed an earlier reference to “facts over fiction”, is also a rhetorical cliché. Facts in politics, especially statistical facts, are always fictions made to serve a particular political purpose.