Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

Throughout Thank You for Arguing, Jay Heinrichs reiterates that “persuasion doesn’t depend on being true to yourself. It depends on being true to your audience” (53). Persuasion is not about the persuader—rather, it is about the beliefs and expectations of their audience. Decorum is a source of rhetorical strength as it builds group identity, “a resource that rhetoric loves to exploit” (54). Decorum is especially important in politics. Senator Bob Packwood, a Republican politician and lawyer from Oregon, once championed women’s rights legislation. People considered him a feminist—until they found out he was sexually harassing women. Packwood’s lack of decorum demonstrated how he truly felt about women; his horrific abuse of power made him unpersuasive. Because persuasion is power in politics, he eventually resigned.

Group identity is key to persuasion. When values differ, another group’s behavior might seem strange or wrong; what is ethical to a persuader could hurt their ethos in an audience’s eyes. One literary example is Atticus Finch, the southern lawyer from To Kill a Mockingbird. Most readers consider him virtuous, as he defends Tom Robinson, a Black man wrongly accused of sexually assaulting a white woman.