No Bully in the Pulpit by Maureen Dowd - Essay Example

No Bully in the Pulpit by Maureen Dowd In the article d, “No Bully at the Pulpit” by Maureen Dowd, a distinguished commentator and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, she writes opinion columns for the New York Times. She argues that President Obama may have learnt how to feel the pain of Americans and grieve with them, but he has not learnt how to govern. She questions the fact that President Obama was able to convince the American public to share his opinion on gun control but was not able to get 60 senators to support him pass the bill in Capitol Hill. Dowd claims that the senators are not intimidated or afraid of him in the least; even republic statesmen who would never have voted for the bill were amazed that the president could only get 54 percent in a house that his party controls. The Ethos in the articles are evident in the fact that it is easy for the ordinary American readers who make the bulk of readers for the NY Times to buy into her reasoning, considering her reputation and the fact that her claims are seemingly supported by the retrospective actions of the senators and president. President Obama thinks, according to the writer, he can make use of emotion to influence the senators like he does to the public (Dowd); however she posits that the senators are “grown men with power” and they cannot be moved by emotive speeches. The president looked set to make some regulations after the massacre in Newton and he said to loud applause that the Newtown families deserved a vote, it looked like he was going to get exactly what he wanted but he somehow lost his momentum and even told journalist he suspected his bill might not be passed by congress (Dowd). Even worse, the president did not do the lobbying in person, but sent the vice president, in Dowd’s view he should have gone there himself. This was a battle that needed planning and he should have engaged in full scale strategy, she even quotes the book titled “The American President”, saying the soaring speeches have their place, but this was about blocking and tackling. If Obama had wanted to have his way, the writer suggests he should have gone off the highroad and talked to specific senators directly and made them see it his way. For instance, he could have brought Mark Begich the Alaskan senator and asked him, how the bill could be adjusted to make him vote and defend it or someone like Heidi Heitkamp from North Dakota. Smooth-talk her into voting for the bill based on the fact that she was a mother and she had a term long enough to make such tough calls. Dowd further suggests that he could have strong armed some of the republican senators in whose states he won with the public or used his friendship with the likes of Tom Coburn to get an extra vote in. Some chances according to Dowd to get extra votes, Obama simply wasted, why for instance did he give the moving speech about the shameful acts before the vote and not after, it could have helped him go a long way in votes. Dowd believes that there were many ways Obama could have used to get 60 votes; he simply did not try hard enough. She argues that the president simply does not like to sell his ideas; he assumes that he is on to the right thing and everybody else can see it his way. The article closes by saying it is not just about doing the right thing for the senators, since they have to sell their ideas to their electorate back home and if they cannot convince them they may not get re-elected. From the article, it is clear that Dowd does not think Obama is much of a leader in the practical sense; she finds him to be just some sort of demagogue who can influence the public’s feelings by manipulating them but loses out when it comes to convincing those who matter. She clearly sets to criticize him for this, however in the first paragraph she begins by saying something positive about him; she talks of the greying man weeping with American families and acknowledges that he has leant form experience how to share the grief of Americans. This statement is placed strategically to enhance the pathos in her appeal, she uses the sympathy Americans have for the grieving families to create a comparison that paints the president and a man who can appreciate sadness, but is incapable of doing nothing about fixing its cause, thus the sympathy they felt for him is used to make them question his leadership qualities. Before she claims he hasn’t learnt how to lead, she establishes a common ground especially with those who may not agree with the subset opinions. This is done so that when she lashes out, the audience will be in a frame of mind to think her reasonable and thus likely to agree with her negative sentiments as they did with the positive ones she has cast herself as an open minded and realistic person. She uses logical appeal in the percentages of 90% Americans not translating into 60 votes in the house, this juxtaposition is likely to make any audience wonder; what could be wrong with that president? How is it that he can talk to the public and convince them yet be so unsuccessful with the senate? Having covertly posed the questions on the audience, she goes ahead to overtly answer them, she say Obama is a weak leader and no-one in the senate is afraid of him. However, this is a fallacious argument since once would assume that the public is afraid of Obama that’s why they agreed with him, furthermore contrasting the senate with the public by claiming they are grown adults also implies that the public is immature. However she cleverly makes it sound as if Obama is only good at talking to people but not getting the job done. To illustrate to the audience how easy it was, the task Obama failed to accomplish, she gives a few hypothetical examples of how he could have convinced democrat senators or even republican senators to see things his way. By making it look so simple she manages to depict Obama as being even more incompetent, how could he not have done such an easy job? The audience probably asks again. She makes it appear as if the whole responsibility of seeing and implementing the right things is the president’s and the senate is just there to be convinced. She seems to agree with Obama, since she says he assumes that everyone will see things the right way like him that is why he does not invest so much time and effort at selling them. However, this brings out her own illogical reasoning, clearly, if she can see that he is right, it means that even the senators who have been elected by the people to safeguard their interests should also see it; thus, leaving the responsibility of convincing them to Obama and blaming him of bad leadership when he fails to make them think like the grown adults she described earlier is in more ways than one hypocritical. Ultimately Dowd, through rhetoric, makes a fairly strong attempt at convincing the audience that despite the fact that the president was right, and the senator failed to agree with him (possibly because they were worried about their re-elections) it is the president who deserves the blame for failing to pass the bill. When one thinks about it objectively and logically it is not really a realistic point of reasoning; however, it is likely that even a pro-Obama audience may be convinced to put the blame on him if they do not carefully read between the lines. As such the article can be applied for being convincing, but it does not in my opinion reflect on the true situation on the ground, if she was objective she would not only have focused on the president’s failure as a result of his character but more deeply examined the reasons the senators did not approve the bill. Therein she would have likely unearthed conspicuously, among other things a fear to offend the electorate and jeopardize future re-election, if she had brought forward that side of the argument the audience would have been more sympathetic to the presidents failure, however since that was clearly not her intention, refrained from opening that particular can of worms. Work Cited Dowd, Maureen. “No Bully in the Pulpit” New York Times. 2013. Web. 25 April 2013 Read More