If you want to see what an ambivalent attitude we have towards rhetoric, you have only to look at the speeches of Barack Obama. Before Obama became President, when he was out on the stump, there was no holding him back rhetorically: he soared, he swooped, he lifted his eyes to the hills and found all kinds of inspiring imagery there.
But the moment he took office something strange happened. All that silver-tongued stuff dropped away and instead he started sounding as if two trucks had collided in his mouth. The message was plain: rhetoric is for the posters, for the promissory notes. When it comes to actually doing the job, there’s no place for it.
However, as Sam Leith shows in this elegant, concise and frequently very funny book, there’s nothing new about regarding rhetoric with suspicion. Plato certainly did, reckoning it was the tool of demagogues and liars.
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