Do the orators seem to you always to speak with an eye to what is best, their sole aim being to render the citizens as perfect as possible by their speeches, or is their impulse also to gratify the citizens, and do they neglect the common good for their personal interest and treat the people like children, attempting only to please them, with no concern whatever whether such conduct makes them better or worse? (Plato, 1989, 502e-503)

 The question Socrates raised remains with us to this day.  This article examines the problem using Vice President Dan Quayle's appeal to family values as a case study.  The article builds on previous studies (see Dow, 1989; Bennett, 1977; Solomon, 1988) to suggest that couching quasi-religious appeals in political campaigns has strategic advantages and disadvantages.  The study proceeds in four stages:  First, it establishes the context for Quayle's speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco.  Second, it examines Quayle's attempt to emulate Vice President Agnew's epideictic campaign of persuasion.  Third, the study examines Quayle's dialectical and exclusionary approach to epideictic speaking.  Finally, the study assesses the effectiveness of Quayle given the problem of his credibility in a nation cynical about appeals to morality in a political context.
 
Quayle's initial speech on family values of May 19, 1992, was a response to the rioting that had occurred in Los Angeles earlier in the month: "I believe the lawless social anarchy which we saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society" (Quayle, 1992).  He supported his contention with a litany of statistics and a specific program to solve the problem (see below).  But the news media focused on an epideictic moment as Quayle moved toward his conclusion: "It doesn't help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'"  The sentence, for which Quayle claims credit (1994, p. 319-20), was played on all three evening news broadcast and the speech soon was the subject of editorial scrutiny.

 Over the remainder of the presidential campaign, Quayle's staff carefully selected forums where he sought to awaken America to the need for "family values" and to reclaim those who believed in them as voters for the Bush-Quayle Republican ticket.  On June 9th, for example, Quayle delivered a speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis which the New York Times called "the sequel to his attack on the 'Murphy Brown' television show" (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A1).  He seemed to relish placing blame for society's problem on a "cultural elite" that was different from "the rest of us."  Two days later, he addressed the annual meeting of the National Right to Life Committee in Washington, D.C. and advocated a "commitment to Judeo-Christian values" (Savage, 1992).  Four days after that, he spoke at the Manhattan Institute in New York City and asserted that "One reason our schools are in crisis is because they have, in many ways, lost their moral bearing" (Goldman, 1992).  A few days later, he chastised Time-Warner for producing a record by rap singer Ice-T whose lyrics read, "I'm 'bout to dust some cops off . . . .  Die, pig, die."  Quayle called on Time-Warner to demonstrate "corporate responsibility."   In August, the "family values" theme was featured at the Republican Convention.  And in September, when Candice Bergen won an Emmy for her portrayal of the character of Murphy Brown, she sarcastically thanked the Vice President.   Clearly, the speech on "family values" delivered in San Francisco touched a nerve, brought much more attention to Quayle's subsequent speeches and shuffled the priority of issues being discussed in the presidential campaign.  Furthermore, it sought to bring some conservative voters back from their flirtations with H. Ross Perot's alternative candidacy and thereby strengthen Quayle's value to the Republican ticket going into his party's convention of August 1992.

 Unpacking the Moment
As President Bush sank in the polls, those around him began to consider various options that might improve his ratings.  While a few argued that Quayle should be sacrificed for the sake of the ticket, a consensus quickly formed to free Quayle from the constraints of the campaign media operation so he could prove his worth (Quayle, 1994, pp. 306, 321, 341-43).  Quayle then increased his visibility and re-cast the political agenda by taking up the Christian Right's call for a return to "family values" (see Murfield, 1993).  The strategy was appealing because it might win back Christians who had supported Patrick Buchanan in the early primaries and were considering Ross Perot's candidacy in the general election, and it might revive the spirits of a somewhat demoralized group that normally supported Republican candidates (Quayle, 1994, pp. 298, 311-12).

The influence of the Christian Right had suffered several blows.  Two of its leading spokespersons, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert, had been disgraced.  Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority had been converted into the much less influential Liberty Federation.  As a Presbyterian whose "personal acceptance of Christ occurred in a Methodist church," Quayle filled the void (Quayle, 1994, p. 263).

His address to the Commonwealth Club caused an uproar.  To understand why, we need to examine the rhetorical situation at the time of the speech.  First, the Bush-Quayle ticket was in second place in many national polls behind the unprecedented, insurgent candidacy of independent Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot.  The Time CNN poll of May 13-14 gave Perot 33% of the vote; in the June 3-4 poll, he reached his zenith of 37% (Barrett, 1992) before temporarily withdrawing from the race in July.  The President's approval ratings had fallen to all time low in part because of the riots in Los Angeles in early May, 1992.  They were the worst in the city's history and far more widespread than the Watts riots of 1965.  Despite the President's trip to the riot scene, his administration's commitment to provide aid in the form of loans, grants and enterprise zones, and his speech to the nation during the rioting, he was identified with a crisis in confidence in the nation's direction.   Second, Murphy Brown is popular situation comedy starring Candice Bergen as single anchor woman.  Over the course of several episodes, Murphy Brown becomes pregnant by her former lover who pops into town only to leave for South America after their trist.  Brown gives birth to the child on the highly rated last show of the season.  During the pregnancy and the birth, Brown has the support and sometimes annoyance of her fellow workers and a handyman who spends a great deal of time at her home.

Third, the likely Democratic nominee, Governor Clinton of Arkansas, had been tainted with charges of adultery and draft dodging.  While Clinton denied a sexual relationship with his chief accuser, Gennifer Flowers, he refused to deny that he had committed adultery with anyone else.  Thus, a campaign focused on "family values" would work to the disadvantage of the prospective Democratic nominee.  On July 2, 1992, Quayle was asked whether a candidate's infidelity was grist for the campaign mill; he responded, "Look, values are a legitimate issue, character is a legitimate issue" (Decker, July 3, 1992).  The epideictic tone allowed the audience to draw the negative inference while sheltering Quayle from being accused of making a personal attack on Clinton.

Fourth, the speech was delivered to the prestigious Commonwealth Club of San Francisco where many major policy statements by presidents, vice presidents, secretaries of state, members of Congress, and other high officials have been delivered.  For example, in September of 1932, Franklin Roosevelt had explained the philosophy behind the New Deal at the Club.  Quayle had originally intended to speak about U.S. - Japanese relations, but changed the subject to a "poverty of values" after the Los Angeles riots and as members of the White House staff lobbied for his removal from the ticket (Quayle, 1994, p. 318).

Finally, the media, which had taken great delight in ridiculing Quayle's military record, mistakes, and gaffes, was quick to equate his attack on a cultural elite with Agnew's attack on the media beginning with his address in Des Moines, Iowa on November 13, 1969 (Savage, 1992).  However, none provided an in depth analysis of this parallel to which I now turn.

 Agnew in Epideictic Clothing
In his Memoirs, Richard Nixon reveals that Agnew's speech was originally intended for the President.  Written by Patrick Buchanan in response to "instant" and unflattering network analysis of Nixon's November 3, 1969 speech on Vietnam (Nixon, 1978, p. 411), Agnew's address was broadcast live by the three major networks.  Theodore White called it "one of the most masterful forensic efforts in recent public discourse" (1973, p. 251).

In the speech, Agnew characterized the broadcast media as a "small and unelected elite," "a small group of men," "a tiny, enclosed fraternity" who "decide what forty to fifty million Americans will learn of the day's events" (Agnew, 1969).  Agnew's and Buchanan's anti-intellectual, geographic, and gender biases were apparent; they knew how to use localization for persuasive effect:
We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the later of which James Reston termed the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.  Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.

Agnew laid the problems of a "credibility gap" in government not with official in Washington, D.C., but "in the studios of the networks in New York."

Agnew developed epideictic themes to drive a dialectic that would isolate his devil figures.  First, he asked, "What is the end value -- to enlighten or to profit? . . . .  Bad news drives out good news.  The irrational is more controversial than the rational.  Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent."  Then, he sought to place blame for the problem.  He claimed that the media should have been policing themselves particularly given the benefits they receive under the First Amendment.  He called on them to "structure their own civic ethics to relate to the great responsibilities they hold."  And then he challenged the American people to "press for responsible news presentations."  He asked them to reject the cynicism and liberalism of the news media.  He contrasted the behavior of those he would later call "nattering nabobs of negativism" from the "silent majority."

This divisive strategy also had the advantage of immunizing the Nixon-Agnew administration from press attacks.  Seizing the high ground, Agnew made clear that he was not prejudiced against the media; it was the media who were prejudiced against Republican conservatives:

I'm not asking for Government censorship or any other kind of censorship.  I'm asking whether a form of censorship already exists when the news that 40 million Americans receive each night is determined by a handful of men responsible only to their corporate employers and is filtered through a handful of commentators who admit to their own set of biases.

During the ensuing campaign of persuasion, he chastised the media for supporting left wing agitators who opposed the war in Vietnam, and whom he characterized as an "effete corps of impudent snobs."  By the congressional campaign of 1970, a hostile media was admitting that Agnew was proving effective.  Nixon writes:

I had decided not to do any campaigning in 1970.  I felt confident that I would not be needed because in Ted Agnew we had the perfect spokesman to reach the silent majority on the Social Issue.  Our strategy worked brilliantly at first.  The Social Issue had liberals on the run everywhere, with Agnew in hot rhetorical pursuit (Nixon, 1978, p.491).

The attacks continued through the 1972 presidential election where Agnew continued to use epideictic themes to his advantage.  While he blamed the media "elites", he praised his President with value laden rhetoric that often took an ethnic twist.  For example, the San Diego Union reported on October 8, 1972 that he said:

Fortitude, character and courage are a trinity of ancient virtues that Poles and Americans of Polish ancestry possess themselves and admire in others.  [President Nixon] has demonstrated fortitude in foreign affairs. . . .  He has demonstrated character by keeping America strong. . . .  And the President has demonstrated courage by refusing to listen to those who said, four years ago, that our nation was doomed to more years of rioting and disturbances and rising crime rates.
Balancing praise with blame, he continually labelled Senator George McGovern an elitist (see, for example, Agnew Calls, October 14, 1972).

Agnew was successful for the most part in cloaking his political ends in epideictic appeals.  He re-ordered the agenda of concerns among his listeners and sustained that agenda for over three years.  He isolated the news media from the "silent majority."  Most important, he helped to immunize his administration from attacks by the media thereby prolonging the time it took the media to bring the Nixon administration down.

 Imitation of Agnew
Agnew's campaign of persuasion began early in his administration's first term.  It was orchestrated to build to a crescendo in the 1970 Congressional races.  While Quayle and his advisors adopted Agnew's rhetorical strategy, their timing worked to their disadvantage because he launched his epideictic appeals in the midst of a presidential election.  The strategy appeared to be a response to the declining stock of his administration rather than a sincere effort at reform.  Furthermore, Agnew's rhetorical campaign was a fairly original idea launched in the pre-Watergate era when the news media was far more vulnerable.  Quayle's attack was not original, often in fact it was compared to Agnew's.  And Quayle was attacking the media in the post- Watergate era where public cynicism is very high.  But before a full assessment of the effectiveness of the strategy can be made, we need to examine how it manifested itself in the same kind of dialectical epideictic themes that Agnew used.
On June 11th Quayle referred to "the country's self-appointed cultural elite" who mock the values of "average Americans."  While Quayle was using Agnew's strategy of alienating his antagonists from the "average American" with whom Quayle hoped to identify, he expanded the antagonistic group to include not only the news media, but the film and academic communities:  "My friends, I know it can be discouraging playing David to the Goliath of the dominant cultural elite.  In Hollywood and elsewhere, your opponents have a lot of money, a lot of glamour, a lot of influence" (Savage. 1992).  The biblical imagery helped the "born again" Quayle identify with those he hoped will "carry the day."  It underscored the dialectical tension that Quayle sought to exploit.

 In his speech to the Southern Baptists two days earlier, he spoke of a "cultural divide in our country. . . .  so great a divide that it sometimes seems we have two cultures, the cultural elite and the rest of us" (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A1).  Then he localized his army: "In the heart of America, in the homes and workplaces and churches, the message is heard."  Like Agnew, Quayle also localized his enemy: "Talk about right and wrong, and they'll mock us in newsrooms, sitcom studios, and faculty lounges across America."  These devil figures distributed "condoms" and "sexual propaganda to our third and fourth graders. . . .  They treat God's greatest gift, new life, as an inconvenience to be discarded" (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A13).  Quayle's use of division and localization also surfaced in the Manhattan Institute speech of June 15:

Here is what's right about New York: the decent, hard-working people who live here.  Here's what's wrong with New York: the entrenched government Establishment and its liberal ideology that have failed them. . . . [You are being harmed by] the teachers union, the cultural elite, the bureaucrats, the liberal lobbies jostling for more space at the public trough (Goldman, 1992, p. A21; Quayle, 1994, p. 330).

And again, Quayle condemned the distribution of condoms to those who are "squandering the gift of youthful innocence in premarital sex."

Like Agnew, Quayle placed responsibility on his listeners, not on the government, for resurrecting crucial values.  For example, before the Southern Baptists, he sounded a little like a Christian existentialist:

It's our work, the work of our churches, the work of each person, responding each day to the hard questions of life and faith.  It's the work of choosing wisely.  Choosing to live in falsehood or fidelity.  Choosing to follow man in his foolish ways -- or the Son of man who walked the way of love and mercy, full of grace and truth. . . .  The elite's culture is a guilt-free culture.  It avoids responsibility and flees consequences (Rosenthal, 1992, pp. A1, A13).

In the same speech, and again imitating Agnew, Quayle used attacks on his person by the news media and Hollywood to his advantage:  "I wear their scorn as a badge of honor" (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A1).  At the Manhattan Institute, Quayle went further, arguing that the ridicule was directed at the group he hoped to win over: "They are laughing at America itself, at the families that have always done the real work of building our great nation.  They are mocking the source of our nation's greatness, the source of our goodness and our hope for the future" (Goldman, 1992, p. A21).
Quayle also employed Agnew's strategy of turning the tables on his opponents: he was not prejudiced; the cultural elite were.  He put it this way in his speech to the Southern Baptists:
As I found after my recent speech on values, the real intolerance is to be found on the other side.  I know it is politically correct to be dismissive of those who speak of moral values.  But political correctness is a form of intolerance.  Let us be clear.  We defend the rights of all Americans.  We are for compassion and tolerance.  We are, after all, commanded to love our neighbor.  But we do not believe that being compassionate and tolerant means abandoning our standards of right or wrong, good or bad (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A13).

On one side, Quayle presented a tolerant, compassionate, righteous people; on the other, an intolerant cultural elite that mocked them.  The Manhattan Institute speech caused the Lieutenant Governor of New York to refer to Quayle as "the attack dog of the Bush reelection campaign, a modern version of Spiro Agnew" (Goldman, 1992, p. A21).

But one major difference with Agnew needs to be stressed.  Agnew activated a large segment of the population, "the silent majority," that was looking for a scapegoat for what was wrong with America.  He narrowed that scapegoat to the network news media that not only reported the bad news from Vietnam, but gave the anti-war demonstrators a platform.  Agnew succeeded in putting the news media on the defensive and encouraged the public to scrutinize what it heard.  In this way, he immunized himself and Nixon from media attacks.

Quayle activated a much smaller and less centrist segment of the public and attacked a much larger segment of the media in his "cultural elite," which included such popular groups as movie and television stars.  Even if his strategy had succeeded, he would have garnered a smaller percentage of voters than Agnew while stirring up a more formidable enemy.  In post-Watergate America, society and its "cultural elite" were far more secular and cynical than they had been only a generation before.  Thus, when a candidate actively seeking public office talked of "family values," he invited skepticism and scorn.  He did not immunize himself from attack; he invited it.

 Dialectical Tensions
Quayle attempted to conceal his desire for re-election in epideictic rhetoric, a difficult task in the midst of a presidential election.  At its best, Quayle's epideictic rhetoric fostered a dialectic between worldviews buttressed by the vices that are condemned and the values that are praised.  For example, he openly listed his virtues as "family, hard work, integrity and personal responsibility" while condemning welfare, and using social conditions as an excuse for one's position in life.  But he did not believe this glib list to be sufficient to establish his communal vision.  For in the next breath Quayle said, "I think we can all agree that government's first obligation is to maintain order."  He then explained that "law and order," which formed the basis of the Nixon-Agnew congressional campaign in 1970, were not code words for racism, but for other values such as "safety, getting control of the streets, and freedom from fear."  Thus, the epideictic format provides a patina of values for implied deliberative proposals that might otherwise be unacceptable.

The dialectic between individualism and government aid was also used to build the moral framework of Quayle's world.  Throughout the Commonwealth Speech, Quayle asserted that "a welfare ethos" has eroded individuality among "the poor."  Welfare inhibits a person's ability to "take advantage of opportunity."  Thus, individuality, the virtue, is compromised by welfare, the vice.  Furthermore, individuality means individual responsibility for actions, a theme repeated throughout the campaign, a theme that supports the mainline Republican position that society is not responsible for the crimes of individuals.  Quayle's condemnatory stance is most clear in the Commonwealth Speech: "Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong.  Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong."
A third dialectic was advanced when Quayle argued that equal opportunity was the best solution to racism as opposed to the world that led to the Los Angeles riots: "[W]e have developed a culture of poverty that is far more violent and harder to escape than it was a generation ago."  Clearly missing here was advocacy of any programs, such as affirmative action, that go beyond equal opportunity.  And that tactic signals Quayle's audience that he opposes those programs and those who advance them.  Instead Quayle echoes the Puritan ethic: "honest work is better than handouts. . ."  Thus, it followed that forcing the able bodied on welfare to work was not only fair, it was morally right.  Again, the epideictic format affords Quayle the opportunity to condemn a deliberative policy enthymematically while advancing a moral framework in its place.  That moral framework was based on "Judeo-Christian" ethic that requires church and school attendance, a "normal" family with two parents and children, and at least one working parent to provide for that family.  He reinforced this position in the speech at the Manhattan Institute: "The solution is to give [children] a value-based education, to teach them what is right and wrong, to teach them they alone are responsible for their actions" (Goldman, 1992, p. A21).  To the Southern Baptists, he went even further when he said, "If America ever lost its sense of moral vision, it would cease to be America" (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A13).  As with most moral visions, this one excludes at least as many as it includes.

 Carving Out an Audience
This tactic is no where more apparent than at those moments when Quayle addressed the issue of the black "underclass."  In the Commonwealth Address, he focused on the problems of black Americans ostensibly to reinforce the need for family values.  He began deftly with praise for American "diversity" and those who "have faced racism squarely" and helped create a new black middle class.  He followed with a list of black successes including those graduating from college, those occupying political office, and those two-parent families with a high median income.
Then, he turned to the problem of the "underclass" and quickly distanced himself from the problem and any implied racism with "a few statistics":

In 1967, 68 percent of black families were headed by married couples.  In 1991, only 48 percent of black families were headed by both a husband and a wife.  In 1965, the illegitimacy rate among black families was 28 percent.  In 1989, 65 percent -- two thirds -- of all black children were born to never-married mothers.

He continued with statistics on the growth of black unemployment and teenage homicides.
These inartistic proofs lent credibility to Quayle's next assertion which was the turning point of the speech.  Learning from Marlin Fitzwater's mistake of early May, Quayle did not blame the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson for these problems, nor did he blame the "growth and success" of the 1980s.  Instead, he claimed, "[W]e are . . . reaping the whirlwind of decades of changes in social mores."  In support of his contention, he focused on the looting, murder, and mayhem of the L.A. riots which were variously ascribed to greed, a criminal element, and lack of proper values.  He then summoned up a picture of the world he hoped to condemn:

Our inner cities are filled with children having children; with people who have not been able to take advantage of educational opportunities; with people who are dependent on drugs or the narcotic welfare.

Quayle's tactic here was to create a dialectic using the black experience as evidence for his claims, a clever ploy which avoids the taint of racism by using black examples for praise and immersing the blame in "objective" statistics.  A similar tactic is used in the Manhattan Institute speech wherein Quayle used New York City for his bifurcated example (see above).  Quayle's epideictic discourse created a dialectic of values grounded in concrete, localized examples which allowed him to issue simple but conservative judgments.  For example, in the Commonwealth Address, he said: "Who is to blame for the riots?  The rioters are to blame.  Who is to blame for the killings?  The killers are to blame."  Implicitly Quayle was saying society is not to blame.  Those in the "underclass" who have committed these crimes have lost their sense of values: "The intergenerational poverty that troubles us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values."  And who is to blame for this poverty of values?  The "cultural elite" who substitute relativism for the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Not surprisingly this position was extended at the Southern Baptist Convention where Quayle again condemned the world of the elites:

The cultural elites respect neither tradition nor standards.  They believe that moral truths are relative and all 'life styles' are equal.  They seem to think the family is an arbitrary arrangement of people who decide to live under the same roof, that fathers are dispensable and that parents need not be married or even of opposite sexes.  They are wrong (Rosenthal, 1992, p. A13).

But in the process of carving away antagonistic groups, Quayle overtly condemned homosexual parents and abortionists, and by implication marginalized non-Judeo-Christians, gays, lesbians, unmarried couples, divorced and single parents.

Quayle also hurt his effectiveness when it came to integrating solutions into the epideictic moment.  Before he could even begin to speak, the political context implied the deliberative message, "vote for our ticket."  Quayle did nothing to allay this message which worked to enhance cynicism among his wider audiences and did nothing to improve his already severely damaged credibility (see below).
His presentation of proposals also worked against the epideictic decorum.  In the Commonwealth Address, they were laid out this way:

Our urban agenda includes:  Fully funding the Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere program.  HOPE -- as we call it -- will help public housing residents become home-owners.  Creating enterprise zones by slashing taxes in targeted areas, including a zero capital gains tax, to spur entrepreneurship, economic development and job creation in inner cities.  Instituting our education strategy, America 2000, to raise academic standards and to give the poor the same choices about how and where to educate their children that rich people enjoy.  Promoting welfare reform to remove the penalties for marriage, create incentives for saving, and give communities greater control over how the programs are administered. . . .  We can attach conditions -- such as school attendance or work -- to welfare.

This quick list of programs has been on the Republican plate for years.  The high minded epideictic themes of the address are undermined by a tired political agenda.  The acronyms seem like a gimmick; the use of the words "strategy" and "agenda" seem cold and remote.  Thus, by the time Quayle mounted his attack on "Murphy Brown," his motives were suspect.  And when in this and other speeches Quayle recommended marriage as the "best anti-poverty program of all," he raised the hackles of cynics all around.

 Assessment of Quayle's Effectiveness
To this point, I have tried to demonstrate that Quayle attempt at imitating Agnew failed because Quayle was in the midst of a presidential election while Agnew was in the beginning of his term, because Quayle carved out a smaller base audience and a much larger and much more influential group to attack, and because Quayle failed to immunize himself to its counterattacks.  On the other hand, Quayle was able to develop a dialectical tension between values and vices that served to engage at least some in his target audience while alienating a great many others.  His epideictic discourse allowed him to address sensitive issues such as welfare reform and the philandering and draft dodging of candidate Clinton enthymematically under the guise of such values as "individual responsibility" and "character."

One mark of his partial success was the way his message resonated with important religious leaders.  They often endorsed and/or repeated his message.  The Reverend Billy Melvin, executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals, claimed, "There's a cultural war going on in this country.  The vast majority of Americans still embrace traditional values.  But there is an elite in the country that has its own agenda" (Cornell, 1992).  Not all of those taking up the call were from the Christian right.  The Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, complained about what motion pictures, television and popular magazines were doing to "enduring family relationships" (Cornell, 1992).  John Carr, Director of Social Development for the U.S. Catholic Conference, took up Quayle's "cultural divide" in an interview in the Los Angeles Times:  "You don't have to be a Republican or conservative to be distressed at the image of the country presented by network television with its obsession with sexuality and emphasis on violence" (Cornell, 1992).  According to the last census, a solid majority of Americans, 137,000,000, identify with some organized religion.  A core group from this number represents a powerful voting block in the country because they are united and turn out in relatively high numbers to vote compared to other groups.

Quayle also succeeded in making family values a theme of the Republican convention (Quayle, 1994, pp. 347-49).  It is the first issue addressed in the Republican Platform, and one of the longest sections at five pages.  Wednesday night of the convention was devoted to the theme; it was addressed by Mrs. Quayle and Mrs. Bush among others.  And throughout the convention speaker after speaker from the vitriolic Pat Buchanan to the fatherly George Bush took up the cry.  In accepting re-nomination, Quayle told the delegates that he was "ready to keep fighting for our beliefs."  He repeated some his favorite strategies such as identification through localization: "I come from Huntington, a small farming community . . . . I had an upbringing like many in my generation -- a life built around family, public school, Little League, basketball and church on Sunday" (Quayle, 1994, p. 350).

Partly because of Candice Bergen's and Diane English's attack on him and on President Reagan at the September Emmy Awards, Quayle was also able to sustain the issue well into the fall.  For example, in his Kansas City speech of September 2, Quayle said:

Family values is neither meaningless nor mean-spirited. . . .  [There's] is a culture that flinches when it hears the word morality and lashes out when it is challenged to discuss values.  Hollywood is a stronghold of the adversary culture.  It is on the other side of the cultural divide from Huntington, and they don't like it when someone from Huntington, with Midwestern values, challenges their so called moral authority (Broder, 1992, p. A24).

But many of these religious and Republican leaders already embraced Quayle's moral vision.  Those in America who did not were unlikely to be drawn to it in the midst of political campaign because his motives were suspect.  Many in the national audience perceived that blaming leads to the exclusion of certain groups.  As we have seen, Quayle severed not only the "cultural elite" from his coalition but the "underclass", non-Judeo-Christians, single parents and those with alternative life styles.
Poll data demonstrates that this was a major miscalculation even if Quayle was only seeking to win a plurality to his ticket.  A Los Angeles Times poll printed on September 15th, 1992 revealed that "only 4% [of Californians] wanted to hear about abortion and just 2% about moral values."  That national poll indicated how counter-productive the strategy was.  The issue of family values was "turning off as many voters as it turned on. In particular, the tactic apparently has eroded Bush's support among younger voters and better educated people who until recently had given the President more support than other groups" (Nelson, September 17, 1992).

That brings us to the problem of credibility, a rhetorical element particularly essential to epideictic speakers.  Despite the fact that Bergen and her fictional character badly distorted Quayle's position, she probably did a great deal of damage to his image among swing voters and was one of the reasons his campaign of persuasion ultimately failed with the mainstream.  At the end of the program, "Brown" implies that the Vice President takes a position antithetical to the single parent families sitting on stage with her:

Perhaps it's time for the Vice President to . . . recognize that, whether by choice or by circumstance, families come in all shapes and sizes.  And ultimately what really defines a family is commitment, caring and love.

"Brown" then introduced some families "who might not fit into the Vice President's vision of a family."  The enthymeme is not subtle: the people you are looking at have been marginalized by the Vice President.  His exclusionary rhetoric gave credibility to "Brown's" claim.  The hour long Fall premier of the show was watched by approximately 70 million viewers and received a 41% audience share in the Nielsen ratings (Du Brow, 1992).

But Quayle's credibility problem neither started nor ended there.  First, Quayle had not established his right to tell Americans what values and lifestyles should be preferred over others.  The prophets of old were perceived to be in touch with something metaphysical that gave them their message and enhanced their credibility (see, for example, Hart, 1971).  Socrates consistently argued that a speaker should not open his/her mouth until he/she had mastered the subject and understood the soul.  A speaker who wishes to sound the call of conscience must first convince his/her audience that he/she has heard the call (see Hyde, 1990; Smith, 1985).  Though Quayle claimed to be a "born again Christian," for most Americans, and particularly for the media, he was unqualified to issue a call of conscience because he did not demonstrate that he had heard such a call himself.  Furthermore, the general voting public, as the poll data reviewed here indicate, does not want its politicians talking about personal morality.  Thus, Quayle's assigned task of shoring up conservative support for the administration worked to drive moderate voters away from the Republican ticket.

The other part of Quayle's credibility problem flows from the fact that from the moment of his selection as the vice presidential nominee in 1988, he had been lambasted by the press, by peers, by the public, and -- perhaps most damaging of all -- by late night talk show hosts and comedians.  He had a knack for providing the very media he was attacking with opportunities to get even (Decker, June 24, 1992).  When he attacked "Murphy Brown", the news media quickly contextualized his remarks as a gaffe.  A public predisposed to laugh at the Vice President went along with the media's description as even Quayle now admits (1994, p. 322).

Quayle's problem with credibility reveals just how important ethos is to those who would deliver the call of conscience.  Given that his speeches are fairly well written and given that they touched a responsive nerve among opinion leaders and the public, they would have proven more effective had they been delivered by a more credible source, and had they been isolated from political agendas.
Perhaps that is why Quayle's momentum soon faltered when unemployment figures rose to new highs.  By July 11, 1992 poll data showed that Quayle had consolidated his support among "Republican right wing" voters but remained "extraordinarily unpopular" with others.  For example, after Perot pulled out the race, polls showed that only 20% of his supporters would vote for the Bush/Quayle ticket (Barrett, 1992).  Quayle had failed in one of his major objectives.  The Washington Post/ABC Poll of the week of July 23rd said that 60% of the voting public approve of Bush dropping Quayle from the ticket; his unfavorable rating was at 63% up from 54% the month before (Matthews, 1992).  That was lowest any vice president had ranked in the history of modern polling (Gugliotta, 1992).  Right up to the Republican Convention in Houston, officials high in the Bush campaign were trying to dump Quayle from the ticket.

Clearly, Quayle was less effective than Agnew.  While he succeeded in elevating the issue of family values to national attention, sustaining the campaign for several months, and consolidating the support of the right, particularly the New Christian Right, he failed to achieve a national consensus on the issue and drove many undecided voters from the Bush camp.

This is not to say that there are no advantages to using the epideictic format in political situations.  It allows a speaker to imply negative qualities about opponents and programs under the guise of a high minded call to conscience.  It allows the speaker to create dialectical tensions that engross listeners while reinforcing the alienation of one group from another.  But several disadvantages are also apparent.  If epideictic speakers do not possess a level of credibility commensurate with their message, they will undercut its effectiveness and invite ridicule.  Second, deliberative appeals are difficult to cloak in epideictic rhetoric during political campaigns when most Americans seem particularly resistant to politicians giving them advice on lifestyles and other personal values.

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