ethos argumentative essay

What Are Logos, Pathos & Ethos?

A straight-forward explainer (with examples)

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewer: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | June 2023

If you spend any amount of time exploring the wonderful world of philosophy, you’re bound to run into the dynamic trio of rhetorical appeals: logos , ethos and pathos . But, what exactly do they mean and how can you use them in your writing or speaking? In this post, we’ll unpack the rhetorical love triangle in simple terms, using loads of practical examples along the way.

Overview: The Rhetorical Triangle

• What are logos , pathos and ethos ?
• Logos unpacked (+ examples)
• Pathos unpacked (+ examples)
• Ethos unpacked (+ examples)
• The rhetorical triangle

What are logos, ethos and pathos?

Simply put, logos, ethos and pathos are three powerful tools that you can use to persuade an audience of your argument . At the most basic level, logos appeals to logic and reason, while pathos appeals to emotions and ethos emphasises credibility or authority.

Naturally, a combination of all three rhetorical appeals packs the biggest punch, but it’s important to consider a few different factors to determine the best mix for any given context. Let’s look at each rhetorical appeal in a little more detail to understand how best to use them to your advantage.

Logos appeals to the logical, reason-driven side of our minds. Using logos in an argument typically means presenting a strong body of evidence and   facts to support your position. This evidence should then be accompanied by sound logic and well-articulated reasoning .

Let’s look at some examples of logos in action:

• A friend trying to persuade you to eat healthier might present scientific studies that show the benefits of a balanced diet and explain how certain nutrients contribute to overall health and longevity.
• A scientist giving a presentation on climate change might use data from reputable studies, along with well-presented graphs and statistical analyses to demonstrate the rising global temperatures and their impact on the environment.
• An advertisement for a new smartphone might highlight its technological features, such as a faster processor, longer battery life, and a high-resolution camera. This could also be accompanied by technical specifications and comparisons with competitors’ models.

In short, logos is all about using evidence , logic and reason to build a strong argument that will win over an audience on the basis of its objective merit . This contrasts quite sharply against pathos, which we’ll look at next.

Contrasted to logos, pathos appeals to the softer side of us mushy humans. Specifically, it focuses on evoking feelings and emotions in the audience. When utilising pathos in an argument, the aim is to cultivate some feeling of connection in the audience toward either yourself or the point that you’re trying to make.

In practical terms, pathos often uses storytelling , vivid language and personal anecdotes to tap into the audience’s emotions. Unlike logos, the focus here is not on facts and figures, but rather on psychological affect . Simply put, pathos utilises our shared humanness to foster agreement.

Let’s look at some examples of pathos in action:

• An advertisement for a charity might incorporate images of starving children and highlight their desperate living conditions to evoke sympathy, compassion and, ultimately, donations.
• A politician on the campaign trail might appeal to feelings of hope, unity, and patriotism to rally supporters and motivate them to vote for his or her party.
• A fundraising event may include a heartfelt personal story shared by a cancer survivor, with the aim of evoking empathy and encouraging donations to support cancer research.

As you can see, pathos is all about appealing to the human side of us – playing on our emotions to create buy-in and agreement.

Last but not least, we’ve got ethos. Ethos is all about emphasising the credibility and authority of the person making the argument, or leveraging off of someone else’s credibility to support your own argument.

The ethos card can be played by highlighting expertise, achievements, qualifications and accreditations , or even personal and professional associations and connections. Ultimately, the aim here is to foster some level of trust within the audience by demonstrating your competence, as this will make them more likely to take your word as fact.

Let’s look at some examples of ethos in action:

• A fitness equipment brand might hire a well-known athlete to endorse their product.
• A toothpaste brand might make claims highlighting that a large percentage of dentists recommend their product.
• A financial advisor might present their qualifications, certifications and professional memberships when meeting with a prospective client.

As you can see, using ethos in an argument is largely about emphasising the credibility of the person rather than the logical soundness of the argument itself (which would reflect a logos-based approach). This is particularly helpful when there isn’t a large body of evidence to support the argument.

Ethos can also overlap somewhat with pathos in that positive emotions and feelings toward a specific person can oftentimes be extended to someone else’s argument. For example, a brand that has nothing to do with sports could still benefit from the endorsement of a well-loved athlete, just because people feel positive feelings about the athlete – not because of that athlete’s expertise  in the product they’re endorsing.

How to use logos, pathos and ethos

Logos, pathos and ethos combine to form the rhetorical triangle , also known as the Aristotelian triangle. As you’d expect, the three sides (or corners) of the triangle reflect the three appeals, but there’s also another layer of meaning. Specifically, the three sides symbolise the relationship between the speaker , the audience and the message .

Without getting too philosophical, the key takeaway here is that logos, pathos and ethos are all tools that you can use to present a persuasive argument . However, how much you use each tool needs to be informed by careful consideration of who your audience is and what message you’re trying to convey to them.

For example, if you’re writing a research paper for a largely scientific audience, you’ll likely lean more heavily on the logos . Conversely, if you’re presenting a speech in which you argue for greater social justice, you may lean more heavily on the pathos to win over the hearts and minds of your audience.

Simply put, by understanding the relationship between yourself (as the person making the argument), your audience , and your message , you can strategically employ the three rhetorical appeals to persuade, engage, and connect with your audience more effectively in any context. Use these tools wisely and you’ll quickly notice what a difference they can make to your ability to communicate and more importantly, to persuade .

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, ethos, pathos, logos, kairos: the modes of persuasion and how to use them.

General Education

Ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos all stem from rhetoric—that is, speaking and writing effectively. You might find the concepts in courses on rhetoric, psychology, English, or in just about any other field!

The concepts of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos are also called the modes of persuasion, ethical strategies, or rhetorical appeals. They have a lot of different applications ranging from everyday interactions with others to big political speeches to effective advertising.

Read on to learn about what the modes of persuasion are, how they’re used, and how to identify them!

What Are the Modes of Persuasion?

As you might have guessed from the sound of the words, ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos go all the way back to ancient Greece. The concepts were introduced in Aristotle’s Rhetoric , a treatise on persuasion that approached rhetoric as an art, in the fourth century BCE.

Rhetoric was primarily concerned with ethos, pathos, and logos, but kairos, or the idea of using your words at the right time, was also an important feature of Aristotle’s teachings.

However, kairos was particularly interesting to the Sophists, a group of intellectuals who made their living teaching a variety of subjects. The Sophists stressed the importance of structuring rhetoric around the ideal time and place.

Together, all four concepts have become the modes of persuasion, though we typically focus on ethos, pathos, and logos.

What Is Ethos?

Though you may not have heard the term before, ‘ethos’ is a common concept. You can think of it as an appeal to authority or character—persuasive techniques using ethos will attempt to persuade you based on the speaker’s social standing or knowledge. The word ethos even comes from the Greek word for character.

An ethos-based argument will include a statement that makes use of the speaker or writer’s position and knowledge. For example, hearing the phrase, “As a doctor, I believe,” before an argument about physical health is more likely to sway you than hearing, “As a second-grade teacher, I believe.”

Likewise, celebrity endorsements can be incredibly effective in persuading people to do things . Many viewers aspire to be like their favorite celebrities, so when they appear in advertisements, they're more likely to buy whatever they're selling to be more like them. The same is true of social media influencers, whose partnerships with brands can have huge financial benefits for marketers .

In addition to authority figures and celebrities, according to Aristotle, we’re more likely to trust people who we perceive as having good sense, good morals, and goodwill —in other words, we trust people who are rational, fair, and kind. You don’t have to be famous to use ethos effectively; you just need whoever you’re persuading to perceive you as rational, moral, and kind.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos, which comes from the Greek word for suffering or experience, is rhetoric that appeals to emotion. The emotion appealed to can be a positive or negative one, but whatever it is, it should make people feel strongly as a means of getting them to agree or disagree.

For example, imagine someone asks you to donate to a cause, such as saving rainforests. If they just ask you to donate, you may or may not want to, depending on your previous views. But if they take the time to tell you a story about how many animals go extinct because of deforestation, or even about how their fundraising efforts have improved conditions in the rainforests, you may be more likely to donate because you’re emotionally involved.

But pathos isn’t just about creating emotion; it can also be about counteracting it. For example, imagine a teacher speaking to a group of angry children. The children are annoyed that they have to do schoolwork when they’d rather be outside. The teacher could admonish them for misbehaving, or, with rhetoric, he could change their minds.

Suppose that, instead of punishing them, the teacher instead tries to inspire calmness in them by putting on some soothing music and speaking in a more hushed voice. He could also try reminding them that if they get to work, the time will pass quicker and they’ll be able to go outside to play.

Aristotle outlines emotional dichotomies in Rhetoric . If an audience is experiencing one emotion and it’s necessary to your argument that they feel another, you can counterbalance the unwanted emotion with the desired one . The dichotomies, expanded upon after Aristotle, are :

• Anger/Calmness
• Friendship/Enmity
• Fear/Confidence
• Shame/Shamelessness
• Kindness/Unkindness
• Pity/Indignation
• Envy/Emulation

Note that these can work in either direction; it’s not just about swaying an audience from a negative emotion to a positive one. 

However, changing an audience's emotion based on false or misleading information is often seen as manipulation rather than persuasion. Getting into the hows and whys requires a dive into the ethics of rhetoric , but suffice to say that when you attempt to deceive an audience, that is manipulation.

If you really want to get an audience fired up about something, you can inspire righteous anger, which may or may not be manipulation. If somebody is offended that you’ve asked them for something, you can try making them feel sorry for you by turning indignation into pity— that’s manipulation.

What Is Logos?

Logos comes from a Greek word of multiple meanings, including “ground,” “speech,” and “reason.” In rhetoric, it specifically refers to having a sense of logic to your persuasion; logos-based rhetoric is founded in logic and reason rather than emotion, authority, or personality.

A logic-based argument appeals to a person’s sense of reason— good logos-based rhetoric will persuade people because the argument is well-reasoned and based in fact. There are two common approaches to logos: deductive and inductive arguments.

Deductive arguments build on statements to reach a conclusion —in effect, the conclusion is reached in reverse. A common method is to propose multiple true statements which are combined to reach a conclusion, such as the classic method of proving that Socrates is mortal.

All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates must be mortal.

That’s not really a case that needs to be argued, but we can apply the same framework to other arguments as well. For example, we need energy to live. Food gives the body energy. Therefore, we need food to live.  

All of this is based on things we can prove, and results in a conclusion that is true , not just theorized. Deductive reasoning works on the assumption that A = B, B = C, so therefore A = C. But this also supposes that all the information is true, which is not always the case.

Sometimes the conclusions you reach with deductive reasoning can be valid, as in the reasoning makes sense, but the conclusion may not be necessarily true. If we return to the Socrates argument, we could propose that:

All men eat apples. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates must eat apples.

The problem is that we can’t prove that all men eat apples —some do, some don’t. Some might eat an apple once but never again. But based on our arguments, the conclusion that Socrates must eat apples is valid.

A strong deductive argument for logos-based reasoning will be composed of provable facts that can reach a provable conclusion. However, a valid but not entirely sound argument can also be effective—but be wary of shifting from persuasion to manipulation!

Another approach to logos-based rhetoric is inductive reasoning, which, unlike deductive reasoning, results in a probable argument rather than a definite one. That doesn’t mean that it is less effective—many scientific concepts we accept as truth are inductive theories simply because we cannot travel back in time and prove them— but rather that inductive reasoning is based on eliminating the impossible and ending in an argument that is based in sound logic and fact, but that may not necessarily be provable.

For example, all people with a cough have a cold. Kelly has a cough. Therefore, Kelly likely has a cold.

Our conclusion is likely , but not absolute. It’s possible that Kelly doesn’t have a cold—not because she doesn't have a cough, but because there are other possible causes, such as having allergies or having just breathed in some dust. The conclusion that she has a cold is likely based on data, but not absolute.

Another example would be that Kelly picks her nose. Kelly is a woman, therefore all women must pick their nose.

Inductive reasoning is based on generalizations. The first example, in which Kelly likely has a cold, makes sense because it’s based on something provable—that a sampling of people who have a cough have colds—and followed up with a likely conclusion. In the second example, this is a less sensible conclusion because it’s based on extrapolation from a single reference point.

If we reverse the claim and say that all women pick their noses, and Kelly is a woman, therefore Kelly must pick her nose, that would be more sound logic. Still not necessarily true—not all women pick their noses—but a more sound example of inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning can still be incredibly effective in persuasion, provided that your information is well-reasoned. Inductive reasoning creates a hypothesis that can be tested; its conclusion is not necessarily true, but can be examined.

As always, be wary of venturing into manipulation, which is more likely to be based on erroneous or misleading facts.

What Is Kairos?

Kairos is the Greek word for the opportune moment, which is precisely what it means in rhetoric. According to this principle, the time in which an argument is deployed is as important as the argument itself. An argument at the wrong time or to the wrong audience will be wasted; to be effective, you must also consider when you are speaking and to whom.

In effect, kairos means choosing the correct rhetorical device to match the audience and space in which you’re attempting to persuade. If you wanted to persuade people to go vegetarian, the middle of a hot dog-eating contest is probably not the right time. Likewise, you’re probably not going to persuade a room of data-driven scientists of something by appealing to pathos or ethos; logos is probably your best bet.

In essence, kairos asks you to consider the context and atmosphere of the argument you’re making. How can you deploy your argument better considering time and space? Should you wait, or is time of the essence?

As Aristotle famously said, “Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

The goal of kairos is to achieve exactly that. Effective use of kairos strengthens your persuasion ability by considering how people are already feeling based on context. How can you influence or counteract that? Or maybe pathos isn’t the right approach—maybe cold hard facts, using logos, is more suited. Kairos works in conjunction with the other modes of persuasion to strengthen your argument, so as you’re putting a persuasive piece together, consider how and when it’ll be deployed!

How to Identify Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Understanding how the modes of persuasion work can make you better at identifying and picking them out. Not only is a better understanding of them useful for composing your own arguments, but it’s also beneficial when seeing other people’s arguments. When you understand how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos work, you’re less susceptible to them.

Advertising is one of the places we see the modes of persuasion most often. Looking at each of these advertisements, you can see how they use each mode of persuasion to convince audiences to convince an audience of something.

Using celebrities is a classic example of ethos, which uses authority or recognition to convince an audience of something. In this case, celebrities like Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Janelle Monáe discuss the importance of voting.

It doesn’t matter that they’re not politicians or political scientists; audiences find them appealing and genuine. When they speak of the importance of voting, audiences listen because they like what these figures have to say . If talented, famous people like this are taking the time to vote, it must be important!

Historians or those well-versed in politics might make different arguments about why audiences should vote, but in this case, the goal is to inspire people. When we see people we admire doing things, we want to do them too; hence the reason that ethos works so well.

ASPCA’s commercials are some of the most infamous examples of pathos in advertising. Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays over footage of abused animals in shelters, encouraging viewers to donate money to support the organization.

It’s not hard to understand why it works; both the song and the imagery are heartbreaking! You can’t help but feel sad when you see it, and that sadness, when followed up by a prompt to donate, encourages you to take immediate action.  And these ads are effective— the campaign raised millions of dollars for ASPCA .

By appealing to our emotions and making us feel sad, this advertisement encourages us to act. That’s a classic use of ethos—it influences our feelings through the one-two punch of sad music and imagery, encouraging us to perform the desired action.

In some cases, emotion and authority aren’t the right tactic. Logos often appears in tech advertisements, such as this one for the iPhone XS and XR.

Notice how the advertisement focuses on product shots and technological terms. Most audiences won’t know what an A12 bionic neural engine is, but it sounds impressive. Likewise, that “12 MPf/1.8 wide-angle lens, with larger, deeper 1.4 micron pixels” is pretty meaningless to most people, but the numbers suggest that this phone is something special because it uses scientific-sounding language.

It doesn’t matter whether audiences really understand what’s being said or not. What matters is that they feel confident that the ad is selling them something they need —in this case, impressive technological specifications that make this phone an improvement over others.

Kairos should ideally factor into all uses of the modes of persuasion, but timeliness can also be a big selling point. In this Christmas-themed M&Ms advertisement, the company uses timely humor to forge a connection between the holidays and M&Ms.

Because these commercials have been running for such a long time, there’s also a nostalgic attachment to them. Just as people look forward to new Budweiser advertisements during the Super Bowl, others look forward to seeing M&Ms or the Coca-Cola polar bear during the holidays.

Though this commercial doesn’t go out of its way to tell you the benefits of M&Ms, it does forge a connection between M&Ms and Christmas, encouraging people to purchase them around the holidays.

Examples of the Modes of Persuasion

Now that you’ve had some exposure to how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos function and what they can do, you can test your ability to recognize them using the images below!

There are a few things to notice about this image:

• The anonymous figure
• The language
• The use of a statistic

Can you figure out which mode of persuasion this represents?

The fact that the figure is anonymous tells us it’s probably not ethos. While we might be influenced by a person who’s in shape, there’s not really an appeal here based on the person—they’re just an image to support the ad.

“DOMINATE” is a pretty loaded word, suggesting that this may have elements of pathos.

However, take a look at that statistic. Whether it’s true or not, a hard statistic like that suggests that this ad is using logos to appeal to viewers. You can draw out an argument from there—75% of users lose weight within weeks. You’re a user. Therefore, you will likely lose weight within weeks.

What do you notice about this image?

• The way the text frames the woman’s body
• The name of the perfume
• The color choice

What mode of persuasion is this?

Again, we don’t know who the model is, and perfume isn’t going to make us look like her, so we can count ethos out.

The ad seems pretty intent on making us look at certain things—the woman’s lips and chest in particular. What is it trying to make us feel?

“FORBIDDEN FRUIT” has a connotation of sensuality.

Red is a color commonly associated with passion.

When you combine the photo, the framing, the perfume name, and the color, you get a strong sense of sex appeal from the advertisement. This makes it an example of pathos—the ad is trying to make us feel a certain way . If we buy this perfume, maybe we would feel attractive, too.

How about this advertisement?

• A serious-looking photo
• Text promising “no more back pain”
• “Doctor recommended.”

Seeing a doctor might make you tempted to think the answer is logos, but there’s no appeal to logic here.

“No more back pain,” is a nice promise, but there’s no attempt to appeal to emotions, so it can’t be pathos.

What’s important in this image is the combination of the doctor in the image and the line “doctor recommended.” This doctor might not be famous, but he does have authority, making this an example of ethos.

Our confidence in this treatment grows because we trust that a doctor understands how to address back pain.

What mode of persuasion is this?  Think about:

• The framing

She does look fashionable and the ad mentions stylists, so it’s possible that this is ethos.

There are no statistics or arguments being made, so the answer probably isn’t logos.

Pathos is possible, but despite having a heavily made-up model, this ad is far less about sex appeal than the previous one.

But the text mentions a specific holiday—New Year’s—suggesting that this is kairos. Kairos can, and often should, be combined with all the modes of persuasion to be even more effective. In this case, the model’s appearance could suggest either ethos or pathos in addition to kairos. The message here is that you should act now, at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the deal and to start the year off with a new style, much like the one the model is sporting.

Key Tips for Identifying Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Now that you know the difference between all the modes of persuasion, you’ll have a much easier time identifying them. If you run into trouble, you can always ask questions about what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading to understand what mode of persuasion it’s using.

#1: Is It Related to a Specific Time?

If the argument is based on a specific day or context, such as Valentine’s Day or appealing only to a select group of people, such as people with dogs, it’s more likely to be kairos.

#2: Does It Involve a Celebrity or Authority Figure?

Celebrities are often a dead giveaway that an argument is using ethos. But authority figures, such as doctors, dentists, or politicians, can also be used to appeal to ethos. Even regular, everyday people can work, particularly when combined with pathos, to appeal to you based on a mutual connection you have.

#3: Does It Involve Statistics?

Statistics are a huge clue that an argument is using logos. But logos can also just be a logical argument, such as that if plants need water, and it’s hard to remember to water them, you should buy an automatic plant waterer. It makes perfect sense, making you more likely to buy it, rather than changing your habits to remember to water your plants more frequently.

#4: Does It Influence Your Emotions?

If an argument tries to change your emotions, whether by making you sad, happy, angry, or something else entirely, it’s a good indicator that it’s using pathos. Sex appeal is one of the biggest examples of pathos in advertising, appearing everywhere from makeup ads to car commercials to hamburger advertisements.

What’s Next?

Need help understanding the historical context for The Great Gatsby to perfect your kairos-based argument?

You can always combine the modes of persuasion with literary devices to make your arguments even stronger!

Learn how to say "good morning" in Japanese ! Even if it's not a mode of persuasion, it's just good manners.

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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Chapter 6: Thinking and Analyzing Rhetorically

6.4 Rhetorical Appeals: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos Defined

Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel

Rhetoric, as the previous chapters have discussed, is the way that authors use and manipulate language in order to persuade an audience. Once we understand the rhetorical situation out of which a text is created (why it was written, for whom it was written, by whom it was written, how the medium in which it was written creates certain constraints, or perhaps freedoms of expression), we can look at how all of those contextual elements shape the author’s creation of the text.

We can look first at the classical rhetorical appeals, which are the three ways to classify authors’ intellectual, moral, and emotional approaches to getting the audience to have the reaction that the author hopes for.

Rhetorical Appeals

Rhetorical appeals refer to ethos, pathos, and logos. These are classical Greek terms, dating back to Aristotle, who is traditionally seen as the father of rhetoric. To be rhetorically effective (and thus persuasive), an author must engage the audience in a variety of compelling ways, which involves carefully choosing how to craft his or her argument so that the outcome, audience agreement with the argument or point, is achieved. Aristotle defined these modes of engagement and gave them the terms that we still use today: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Logos: Appeal to Logic

Logic. Reason. Rationality. Logos is brainy and intellectual, cool, calm, collected, objective.

When an author relies on logos, it means that he or she is using logic, careful structure, and objective evidence to appeal to the audience. An author can appeal to an audience’s intellect by using information that can be fact checked (using multiple sources) and thorough explanations to support key points. Additionally, providing a solid and non-biased explanation of one’s argument is a great way for an author to invoke logos.

For example, if I were trying to convince my students to complete their homework, I might explain that I understand everyone is busy and they have other classes (non-biased), but the homework will help them get a better grade on their test (explanation). I could add to this explanation by providing statistics showing the number of students who failed and didn’t complete their homework versus the number of students who passed and did complete their homework (factual evidence).

Logical appeals rest on rational modes of thinking , such as

• Comparison –  a comparison between one thing (with regard to your topic) and another, similar thing to help support your claim. It is important that the comparison is fair and valid – the things being compared must share significant traits of similarity.
• Cause/effect thinking –  you argue that X has caused Y, or that X is likely to cause Y to help support your claim. Be careful with the latter – it can be difficult to predict that something “will” happen in the future.
• Deductive reasoning –  starting with a broad, general claim/example and using it to support a more specific point or claim
• Inductive reasoning –  using several specific examples or cases to make a broad generalization
• Exemplification –  use of many examples or a variety of evidence to support a single point
• Elaboration – moving beyond just including a fact, but explaining the significance or relevance of that fact
• Coherent thought – maintaining a well organized line of reasoning; not repeating ideas or jumping around

Pathos: Appeal to Emotions

When an author relies on pathos, it means that he or she is trying to tap into the audience’s emotions to get them to agree with the author’s claim. An author using pathetic appeals wants the audience to feel something: anger, pride, joy, rage, or happiness.  For example, many of us have seen the ASPCA commercials that use photographs of injured puppies, or sad-looking kittens, and slow, depressing music to emotionally persuade their audience to donate money.

Pathos-based rhetorical strategies are any strategies that get the audience to “open up” to the topic, the argument, or to the author. Emotions can make us vulnerable, and an author can use this vulnerability to get the audience to believe that his or her argument is a compelling one.

Pathetic appeals might include

• Expressive descriptions of people, places, or events that help the reader to feel or experience those events
• Vivid imagery  of people, places or events that help the reader to feel like he or she is seeing  those events
• Sharing  personal stories that make the reader feel a connection to, or empathy for, the person being described
• Using emotion-laden   vocabulary  as a way to put the reader into that specific emotional mindset (what is the author trying to make the audience feel? and how is he or she doing that?)
• Using any information that will evoke an emotional response from the audience . This could involve making the audience feel empathy or disgust for the person/group/event being discussed, or perhaps connection to or rejection of the person/group/event being discussed.

When reading a text, try to locate when the author is trying to convince the reader using emotions because, if used to excess, pathetic appeals can indicate a lack of substance or emotional manipulation of the audience. See the links below about fallacious pathos for more information.

Ethos: Appeal to Values/Trust

Ethical appeals have two facets: audience values and authorial credibility/character.

On the one hand, when an author makes an ethical appeal, he or she is attempting to  tap into the  values or ideologies that the audience holds , for example, patriotism, tradition, justice, equality, dignity for all humankind, self preservation, or other specific social, religious or philosophical values (Christian values, socialism, capitalism, feminism, etc.). These values can sometimes feel very close to emotions, but they are felt on a social level rather than only on a personal level. When an author evokes the values that the audience cares about as a way to justify or support his or her argument, we classify that as ethos. The audience will feel that the author is making an argument that is “right” (in the sense of moral “right”-ness, i.e., “My argument rests upon that values that matter to you. Therefore, you should accept my argument”). This first part of the definition of ethos, then, is focused on the audience’s values.

On the other hand, this sense of referencing what is “right” in an ethical appeal connects to the other sense of ethos: the  author. Ethos that is centered on the author revolves around two concepts: the credibility of the author and his or her character.

Credibility of the speaker/author is determined by his or her knowledge and expertise in the subject at hand. For example, if you are learning about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, would you rather learn from a professor of physics or a cousin who took two science classes in high school thirty years ago? It is fair to say that, in general, the professor of physics would have more credibility to discuss the topic of physics. To establish his or her credibility, a n author may draw attention to who he or she is or what kinds of experience he or she has with the topic being discussed as an ethical appeal (i.e., “Because I have experience with this topic –  and I know my stuff! – you should trust what I am saying about this topic”). Some authors do not have to establish their credibility because the audience already knows who they are and that they are credible.

Character  is another aspect of ethos, and it   is different from credibility because it involves personal history and even personality traits. A person can be credible but lack character or vice versa. For example, in politics, sometimes the most experienced candidates – those who might be the most credible candidates – fail to win elections because voters do not accept their character. Politicians take pains to shape their character as leaders who have the interests of the voters at heart. The candidate who successfully proves to the voters (the audience) that he or she has the type of character that they can trust is more likely to win.

Thus, ethos comes down to trust. How can the author get the audience to trust him or her so that they will accept his or her argument? How can the the author make him or herself appear as a credible speaker who embodies the character traits that the audience values?

In building ethical appeals, we see authors

• Referring either directly or indirectly to the values that matter to the intended audience (so that the audience will trust the speaker)
• Using language, phrasing, imagery, or other writing styles common to people who hold those values, thereby “talking the talk” of people with those values (again, so that the audience is inclined to trust the speaker)
• Referring to their experience and/or authority with the topic (and therefore demonstrating their credibility)
• Referring to their own character, or making an effort to build their character in the text

When reading, you should always think about the author’s credibility regarding the subject as well as his or her character. Here is an example of a rhetorical move that connects with ethos: when reading an article about abortion, the author mentions that she has had an abortion. That is an example of an ethical move because the author is creating credibility via anecdotal evidence and first person narrative. In a rhetorical analysis project, it would be up to you, the analyzer, to point out this move and associate it with a rhetorical strategy.

 When writers misuse Logos, Pathos, or Ethos, arguments can be weakened

Above, we defined and described what logos, pathos, and ethos are and why authors may use those strategies. Sometimes, using a combination of logical, pathetic, and ethical appeals leads to a sound, balanced, and persuasive argument. It is important to understand, though, that using rhetorical appeals does not always lead to a sound, balanced argument.

In fact, any of the appeals could be misused or overused. When that happens, arguments can be weakened.

To see what a misuse of logical appeals might consist of, see the next chapter,   Logical Fallacies.

To see how authors can overuse emotional appeals and turn-off their target audience, visit the following link from WritingCommons.org :   Fallacious Pathos . 

To see how ethos can be misused or used in a manner that may be misleading, visit the following link to WritingCommons.org :  Fallacious Ethos

A Guide to Rhetoric, Genre, and Success in First-Year Writing by Melanie Gagich & Emilie Zickel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Ethos Definition

What is ethos? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Ethos , along with logos and pathos , is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Ethos is an argument that appeals to the audience by emphasizing the speaker's credibility and authority. If the speaker has a high-ranking position, is an expert in his or her field, or has had life experience relevant to a particular topic, anything the speaker says or does to ensure that the audience knows about and remembers these qualifications is an example of ethos .

Some additional key details about ethos:

• Ethos shares a root with the word "ethics ." This is helpful to remember because speakers often try to establish their own strong moral character by using ethos.
• The word "ethos" is also often used to refer to a community or organization's characteristic belief or spirit, as in the sentence, "We will not give you a larger bonus than your coworkers: that is against our company's ethos of fairness." However, this guide focuses specifically on the rhetorical technique of ethos used in literature and public speaking.
• The three "modes of persuasion"— pathos , logos , and ethos —were originally defined by Aristotle.
• While ethos appeals to an audience's instinctive respect for authority, logos appeals to the audience's sense of reason, and pathos appeals to the audience's emotions.
• Ethos is used in advertising just as often as it is used in public speaking and literature. Any commercial in which a celebrity endorses a product, for example, hopes to persuade its target audience by cultivating an aura of authority or expertise through its association with the celebrity—and is therefore an example of ethos.

How to Pronounce Ethos

Here's how to pronounce ethos: ee -thos

Ethos Explained

Aristotle (the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist) first defined e thos , along with logos and pathos , in his treatise on rhetoric, Ars Rhetorica. Together, he referred to e thos , logos , and pathos as the three modes of persuasion, or sometimes simply as "the appeals." Aristotle believed that in order to have ethos a good speaker must demonstrate three things:

• Phronesis : Sound reasoning, and relevant experience or expertise.
• Arete : Moral character.
• Eunoia : Good intentions towards the audience.

Aristotle argued that a speaker in possession of these three attributes will naturally impress the audience with his or her ethos , and as a result will be better able to influence that audience. Over time, however, the definition of ethos has broadened, and the significance of the three qualities Aristotle named is now lost on anyone who hasn't studied classical Greek. So it may give more insight into the meaning of ethos to translate Aristotle's three categories into a new set of categories that make more sense in the modern era. A speaker or writer's credibility can be said to rely on each of the following:

• Within literature, it's interesting to notice when characters attempt to invoke their own authority and enhance their ethos by reminding other characters of the titles they possess. Often, this can be an indication that the character citing his or her own credentials actually feels his or her authority being threatened or challenged.
• In literature, this form of ethos is particularly relevant with respect to narrators. Authors often have their narrators profess impartiality or objectivity at the outset of a book in order to earn the reader's trust in the narrator's reliability regarding the story he or she is about to tell.
• This type of ethos translates into literature quite easily, in the sense that characters' opinions are often evaluated within the framework of their professions.
• Literary characters often use ethos to communicate similarity or likemindedness to other characters, and you can detect this by certain changes in their speech. In these situations, characters (as well as real-life speakers) often use a shibboleth— a specialized term or word used by a specific group of people—to show that they belong. For example, if you knew the name of a special chemical used to make jello, and you wanted to impress the head of a jello company, the name of that chemical would count as a shibboleth and saying it would help you show the jello executive that you're "in the know."

The Stagecraft of Ethos

In order to impress their positive personal qualities upon audiences, public speakers can use certain techniques that aren't available to writers. These include:

• Speaking in a certain manner or even with a certain accent.
• Demonstrating confident stage presence.
• Having reputable people to introduce the speaker in a positive light.
• Listing their credentials and achievements.

Put another way, the ethos of a speech can be heavily impacted by the speaker's confidence and manner of presenting him or herself.

Ethos and Ad Hominem

An ad hominem argument is a specific type of argument which involves attacking someone else's character or ethos, rather than attacking that person's position or point of view on the subject being discussed. Ad hominem attacks usually have the goal of swaying an audience away from an opponent's views and towards one's own by degrading the audience's perception of the opponent's character. For instance, if one politician attacks another as being "elite," the attacker may be seeking to make voters question whether the other politician is trustworthy or actually has the public's interest at heart. But the first politician is not in any way attacking their opponent's positions on matters of policy.

An ad hominem argument is not necessarily "wrong" or even a bad strategy, but it's generally seen as more dignified (another component of ethos ) for speakers to focus on strengthening their own ethos, and to debate their opponents based on the substance of the opposition's counterarguments. When a literary character uses an ad hominem argument, this can sometimes indicate that he or she is insecure about his or her own position regarding a certain issue.

Ethos Examples

Examples of ethos in literature.

Characters in novels often use ethos , as well as logos and pathos , to convince one another of certain arguments in the same way that a speaker in reality might use these techniques. In addition, authors often use a subtler form of ethos when establishing a narrator's reliability at the outset of a novel.

Ethos in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

In Atlas Shrugged, a group of pioneering American industrialists, financiers, and artists go on strike against a corrupt government. As the strike nears its end, its leader—John Galt—delivers a speech to the nation about his ideals. He promises that the strike will end only if Americans allow him to remake the country according to his moral code, which he explains in the following lines:

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal's lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.

Galt not only creates an impression of moral rectitude, but also emphasizes his own self-sufficiency. He assures his audience that he expects nothing in return from them for sharing his personal views. In this way, his ability to cultivate an aura of impartiality and objectivity enhances his ethos.

Ethos in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter opens with a chapter called "The Custom-House," in which the unnamed narrator—who has a similar biography to Hawthorne—describes his job in a Custom House, a place where taxes were paid on imports in 18th century Massachusetts. The narrator's stories about his job have no relation to the actual narrative of The Scarlet Letter, except that he finds the scarlet letter of the title in the Custom House attic. This discovery inspired him to research the life of the woman who wore the embroidered letter, and to tell her story. By presenting himself as someone who merely discovered, researched, and "edited" the story the reader is about to begin, the narrator effectively creates the impression that his is a reliable historical account, thereby strengthening his ethos.

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This, in fact—a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume—this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public.

Ethos in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

In the opening lines of The Great Gatsby , the narrator, Nick Carraway, claims that he has followed one piece of his father's advice throughout his life:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'... In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men...

Nick's tendency to reserve judgement makes him an ideal, objective narrator, while his awareness of his own economic and social advantages makes him a perfect guide to the privileged world of The Great Gatsby. Though he describes his non-judgmental, "neutral" affect with self-deprecating humor, it's a subtle way of strengthening his ethos as a narrator, and of causing the reader to eagerly anticipate hearing the stories that "wild, unknown men" have shared with him.

Examples of Ethos in Political Speeches

Every politician recognizes that a speaker must earn an audience's respect and trust if he or she expects to be listened to. As a result, it's difficult to find a political speech that doesn't contain an example of ethos. It's particularly easy to spot ethos in action when listening to speeches by candidates for office.

Ethos in Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention

When he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, Romney pointed to his business success as relevant experience that would serve him well if he were to take office:

I learned the real lessons about how America works from experience. When I was 37, I helped start a small company. My partners and I had been working for a company that was in the business of helping other businesses. So some of us had this idea that if we really believed our advice was helping companies, we should invest in companies. We should bet on ourselves and on our advice. So we started a new business called Bain Capital...That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.

In addition to strengthening his ethos by pointing to his past achievements, Romney also hopes to portray himself as principled, rational, and daring when he explains how his company decided to "bet on ourselves and on our advice."

Ethos in John Kasich's 2016 Ohio Primary Victory Speech

After winning his first campaign victory, 2016 presidential candidate John Kasich told his supporters about his disadvantaged yet hardworking relatives to contextualize his own rise to success:

And you know, ladies and gentlemen, my whole life has been about trying to create a climate of opportunity for people. You know, as my father carried that mail on his back and his father was a coal miner, and you know, I was just told by my cousin—I didn't realize this—that my mother, one of four [children]‚ was the only one to graduate from high school. The other three barely made it out of the eighth grade because they were poor... And you know, as I've traveled the country and I look into your eyes... You want to believe that your children are going to have ultimately a better America than what we got from our mothers and fathers. That's the great American legacy: that our kids will be better than we are.

By saying that he comes from a modest background, Kasich hopes to convey that he is "just a regular American" and that he will advocate for other hard working Americans.

Ethos in Winston Churchill's 1941 Address to Joint Session of the US Congress

In this speech to the US Congress during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill enhances the ethos of his speech by emphasizing both the qualities he shares in common with the American people and the American Democratic values instilled in him by his parents:

I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people." That was his message. I used to see him cheered at meetings and in the streets by crowds of workingmen way back in those aristocratic Victorian days when as Disraeli said "the world was for the few, and for the very few." Therefore I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Examples of Ethos in Advertisements

Advertisers often attempt to use ethos to influence people to buy their product. Dressing up an actor as a doctor who then extols the benefits a medication is a way that advertisers used to try to gin up a little ethos , but such obvious practices of what might be called "fake ethos" are now regularly mocked. However, any celebrity endorsement or testimonial from an expert are also attempts to build up ethos around a product's endorsement. For instance, here's a Prudential Financial commercial that ups its ethos with an appearance by Harvard social psychologist Dan Gilbert.

Why Do Writers Use Ethos?

Politicians, activists, and advertisers use ethos because they recognize that it is impossible to convince an audience of anything if its members do not believe in the speaker's credibility, morality, or authority.

The use of e thos in fiction is often different from real-world examples. Authors are not usually trying to directly influence their audience in the way politicians or advertisers are. Rather, authors often show one of their characters making use of ethos . In doing so, the author gives insight into characters' perceptions of one another, their values, and their motives.

In addition, e thos is an especially useful tool for authors looking to establish a narrator's credibility. Having a credible narrator is hugely important to the success of a literary work. Books with narrators that never establish a reasonable claim to an objective viewpoint are nearly impossible to read because everything they say is cast in doubt, so that readers come to feel like they're being lied to or "jerked around," which is fatiguing. Although often enough readers simply assume that a narrator has credibility , if you've ever read a book where you felt you simply didn't like the narrator very much—or watched a television show where you felt that none of the characters were likable or believable—that might be another sign that the writer has failed to establish a character's ethos . There are circumstances in which a writer creates an unreliable narrator —a narrator who is either purposefully or subconsciously offering a slanted narrative—but ethos is just as crucial in creating such a narrator: the author must first establish the narrator's ethos and then slowly undermine it over the course of the book.

Other Helpful Ethos Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Ethos: An in-depth explanation of ethos , and how the concept has changed over time.
• The Dictionary Definition of Ethos: A definition and etymology of the term, which comes from the Greek ethos meaning "character, custom, or habit."
• Ethos on Youtube: An excellent video from TED-Ed about the three modes of persuasion.

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15 Ethos Examples (Appeal to Credibility)

Ethos is one part of the so-called rhetorical triangle. In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Ethos refers to a technical means of persuasion that has to do with the credibility of the persuader.

Aristotle claims that there are three technical means of persuasion:

“Now the proofs furnished by the speech are of three kinds. The first depends upon the moral character of the speaker, the second upon putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind, the third upon the speech itself, in so far as it proves or seems to prove” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 3).

Each of these corresponds to the three means of persuasion: 

• Ethos (Appeal to credibility): Persuasion through establishing the character of the speaker.
• Pathos (Appeal to emotion) : Persuasion through putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind.
• Logos (Appeal to logic) : Persuasion through proof or seeming proof.

For Aristotle, speech consists of three things: the speaker, the hearer, and the speech. These correspond to ethos, pathos, and logos , respectively. The first of these is the subject of this article.

Definition of Ethos

In rhetoric, ethos, from the Greek word for “character,” refers to persuasion through establishing the authority of the speaker .

According to Aristotle, people follow a trustworthy speaker more readily on almost all subjects and completely so if there are no objective criteria to decide the matter.

The orator is using ethos if their speech is delivered in a manner that makes them seem worthy of confidence (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 4). 

The importance of ethos in rhetoric can readily be seen through Aristotle’s example: The orator must appear to be of a certain character because this will determine how the audience is disposed towards them.

One’s dispositions toward the speaker will make all the difference,

“…for when a man is favorably disposed towards one on whom he is passing judgement, he either thinks that the accused has committed no wrong at all or that his offence is trifling; but if he hates him, the reverse is the case.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 4).

Effective use of ethos requires three qualities: good sense, virtue, and good will (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 5). These qualities are necessary and sufficient for the orator. 

15 Examples of Ethos

Example 1: the climate expert.

“As a leading climate scientist with years of experience researching this field, I can assure you that global warming is a pressing issue that requires an urgent and serious response.” 

The first part of the argument above (“As a leading climate scientist with years of experience researching this field”) establishes the speaker’s credibility, which means that the primary means through which the speaker is trying to convince their audience is ethos. For a topic as complex as global warming, the average audience member is far more likely to listen to someone who establishes their credibility from the start than to someone who relies solely on pathos and logos. 

Example 2: The Infectious Disease Expert

“I’ve dedicated over 40 years of my career to studying infectious diseases and their large-scale effects, so I can assert with full confidence that widespread vaccination is crucial for public health.”

It is easy to see that virtually anyone is more likely to trust the medical advice of someone who immediately establishes themselves as a seasoned professional than someone who limits their speech to logical arguments alone.

Example 3: Brand Credibility

The use of ethos is particularly frequent for brands. This is especially true when two competing brands have virtually indistinguishable products in terms of their use value. There would be no logical reason to prefer one brand to another, so each must try to appear more credible than the other. 

Example 4: The Art Critic

“I’ve been an art critic for over 30 years and during that time I’ve never come across a contemporary work of art that has as many layers of meaning as this one.”

This example exploits the peculiar advantages of ethos in matters that have no objective criteria. As Aristotle said, “we feel confidence in a greater degree and more readily in persons of worth in regard to everything in general, but where there is no certainty and there is room for doubt, our confidence is absolute.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, ca. 367-322 B.C.E./1926, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 4).

Example 5: The Expert Witness

An expert witness is using ethos (their education, certification, experience, etc.) to establish their testimony as authoritative.

For example, an expert witness might be called up to give evidence about whether an image was doctored or if it was, indeed, the original image that is being presented. The jury is more likely to find the witness credible if they can established that they do indeed have expertise on the topic, making their statement more authoritative.

Example 6: The Seasoned Traveler

“Having visited over 60 countries around the world, my recommendations for which places to visit and which to avoid are based on my years of experience.”

In this example, the speaker is using ethos to establish trustworthiness in an area where the audience members are unlikely to have conflicting experiences. The sheer number of countries they have been to gives them some clout, although we may be having the wool pulled over our eyes if 45 of those countries were merely in transit!

Example 7: The Experienced Entrepreneur

“While I wasn’t born in a particularly well-off family, by age 22 I was already the CEO of a 100 million dollar company. I know what it’s like to go from zero to hundred when it comes to entrepreneurship, so you can rest assured that what I’m about to say is backed up by lived experience.”

The speaker’s appeal to their financial success story is an attempt to prime the audience and make the speech that will follow more persuasive and influential through the use of ethos. 

Example 8: The Former Judge

“As a former judge who presided over hundreds of criminal justice cases, I’ve seen first hand what injustices our system often gives rise to.”

Not only is the speaker establishing their credibility from the start, but ethos is an especially well-suited persuasion technique in such a case because the matter at hand requires personal acquaintance with the topic. It’s not just that a judge will be more knowledgeable about criminal justice than the average person, but a judge would also have access to information that is simply unavailable for others, no matter how well-informed they may be. 

Example 9: The Celebrity Endorsement

While most examples focus on how ethos can be used in speech or writing, we shouldn’t forget that ethos may also be expressed visually.

For example, using images of celebrities or doctors to advertise a product is an example of ethos, because the advertisement is trying to establish its credibility and trustworthiness.

Example 10: The Certified Personal Trainer

“As a certified personal trainer with years of experience coaching professional athletes as well as clients with diverse fitness goals, I can build a training and nutrition program that is a perfect fit for your goals.”

The speaker is using ethos in the first part of the speech to establish credibility. In the context of physical fitness, ethos often has a visual component along with the verbal: the speaker will probably be especially fit and they will make sure you see that because you’re far more likely to take advice from someone who already has the body you want. 

Example 11: The Veteran Educator

“With 25 years of experience in teaching and a doctoral degree in education, I can assure you that early childhood learning lays a vital foundation for a child’s future academic and personal development.”

Here, the speaker uses their academic qualifications and extensive experience to convince the audience about the importance of early childhood education. The ethos is essential as it brings forth a certain level of expertise and credibility to the argument.

Example 12: The Renowned Chef

“Having trained in culinary schools around the world and worked in Michelin-starred restaurants, I can assure you that the art of cooking is much more than just following recipes.”

In this case, the chef uses their international experience and association with esteemed restaurants to validate their point of view about cooking. This is an excellent example of ethos, as it makes the audience value the speaker’s perspective based on their distinguished background.

Example 13: The Skilled Craftsman

“Working as a craftsman for more than 30 years, mastering techniques of pottery and sculpture, I can vouch for the therapeutic benefits of hands-on artistry.”

The speaker uses ethos to enhance the weight of their perspective, drawing upon their lifelong experience in the field of craftsmanship. The audience would likely give more credence to the speaker’s argument due to their established authority in the subject.

Example 14: The Experienced Psychologist

“As a psychologist with over two decades of clinical experience and several research papers in the field of cognitive behavior, I strongly believe that maintaining a positive mindset is crucial for mental health.”

In this instance, the psychologist uses ethos, leveraging their years of practical experience and contribution to scientific research to advocate for the importance of a positive mindset. This use of ethos enhances the credibility of their argument, making the audience more likely to accept their viewpoint.

Example 15: The Professional Environmentalist

“As a professional environmentalist, who has spent the last 20 years advocating for sustainable practices and policies, I can confidently say that adopting renewable energy sources is essential for a sustainable future.”

Here, the speaker uses their long-term dedication to environmental issues and advocacy work to establish their credibility. The ethos in this argument underscores the importance of their message, making it more persuasive to the audience.

Strengths of Ethos

• Trust: In settings where the audience has little or no knowledge of the topic, the speaker’s appeals to ethos might be the most important means of persuasion. For example, if you know nothing about quantum physics, you may not be able to detect fallacies in arguments about it, and it’s not a subject that’s connected with any strong emotions, so the only thing you may rely on is the speaker’s credibility. 
• Subjective topics: Ethos, as Aristotle noted, is especially useful in cases where there are no objective criteria to decide the matter. For example, the orator may make greater use of ethos when speaking about a work of art than when debating the merits of a mathematical proof.

Weaknesses of Ethos

• Insincerity: It is easy for the audience to perceive the speaker’s appeals to ethos as inauthentic. While arguments don’t generally arouse suspicion, an appeal to one’s credentials can make the audience distrust you if done unskillfully. 
• Objectivity: The converse of Aristotle’s statement about the usefulness of ethos in vague matters is that its utility is limited in matters that have objective criteria. For example, ethos is of no use if the truth of the argument one makes can easily be determined by each audience member for themselves.

Ethos is one of three main technical means of persuasion. In the context of rhetoric, it refers to appeals to the persuader’s credibility and comes from the Greek word for “character.” Like other means of persuasion, it has its strengths and weaknesses. 

See Also: The 5 Types of Rhetorical Situations

Aristotle. (1926). Rhetoric. In Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 22, translated by J. H. Freese. Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 367-322 B.C.E.) 

Rapp, C. (2022). Aristotle’s Rhetoric. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/

Tio Gabunia (B.Arch, M.Arch)

Tio Gabunia is an academic writer and architect based in Tbilisi. He has studied architecture, design, and urban planning at the Georgian Technical University and the University of Lisbon. He has worked in these fields in Georgia, Portugal, and France. Most of Tio’s writings concern philosophy. Other writings include architecture, sociology, urban planning, and economics.

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What is Ethos? Definition, Examples of Ethos in Literature

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is Ethos? Definition, Examples of Ethos in Literature

Ethos definition: Ethos is a rhetorical device that includes any content in an argument that is meant to appeal to ethics.

What is Ethos? Ethos as a Literary Term

What does ethos mean? Ethos is one of the three Aristotelian appeals. Ethos refers to any element of an argument that is meant to appeal to an audience’s ethics or ethical responsibilities.

A writer utilizes the three appeals in order to convince his audience of his argument. The other two appeals are pathos (emotion) and logos (logic).

Appeals to ethos are those that involve or influence the ethical reasons an audience should believe an argument.

Ethos Examples in Writing

Examples of ethos in an argument in support of education reform that appeal to ethos might include:

• I have studied this topic for the past ten years.
• This is a national problem, one every citizen and every parent should find concerning.

The first example is reference to the speaker’s credibility; the second example is an appeal to the audience’s sense of ethical responsibility.

• The idea of building a large work force of full-time employees, outside of core disciplines like engineering, is not part of the ethos of most companies in today’s tech industry, observers who have studied the industry say.

In this example, the author is contrasting the company with that of its competitors. This company has a different set of ethos, a different set of ethics and priorities. This company, unlike others in the industry, value full-time employees outside of engineers. It is an attempt to set this company on an ethical high ground above its peers.

Ethos vs. Pathos vs. Logos

Each of these is used in an argument in order to convince an audience. The argument may be heavier in one appeal over another; however, a good argument will contain some of all three appeals.

Continuing the education reform argument from above, here are additional examples for demonstration:

• How can you look at these failing students and say nothing should be done about our education system?
• No average person would ignore this problem.
• Student SAT scores are the lowest they are in 40 years.
• Given these low test scores, we should rally our efforts to reform K-12 education.

The Purpose of Ethos in Writing

First and foremost, a speaker must convince his audience that he is someone they should believe. He does this through appeals to ethos. The speaker might not directly state his credits, but he should in some way present his authority to the audience. Some speakers have innate authority (like the President) and others have to prove it.

Furthermore, most people want to do the “right” thing. That is where ethos comes into play. Through appeals to ethos, a speaker will convince the audience that agreeing with his argument is “good” and “right.”

Examples of Ethos in Literature

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

These lines appeal to ethos especially in the last clause beginning with “a decent respect”. At the time of this document’s conception, it was the “right” thing for mankind to want to separate from the British Kingdom.

This document starts with these lines because the authors intend to convince the British Crown that their separation is a just and ethical obligation.

Summary: What Does Ethos Mean in Literature?

Define ethos in literature: the definition of ethos in literature is an argument based on the ethics or credibility of the person making the argument; an appeal to ethics.

To sum up, ethos is:

• one of the three Aristotelian appeals used in argument
• an appeal to ethics
• evident in an argument in statements of the speaker’s credibility or references to why the argument is “good” or “right”

Understanding Pathos, Ethos, and Logos through Examples

This essay is about the rhetorical concepts of pathos, ethos, and logos, as defined by Aristotle, and their application in effective communication. Pathos appeals to emotions, as seen in charity advertisements and Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches. Ethos establishes credibility and trustworthiness, exemplified by respected authorities and historical figures like Abraham Lincoln. Logos relies on logic and evidence, demonstrated in scientific papers and legal arguments. By combining these three modes of persuasion, one can create compelling arguments that resonate emotionally, establish credibility, and present logical reasoning. Understanding and using these techniques enhances the ability to influence and persuade in various contexts.

How it works

Within the domain of rhetoric, Aristotle delineated three pivotal modes of persuasion: pathos, ethos, and logos. These tenets endure as linchpins of efficacious discourse, whether in oratory, script, or mundane dialogues. By assimilating and deploying these components, one can contrive compelling rationales and foster deeper resonance with an audience. Let us delve into each of these persuasive methodologies with pertinent exemplars to elucidate their efficacy.

Pathos endeavors to stir the emotions of the audience, aiming to elicit sentiments that precipitate a desired reaction.

Advertisements abound with pathos; for instance, philanthropic entities often deploy images of distressed fauna or juveniles to evoke empathy and benevolence, prompting viewers to contribute. In literature, John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” serves as a poignant testament to pathos. The vivid portrayals of the Joad family’s travails during the Great Depression evoke profound sentiments of commiseration and indignation, engaging readers on an emotional plane and rendering them more receptive to the novel’s societal critique. Likewise, political orations frequently harness pathos. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech adeptly employs emotional appeal by delineating an optimistic vision of a racially integrated and harmonious America, galvanizing his audience to champion the civil rights movement.

Ethos, conversely, delineates the credibility and authority of the orator or author. It entails persuading the audience of the integrity and moral rectitude of the communicator. A distinguished physician expounding on matters of health inherently possesses ethos, as their expertise and background imbue their arguments with credibility. In scholarly composition, citations and allusions to esteemed sources cultivate ethos by showcasing the writer’s meticulous scholarship and alignment with established erudition. Historical addresses, such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, likewise leverage ethos. Lincoln’s incumbency as President and his reputation for veracity and integrity buttressed the persuasive efficacy of his oration, reinforcing his plea for national cohesion and the precepts of egalitarianism.

Logos embodies the appeal to logic and rationality, entailing the construction of a cogent argument buttressed by evidence and cogent rationale. Scientific treatises exemplify logos in practice, relying on data, experimentation, and empirical evidence to buttress their contentions. In quotidian existence, logos manifests when decisions are predicated on weighing pros and cons or when expounding upon intricate concepts with lucid, logical explication. An exemplar of logos is discernible in the writings of Thomas Paine, notably in “Common Sense,” where he methodically dismantles the justifications for British dominion over the American colonies, employing logical deduction and empirical evidence to advocate for independence. In legal spheres, attorneys deploy logos by marshaling facts, evidence, and cogent arguments to advance their case compellingly before a tribunal.

The amalgamation of these three modalities of persuasion engenders a compelling and well-rounded discourse. For instance, in a persuasive treatise on climate change, one might commence with pathos by delineating the cataclysmic repercussions of natural calamities on communities. This emotive entreaty establishes the backdrop and elicits the empathy of the audience. Subsequently, the writer could invoke ethos by citing the consensus of climate scientists and reputable institutions, cementing the trustworthiness of their assertions. Finally, logos would come to the fore by presenting statistical data, empirical studies, and logical arguments elucidating the causality of climate change and the exigency of immediate action.

Comprehending the interplay between pathos, ethos, and logos is imperative for anyone endeavoring to communicate effectively. Whether composing a persuasive treatise, delivering an address, or engaging in dialectical discourse, these rhetorical stratagems aid in crafting arguments that are emotionally resonant, credible, and logically cogent. By mastering these methodologies, one can augment their capacity to sway and persuade others across diverse contexts.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Writing — Persuasive Writing: The Power of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Persuasive Writing: The Power of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

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Table of contents

Using ethos, pathos, and logos together, counterarguments.

• Professional qualifications, expertise, and experience
• Personal reputation, character, and integrity
• Third-party endorsements, testimonials, and references
• Common values, beliefs, and interests
• Create empathy, compassion, or sympathy
• Trigger fear, anger, or sadness
• Stir hope, inspiration, or joy
• Connect with the audience's values, beliefs, and experiences
• Present facts, data, and statistics
• Use reasoning, deductions, and analogies
• Use examples, anecdotes, and case studies
• Address counterarguments and refute objections
• Establish your ethos first, to gain the audience's trust and respect
• Use pathos to engage the audience's emotions and values, but avoid manipulating or exploiting them
• Use logos to provide evidence, reasoning, and counterarguments, but avoid being too technical or dry
• Integrate ethos, pathos, and logos seamlessly, so that they reinforce each other and create a persuasive synergy
• Acknowledge the counterarguments and show that you understand the other side's perspective (ethos)
• Anticipate the emotional reactions that the counterarguments may trigger and address them proactively (pathos)
• Provide evidence, reasoning, and examples to refute the counterarguments and strengthen your position (logos)
• Use rhetorical questions, analogies, or metaphors to reframe the counterarguments and show their weaknesses (logos)

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Understand The Difference Between Ethos, Pathos, And Logos To Make Your Point

• What Is Ethos?
• What Is Pathos?
• What Is Logos?
• Examples Of Each
• What Are Mythos And Kairos?

During an argument, people will often say whatever is necessary to win. If that is the case, they would certainly need to understand the three modes of persuasion, also commonly known as the three rhetorical appeals: ethos , pathos , and logos . In short, these three words refer to three main methods that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. As you’re about to find out, the modes of persuasion are important because a speaker who knows how to effectively use them will have a significant advantage over someone who doesn’t.

The terms ethos , pathos , and logos and the theory of their use can be traced back to ancient Greece to the philosophy of Aristotle . Aristotle used these three concepts in his explanations of rhetoric , or the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience. For Aristotle, the three modes of persuasion specifically referred to the three major parts of an argument: the speaker ( ethos ), the argument itself ( logos ), and the audience ( pathos ). In particular, Aristotle focused on the speaker’s character, the logic and reason presented by an argument, and the emotional impact the argument had on an audience.

While they have ancient roots, these modes of persuasion are alive and well today. Put simply, ethos refers to persuasion based on the credibility or authority of the speaker, pathos refers to persuasion based on emotion, and logos refers to persuasion based on logic or reason.

By effectively using the three modes of persuasion with a large supply of rhetorical devices, a speaker or writer can become a master of rhetoric and win nearly any argument or win over any audience. Before they can do that, though, they must know exactly what ethos , pathos , and logos mean. Fortunately, we are going to look closely at each of these three ideas and see if they are really as effective as they are said to be.

⚡️ Quick summary

Ethos , pathos , and logos are the three classical modes of persuasion that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. Specifically:

• ethos (character): known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” This is the method in which a person relies on their credibility or character when making an appeal or an argument.
• pathos (emotions): known as “the appeal to emotion.” Pathos refers to the method of trying to persuade an audience by eliciting some kind of emotional reaction.
• logos (logic): known as “the appeal to reason.” This method involves using facts and logical reasoning to support an argument and persuade an audience.

What is ethos ?

The word ethos comes straight from Greek. In Greek, ethos literally translates to “habit,” “custom,” or “character.” Ethos is related to the words ethic and ethical , which are typically used to refer to behavior that is or isn’t acceptable for a particular person.

In rhetoric, the word ethos is used to refer to the character or reputation of the speaker. As a rhetorical appeal, ethos is known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” When it comes to ethos , one important consideration is how the speaker carries themself and how they present themselves to the audience: Does it seem like they know what they are talking about? Do they even believe the words they are saying? Are they an expert? Do they have some experience or skills that tell us we should listen to them?

Ethos is important in rhetoric because it often influences the opinion or mood of the audience. If a speaker seems unenthusiastic, unprepared, or inexperienced, the audience is more likely to discount the speaker’s argument regardless of what it even is. On the other hand, a knowledgeable, authoritative, confident speaker is much more likely to win an audience over.

Ethos often depends on more than just the argument itself. For example, a speaker’s word choice, grammar, and diction also contribute to ethos ; an audience may react more favorably toward a professional speaker who has a good grasp of industry jargon and enunciates clearly versus a speaker who lacks the necessary vocabulary and fails to enunciate. Ethos can also be influenced by nonverbal factors as well, such as posture, body language, eye contact, and even the speaker’s choice of clothing. For example, a military officer proudly wearing their uniform bedecked with medals will go a long way to establishing ethos without them saying a single word.

Here as a simple example of ethos :

• “As a former mayor of this city, I believe we can solve this crisis if we band together.”

The speaker uses ethos by alerting the audience of their credentials and experience. By doing so, they rely on their reputation to be more persuasive. This “as a…” method of establishing ethos is common, and you have probably seen it used in many persuasive advertisements and speeches.

What are open-ended questions and how can you use them effectively? Find out here.

What is pathos ?

In Greek, pathos literally translates to “suffering, experience, or sensation.” The word pathos is related to the words pathetic , sympathy , and empathy , which all have to do with emotions or emotional connections. Aristotle used the word pathos to refer to the emotional impact that an argument had on an audience; this usage is still mainly how pathos is used in rhetoric today.

As a rhetorical appeal, pathos is referred to as “the appeal to emotion.” Generally speaking, an author or speaker is using pathos when they are trying to persuade an audience by causing some kind of emotional reaction. When it comes to pathos , any and all emotions are on the table: sadness, fear, hope, joy, anger, lust, pity, etc.

As you probably know from your own life, emotions are a powerful motivating factor. For this reason, relying on pathos is often a smart and effective strategy for persuading an audience. Both positive and negative emotions can heavily influence an audience: for example, an audience will want to support a speaker whose position will make them happy, a speaker who wants to end their sadness, or a speaker who is opposed to something that makes them angry.

Here is a simple example of pathos :

• “Every day, the rainforests shrink and innocent animals are killed. We must do something about this calamitous trend before the planet we call our home is damaged beyond repair.”

Here, the author is trying to win over an audience by making them feel sad, concerned, or afraid. The author’s choice of words like “innocent” and “calamitous” enforce the fact that they are trying to rely on pathos .

What is logos ?

In Greek, the word logos literally translates to “word, reason, or discourse.” The word logos is related to many different words that have to do with reason, discourse, or knowledge, such as logic , logical , and any words that end in the suffixes -logy or -logue .

As a mode of persuasion and rhetorical appeal, logos is often referred to as “the appeal to reason.” If a speaker or author is relying on logos , they are typically reciting facts or providing data and statistics that support their argument. In a manner of speaking, logos does away with all of the bells and whistles of ethos and pathos and cuts to the chase by trying to present a rational argument.

Logos can be effective in arguments because, in theory, it is impossible to argue against truth and facts. An audience is more likely to agree with a speaker who can provide strong, factual evidence that shows their position is correct. On the flip side, an audience is less likely to support an argument that is flawed or entirely wrong. Going further, a speaker that presents a lot of supporting evidence and data to the audience is likely to come across as knowledgeable and someone to be listened to, which earns bonus points in ethos as well.

While Aristotle clearly valued an argument based on reason very highly, we know that logos alone doesn’t always effectively persuade an audience. In your own life, you have likely seen a rational, correct speaker lose an argument to a charismatic, authoritative speaker who may not have the facts right.

Here is a simple example of logos :

• “According to market research, sales of computer chips have increased by 300% in the last five years. Analysis of the industry tells us that the market share of computer chips is dominated by Asian manufacturers. It is clear that the Asian technology sector will continue to experience rapid growth for the foreseeable future.”

In this paragraph, the author is using data, statistics, and logical reasoning to make their argument. They clearly hope to use logos to try to convince an audience to agree with them.

Do you need persuading to take this quiz on identifying ethos, pathos, and logos? We think you’ll be a champion at it.

Examples of ethos , pathos , and logos

Ethos , pathos , and logos can all be employed to deliver compelling and persuasive arguments or to win over an audience. Let’s look at a variety of examples to see how different speakers and authors have turned to these modes of persuasion over the years.

“Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me […] You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?” —Marc Antony, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

In this scene, Marc Antony is trying to win over the Roman people, so Shakespeare has Antony rely on ethos . Antony is establishing himself as both a person of authority in Rome (having the power to offer Caesar a crown) and an expert on Caesar’s true character (Antony was Caesar’s close friend and advisor).

“During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story , and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.” —Steve Jobs, 2005

Here, Steve Jobs is providing his background–via humblebrag – of being a major figure in several different highly successful tech companies. Jobs is using ethos to provide substance to his words and make it clear to the audience that he knows what he is talking about and they should listen to him.

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“Moreover, though you hate both him and his gifts with all your heart, yet pity the rest of the Achaeans who are being harassed in all their host; they will honour you as a god, and you will earn great glory at their hands. You might even kill Hector; he will come within your reach, for he is infatuated, and declares that not a Danaan whom the ships have brought can hold his own against him.” —Ulysses to Achilles, The Iliad by Homer

In this plea, Ulysses is doing his best to pile on the pathos . In one paragraph, Ulysses is attempting to appeal to several of Achilles’s emotions: his hatred of Hector, his infamous stubborn pride, his sympathy for civilians, and his desire for vengeance.

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest—quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

In this excerpt from his “I Have A Dream” speech, King is using pathos to accomplish two goals at once. First, he is connecting with his audience by making it clear is aware of their plight and suffering. Second, he is citing these examples to cause sadness or outrage in the audience. Both of these effects will make an audience interested in what he has to say and more likely to support his position.

Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech is recognizable and noteworthy for many reasons, including the rhetorical device he employs. Learn about it here.

“Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would have free scope for the work of improvement.” —Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species , 1859

In this passage, Darwin is using logos by presenting a rational argument in support of natural selection. Darwin connects natural selection to established scientific knowledge to argue that it makes logical sense that animals would adapt to better survive in their environment.

“I often echo the point made by the climate scientist James Hansen: The accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases—some of which will envelop the planet for hundreds and possibly thousands of years—is now trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs would release every 24 hours. This is the crisis we face.” —Al Gore, “The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win,” 2019

In this call to action, Al Gore uses logos to attempt to convince his audience of the significance of climate change. In order to do this, Gore both cites an expert in the field and provides a scientifically accurate simile to explain the scale of the effect that greenhouse gases have on Earth’s atmosphere.

What are mythos and kairos ?

Some modern scholars may also use terms mythos and kairos when discussing modes of persuasion or rhetoric in general.

Aristotle used the term mythos to refer to the plot or story structure of Greek tragedies, i.e., how a playwright ordered the events of the story to affect the audience. Today, mythos is most often discussed as a literary or poetic term rather than a rhetorical one. However, mythos may rarely be referred to as the “appeal to culture” or the “appeal to myth” if it is treated as an additional mode of persuasion. According to this viewpoint, a speaker/writer is using mythos if they try to persuade an audience using shared cultural customs or societal values.

A commonly cited example of mythos is King’s “I Have a Dream” speech quoted earlier. King says:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable rights’ of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”

Throughout the speech, King repeatedly uses American symbols and American history ( mythos ) to argue that all Americans should be outraged that Black Americans have been denied freedom and civil rights.

Some modern scholars may also consider kairos as an additional mode of persuasion. Kairos is usually defined as referring to the specific time and place that a speaker chooses to deliver their speech. For written rhetoric, the “place” instead refers to the specific medium or publication in which a piece of writing appears.

Unlike the other modes of persuasion, kairos relates to the context of a speech and how the appropriateness (or not) of a setting affects how effective a speaker is. Once again, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a great example of the use of kairos . This speech was delivered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Clearly, King intended to use kairos to enhance the importance and timeliness of this landmark speech.

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Have you ever struggled to persuade others to see your point of view? Do you find it challenging to convey your ideas effectively, whether in writing or speaking?

As a student, communication skills are crucial for your academic success and personal growth. However, simply stating your arguments may not be enough to convince others. You need to appeal to their emotions, logic, and credibility to create persuasive messages.

That's where ethos, pathos, and logos come in!

These three elements of communication can help you establish credibility, appeal to emotions, and make logical arguments. In this blog, we will explore the importance of ethos, pathos, and logos in effective communication. We will provide you with practical examples and tips to help you implement these principles in your own communication. 

So, let's dive in and discover the power of ethos, pathos, and logos!

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The Concept of Ethos

Ethos is the Greek word for "character ”. It is a rhetorical appeal that refers to the credibility and trustworthiness of the speaker or writer. 

Ethos is a critical element of effective communication, as it helps the audience to trust and believe the message being conveyed. 

How To Establish Ethos In Your Communication

Establishing ethos in your communication is essential, whether you are giving a presentation, writing an essay, or engaging in a debate. 

To establish ethos, you need to do the following:

• Demonstrate your expertise: Provide evidence that you are knowledgeable about the subject matter you are discussing. This could include citing sources, sharing your qualifications or experience, or referencing your previous work on the topic.
• Show your trustworthiness: Be transparent and honest in your communication. Avoid exaggerating or distorting information, and admit when you are unsure about something.
• Be respectful: Treat your audience with respect and avoid insulting or belittling them.

Elements of Ethos 

The three elements of ethos are phronesis, arete, and eunoia.

• Phronesis: It refers to practical wisdom or practical intelligence. It is the ability to demonstrate sound judgment, practical knowledge, and expertise in a particular field. Phronesis helps establish credibility by showcasing competence and expertise.
• Arete: Arete is often translated as "excellence" or "virtue." It refers to the character, integrity, and moral goodness of the speaker or writer. Speakers or writers with arete gain the audience's trust, enhancing the persuasive power of their message.
• Eunoia: It is the goodwill or benevolence displayed by the speaker or writer toward the audience. It involves the ability to show empathy, understanding, and concern for the well-being and interests of the audience. Eunoia can be conveyed through language, tone, gestures, and other non-verbal cues, making the audience feel valued.

Examples of Ethos in Communication

Here are examples of ethos in two different contexts:

Example# 1: Political Speech

In a political speech, a candidate may establish their credibility by referencing their experience in public service, accomplishments, and education. 

For example, a candidate might say,

Example# 2: Marketing

In marketing, a company may use ethos to establish credibility and trustworthiness with its customers. For example, a company that sells natural and organic skincare products might use the tagline,

The company uses ethos in its marketing by highlighting the endorsement of dermatologists and the loyalty of its customers. This approach appeals to consumers who value natural and safe skincare products.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Ethos

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when using ethos in communication:

• Using irrelevant or unreliable sources to back up your arguments.
• Overemphasizing your own qualifications or expertise to the point of appearing arrogant.
• Failing to address counterarguments or alternative perspectives.
• Providing false information or distorting facts.
• Insulting or belittling your audience.

Want to learn about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in a fun way? Watch this video!

The Concept of Pathos

Pathos is a rhetorical device that involves the use of emotional appeals to persuade an audience. It is one of the three modes of persuasion identified by Aristotle, alongside ethos and logos. 

Pathos is about connecting with your audience on an emotional level, appealing to their values, desires, fears, and hopes. Effective use of pathos can be a powerful tool for communication because it can engage the audience and elicit a response.

Some of the most common emotions that pathos appeals to include: love, fear, anger, pity, joy, and sadness. 

How To Use Pathos Effectively in Your Communication 

To use pathos effectively in your communication, consider the following tips:

• Know your audience: Understand the emotions, values, and beliefs of your audience to tailor your message to them.
• Use vivid language and imagery: It creates a visual image in the audience's mind to make your message more memorable.
• Tell stories: Stories are a powerful way to evoke emotions and create empathy. Use anecdotes and narratives that illustrate your point and appeal to your audience's emotions.
• Use humor: Humor can be an effective way to create a positive emotional connection with your audience.
• Be sincere: Authenticity is key when using pathos. Avoid manipulating emotions or using insincere tactics to elicit an emotional response.
• Use appropriate emotions: Be mindful of the emotions you are appealing to and make sure they are appropriate for the message.
• Combine pathos with logos and ethos: Pathos is most effective when used in conjunction with logical reasoning and ethical appeals.

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Examples of Pathos in Communication

Here are two examples of pathos in communication:

Example# 1: Speech About Climate Change

Here, the speaker uses pathos by appealing to the audience's emotions about their children and the future of the planet. The emotional appeal is reinforced by the personal anecdote of looking into his daughter's eyes.

Example# 2: Speech About Overcoming Adversity

Here the speaker uses pathos by appealing to the audience's emotions about overcoming adversity and achieving success. The emotional appeal is reinforced by the personal anecdote of the speaker's own struggle with a learning disability.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Pathos

Let’s take a look at some common mistakes to avoid when using pathos:

• Overusing emotions to manipulate the audience.
• Using inappropriate emotions for the audience or message.
• Ignoring or downplaying logical or ethical appeals.
• Failing to back up emotional appeals with evidence or support.
• Using too many emotional appeals, which can weaken the overall impact.
• Using clichéd or overused emotional appeals.
• Being insincere or fake when trying to appeal to emotions.

The Concept of Logos

Logos is a Greek word that means ‘plan’ or ‘reason.’ It is the use of logic, reasoning, and evidence to support an argument or message. It establishes credibility and reliability by presenting a well-reasoned and logical argument.

Logos is particularly important in academic or professional contexts, where accuracy, precision, and objectivity are valued. It can also be used effectively in marketing messages that rely on data, statistics, or other evidence to support claims.

How To Use Logos Effectively in Your Communication 

Here is how to use logos in your communication:

Do your research: Thoroughly research your topic and gather relevant data and statistics to support your argument. Use clear and concise language: Use language that is easy to understand and avoid technical jargon or overly complicated terminology. Use visual aids: Charts, graphs, and other visual aids can help to illustrate your points and make your argument more persuasive. Appeal to common sense: Use logical reasoning and appeal to common sense to support your argument. Anticipate counterarguments: Consider potential counterarguments to your position and address them in your communication. Be honest and transparent: Use accurate and truthful information, and be transparent about your sources and methodology.

Examples of Logos in Communication

Let’s check examples of logos in communication:

Example# 1:

Here, the speaker is using a statistic from a credible source to support the argument that regular exercise is important for good health.

Example# 2:

In this example, the speaker is using market data to support the argument that investing in renewable energy is a smart decision.

Mistakes to Avoid when Using Logos

To be effective in using logos, it's important to avoid certain mistakes.

• Failing to use credible sources or using outdated information.
• Ignoring counterarguments or failing to address potential weaknesses in your argument.
• Overloading the audience with too much data or technical jargon that they may not understand.
• Using faulty or illogical reasoning, such as drawing false conclusions or making unwarranted assumptions.
• Failing to connect with the audience on an emotional level, as logos alone may not always be persuasive enough.
• Ignoring the context or audience, such as using data or evidence that may not be relevant or persuasive to them.

Comparison of Rhetorical Appeals: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Here is a comparison table of the three main rhetorical appeals:

Gain a comprehensive understanding by exploring our blog on rhetorical analysis essays !

Ethos, Pathos, Logos Examples

The following are some ethos, logos, and pathos examples to help you make your content convincing.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Advertising

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos Worksheet

Ethos, Pathos Logos Identifier

To summarize,  Understanding ethos, pathos, and logos is crucial in creating an effective and persuasive essay. These three elements can greatly influence your audience's perception and engagement with your writing. 

We hope this guide has provided you with a clear understanding of these concepts and how to incorporate them into your own writing.

Navigate your college journey with ease using our college paper writing service , where academic excellence is always the priority. Specializing in analytical essay writing services , we bring a critical and insightful approach to your papers, ensuring they stand out in both content and quality.

For an additional boost, explore the capabilities of our essay writer AI , a state-of-the-art tool designed to enhance and perfect your writing

Frequently Asked Questions

What are ethos, pathos, and logos called.

Ethos, pathos, and logos are commonly referred to as rhetorical appeals.

What are the four components of ethos?

Below are the four components of ethos.

• Similarity to the audience
• Trustworthiness

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Different Types Of Persuasive Writing

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Updated: May 6, 2024

Have you ever found yourself needing to write an essay where you convince the reader of your point of view? Then, persuasive writing is what you need!

A persuasive essay or text aims to convince the person reading your words that a particular point is correct. It’s one of the oldest forms of writing and has been used in politics, business, and religion over the years.

Despite there being different types of persuasive writing, they all have one thing in common: allowing the reader to understand (and believe) the writer’s position on any given matter.

But, there is a time and a place for each type, and you need to know when to choose which one to achieve your goals.

Read on to learn more about the three main techniques used for persuasive writing and how to hone your writing skills to have people believe your point of view.

What Is Persuasive Writing?

Persuasive writing is any text that convinces the reader of the writer’s opinion.

There are different techniques and types, which will be discussed later, but each is intended for a specific context and purpose.

For example, if you are trying to get an extension on your essay deadline, you will write an email with a formal tone of voice to your professor. If you’re convincing your roommate to go grab a drink, your text will be far more informal.

You may not even notice it, but persuasive writing is all around us – in the media, in advertisements, in the news, and on social media.

No matter your purpose or context, all persuasive writing has the following in common:

• Evidence to back your claims
• Appealing to the reader’s emotion
• Logical arguments

Why Is Persuasive Writing Important?

Whether you’re a high school student or new to the working world, persuasive writing is an invaluable skill to have in your toolkit.

You may have to write convincing and/or persuasive essays for school to score top marks, or you have to write a convincing cover letter to go with your resume to get the job of your dreams.

But it’s more than that. Knowing how to write in a way to convince others of your personal opinion is a good way to sharpen your writing and negotiation skills. It teaches you how to research, fact-check, and construct concise and clear arguments – tools you can use your entire life.

If you end up in marketing or content writing one day, it is a good tool to have in your writing arsenal. But even if you turn towards charity work, you can use your persuasive writing skills to get donations and rally people to your cause.

3 Types Of Persuasive Writing Techniques

There are three main types of persuasive writing techniques, dating back to ancient Greece. These are:

The Greek philosopher Aristotle coined these terms back in the day, but they are still very applicable today when it comes to argumentative essays or any kind of text that needs to convince the reader.

Most persuasive writing examples use a variety of these techniques, as the combination of them strengthens your arguments.

“Ethos” is the Greek word for “character.” This technique uses writing that appeals to the reader’s character and virtues. For that reason, this style of writing is also called “ personal appeal. ”

This kind of writing plays on the reader’s sense of right and wrong. The writer establishes themselves as a trustworthy and knowledgeable character, and because of that, the readers will agree with what they have to say.

Some examples of ethos writing include:

• “My family has been farming in Texas for four generations, and I’ve been working in food production for 25 years. So, trust me when I say that we need to avoid genetically modified produce.”
• “I spent my entire childhood and most of my teenage years in Eureka Springs. I know most of you from school. Please, listen to me when I say: we need to put money towards restoring the Winona Springs Church – you all know it’s the right thing to do.”

Pathos means either “suffering” or “experience” in Greek. This type of writing targets the emotions of the reader, which is why it’s also called “ emotional appeal. ”

The goal of this type of writing is to trigger an emotional response in the reader, which causes them to trust what you have to say.

You can influence readers by eliciting a variety of emotions, including:

Here are some examples of how you can use the pathos technique in persuasive essays:

• “Are you really willing to stand by and watch as millions of unwanted dogs in the Humane Society shelters are euthanized each year?”
• “Business owners say Gen Z is scared to work, but the real reason is that they’re not paying their staff fair wages.”

“Logos” is the origin of the word “logic”. This technique is also called “ logical appeal. “It is mainly focused on logical arguments, presenting facts to convince the reader that you are speaking the undeniable truth.

Each statement that is written is backed up by facts, enhancing the writer’s credibility.

It’s possible that a writer may twist facts to fit in with their narrative, but many readers can spot this manipulative style of writing.

Some examples of the logos technique are:

• “If you know nicotine is bad for your health, why are you still grabbing your vape as soon as you wake up?”
• “Passenger cars emitted 374.2 million metric tons of CO2 in 2021. If we truly want to slow down climate change, we need to skip the short car trips to the store and walk instead.”

Bonus technique: Kairos

So, this technique wasn’t grouped by Aristotle with the three discussed above. However, he did believe that this was a fourth way to persuade readers to see your point of view.

Kairos means “the opportune moment.” To use this technique, the writer or speaker must create (or take advantage of) the perfect moment to deliver their message.

As an example: after a major storm in the U.S. Virgin Islands, human rights charities in the area may have more success in raising funds for their causes as they can appeal to people’s emotions.

As you can see, this example combines kairos and pathos.

Persuasive Writing Examples

As is evident from the above, persuasive writing can take many forms. Although the main goal is always to influence readers, the applications of persuasive texts are vast.

Below are just some examples of where you might use persuasive writing:

1. Persuasive essays

In persuasive essays – also called argumentative essays – the writer makes a specific claim about a topic and then uses facts and evidential data to drive the point home.

A persuasive essay aims to convince the reader that the writer is correct and that the evidence can’t be disputed in any way.

This type of persuasive writing requires a lot of research and fact-checking from the writer – it’s about more than just their opinion.

Examples of an argumentative essay include:

• School essay
• Thesis statement

2. Opinion pieces

An opinion piece is just the thing you need if you have strong feelings about a certain topic and want to express your views with the hope of convincing others. These are less focused on facts and instead play on the reader’s emotions.

Examples of opinion pieces include:

3. Cover letters

The job market is tough. Hundreds of applicants are vying for the same position. A convincing cover letter and job application can really make you stand out from the crowd. Using persuasive writing in cover letters can help you sell yourself to the recruiter, convincing them that you’re the only one for the job.

Reviews are typically opinion-based, but they can still make use of ethos, pathos, and logos to convince the reader of your opinion.

Say, for example, you are writing a book review on The Hobbit for school. Here are some ways in which you can adopt the three main techniques mentioned above:

• Ethos: “I’ve devoured dozens of fantasy novels, and I believe that J.R.R. Tolkien’s world-building in The Hobbit is the best. He is able to create detailed imaginary worlds like no other writer.”
• Pathos: “The journey of Bilbo Baggins filled me with a sense of wonder and excitement, reminding me of the magic of friendship and having a keen sense of adventure.”
• Logos: “Tolkein’s use of detailed maps and a sensible timeline makes the story of Bilbo Baggins much more believable, as it lends a sense of logic to a fantasy realm.”

How To Excel At Persuasive Writing

Do you want to become a pro at persuasive writing? Learn by doing!

Here are some tips on how to develop your persuasive writing skills. Follow these pointers, and you’ll hone your skills enough to convince a night owl to become an early bird (with enough practice).

1. Conduct thorough research

Humans are emotional beings, but appealing to emotions alone just isn’t enough at times.

If your readers are analytical, they might not respond to emotional writing. That’s why you need to back up your persuasive writing with cold, hard facts.

Plus, having indisputable proof to substantiate your claims makes you seem a lot more trustworthy. By providing stats, facts, case studies, and references, readers will believe your words to be true.

Of course, you need to write your facts and evidence in your own words to avoid plagiarism. Smodin’s AI Paraphrasing Tool can help you write evidence-based text in your own writing style.

2. Be empathetic

Sometimes, all anyone wants is to feel heard and understood. You can provide your readers with this understanding by addressing, and relating to, their pain points. If you can offer them a solution to their problems, that’s even better!

Showing empathy allows you to identify with your readers. They need to know that you understand them. Only then will they realize that what you say truly matters.

If you show you can relate, and that you can help your audience, they’ll be more inclined to trust your solutions.

3. Use tools to help you write

Sitting down and writing an argumentative or persuasive essay or speech from scratch can be very daunting. Writer’s block is real, and sometimes you may have strong opinions but struggle to formulate your words.

There are plenty of tools on the market, but none are as effective in helping you write persuasive essays as Smodin’s AI Writer and Advanced AI Essay Writer.

The AI Writer can help you write shorter texts and sprinkle some persuasive writing into your work, for example. The smart AI technology can even cite your references to add to your credibility.

The Advanced AI Essay Writer is specifically for helping you craft persuasive essays from scratch. It’s so simple, all you have to do is give the tool five words and it will begin to write a powerful, structured essay.

But of course, writing a persuasive essay with AI is not always ideal, especially if your institution uses AI detection tools. The good news is that Smodin has a solution for you: the Smodin AI Detection Remover .

4. Make use of rhetorical questions

One surefire way to grab your reader’s attention is to use rhetorical questions. These questions don’t require answers, but they are thought-provoking. They’re used to make a point (either negative or positive) and will keep your audience hooked.

Here are some examples:

• “How can we expect to progress as a society if we can’t take care of our homeless?”
• “What’s the point of technological advancement if we lose touch with our cultural heritage?”
• “How can we expect positive changes if we’re not willing to stand up for what we believe in?”

5. Repeat yourself

Repetition is a great tool in persuasive writing. By using this technique strategically, you can emphasize your key points while adding value to your argumentative essay.

You can tell stories, paraphrase what someone else said, or use metaphors to bring your point across.

In other words, you’re repeating the same opinion, without becoming redundant.

6. Choose your words carefully

No matter the kind of persuasive content you’re producing, you need to understand your audience.

There’s no point in writing in Elvish if your audience has never read Lord of the Rings!

It depends on the context, but usually, colloquial language is best for persuasive writing. It allows your audience to relate to you (and not make them feel like you’re better than them).

You’ll also want to avoid jargon or technical terms that not everyone will understand. Rather write inclusively, keeping your target audience in mind.

7. Adapt your tone of voice

A persuasive essay for college will have a different tone of voice than political speeches delivered by world leaders.

There isn’t one tone that works for all persuasive texts. Instead, it depends on the context and the readers. The tone you use goes hand in hand with your vocabulary, and can be:

• Professional
• Authoritative
• Encouraging

Can I use persuasive writing in everyday life?

Absolutely! It’s not just about school essays and oral presentations. Persuasive writing and speaking can be used in discussions, cover letters, and texts to your friends… even if you just want to convince them to watch a movie with you.

How can I balance pathos and logos in persuasive writing?

Finding the balance between an emotional and logical appeal is key to your success. First, you need to understand your audience. This will allow you to appeal to their emotions. Then, you can reinforce your emotional triggers with well-researched facts and sound logic.

Wrapping Up

It is clear that persuasive writing is a very powerful skill to have. It can be used in various contexts, helping you to convince the reader about certain issues. Whether you simply want to bring your point across or motivate readers to take action, persuasive writing can help you achieve these goals.

The key to persuasive writing is understanding who your audience is. You need to tailor your words to relate to them.

Fortunately, Smodin offers a whole suite of tools to facilitate your writing process. Smodin can save you a lot of time, stress, and pre-essay tears as it assists you in writing compelling, hassle-free persuasive content.

• From the President

‘Your Values Will Help You Decide What to Do’

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Commencement 2024 in Photos

‘Unbridled Admiration for This University’

A Conversation with Life Trustee Ezra Cornell ’70, BS ’71

At her final Commencement, Pollack reflects on the University’s founding principles—and urges grads to use what they’ve learned

By Martha E. Pollack

When you’re a student at Cornell, the end of a semester means showing what you’ve learned through papers, projects, and exams. Commencement, usually, comes only once.

But when you’re the president of Cornell, the end of a semester always means Commencement, whether for our December graduates in Barton, or our May graduates here in Schoellkopf. Over the last seven years and two months that I’ve been president, that’s added up to 15 Commencements, and 15 Commencement speeches.

At every one, I’ve tried to share something from what I’ve learned in my time as an educator and administrator: some lesson, some advice, something for the graduates to take with them as they head off to whatever comes next.

And I’ve been at enough Commencements in my life, here at Cornell and elsewhere, to know that graduates have a lot on their minds, and aren’t necessarily functioning at peak attention level.

So I’ve tried to keep the messages easy to remember.

I’ve told past classes of Cornellians to read. To be kind. To choose courage over comfort.

The nature of Commencement is such that I never really know what anyone remembers—unlike the experience of speaking at New Student Convocation in 2019, where I told the incoming students to be open to new experiences by taking off their headphones. I know that one sank in to at least some of them, because for years after that I’d pass students on campus who would see me, point at their ears, and say, “Look President Pollack, no headphones!”

This is my last Commencement. There’s no paper, project, or exam that’s required to complete a term as president. There’s just this speech, and the chance to share some lessons and maybe a little advice.

I gave my first Cornell commencement speech in the spring of 2017, when I’d been here for just six weeks. I quoted from Daniel Fried ’74, BA ’75, a career diplomat whose career spanned six presidents, and events that seemed unthinkable when he graduated Cornell: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the election of America’s first Black president.

Looking back on his career, Fried wrote, “I learned never to underestimate the possibility of change, that values have power, and that time and patience can pay off, especially if you are serious about your objectives.”

So I urged the graduates of the Class of 2017 to begin their careers by clarifying their values.

Clarifying our values is something we, the Cornell community, did together, through a process that took place just before most of you arrived in Ithaca—discerning together, across our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, what defined the Cornell ethos, and what it meant to be a Cornellian.

We arrived at six core values : purposeful discovery; free and open inquiry and expression; a community of belonging; exploration across boundaries; changing lives through public engagement; and respect for the natural environment.

Clarifying our values is something we did together—discerning what defined the Cornell ethos, and what it meant to be a Cornellian.

When we started that process, a lot of people asked me—most of them nicely—why defining our shared values mattered. What were we going to do with that statement of values, once we had it?

I answered: we’re going to use it. And we have. But I had no idea, back then, how often we’d use it, and how critically important it would be in the years ahead.

That statement of core values has been vital to me, as we’ve navigated the intensity and complexity of these past years: from a global pandemic to a national racial reckoning; through an increasingly divisive political culture, and the reverberating impacts of an ongoing war.

Clear values are a north star, in life and in leadership: casting light on complex situations, and guiding your decisions when the way forward is anything but obvious.

But just as a clear set of values will help you to navigate your lives, you’ll also, throughout your lives, need to navigate your values.

Because deeply felt values can come into tension with each other—and indeed, in any full and richly lived life, they will.

And when that happens, we can do one of two things. We can choose to let one value give way wholly to another, or we can do the hard work of managing that tension—seeking a balance that honors both values to the fullest extent possible.

At a personal level, finding ways to balance our values is something we do every day. You value your health and want to work out more, but on weekdays, it’s either time at the gym, or dinner with your family. You’re deeply concerned about carbon emissions—but you work in a field where you have to travel. You have a friend whose relationship you value dearly, but who has acted toward a third person in a way that you think was unfair.

Deeply felt values can come into tension with each other—and indeed, in any full and richly lived life, they will.

In every case, your values will help you decide what to do. But in the end, the one who has to make the decision, who has to choose how to balance your values, is you.

Because human lives and choices are inherently complex. And what is complex at the individual level is exponentially more so at the level of institutions and organizations.

Throughout your time here, and especially over the past seven months, we’ve seen two of our core Cornell values—free and open inquiry and expression, and being a community of belonging—come into tension, here in Ithaca and on campuses across the country. And we’ve had to confront that tension, and all the questions it brings.

Where should one value end, and another begin? When and how should one person’s right to freely share their opinions—to advocate, argue, protest—yield to another’s right to go peacefully about their work, to feel a sense of belonging? When does the desire to feel safe and comfortable need to give way to the educational imperative of being challenged by new and different ideas?

Part of our responsibility, as a university, is demonstrating how to hold these two values together, even when they are in tension: finding ways to honor both, even when we cannot do so absolutely; deploying all the tools available to us as scholars to find the compromises and the solutions that are, while imperfect, the best available.

Because holding these two values together lies at the heart of the radical vision that Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White conceived in the waning days of the American Civil War—a vision of a new kind of university; where no student would be excluded because of their sex or race or nationality, and no field of study would be out of bounds.

In 1865, this idea was seen as dangerous, offensive, and even heretical: an ill-advised experiment doomed to fail.

But it was precisely that dual commitment to any person and any study—to not only tolerating, but valuing diversity, in individuals and ideas—that made our university, and the model it set, possible: a model on which the major research university, as we know it today, is based.

It was precisely that dual commitment to any person and any study that made our university, and the model it set, possible.

One hundred and fifty-nine years later, those two values—of freedom of expression and being a community of belonging—are still, in different ways, under threat.

Universities are being criticized for doing too much to make our communities more welcoming and diverse, or for not doing enough; for doing too little to protect speech, or too little to curtail it—or, just as often, for protecting or curtailing the wrong kinds of speech.

Finding solutions to the tensions inherent in free speech is something our nation has grappled with since the First Amendment was enshrined into law. Generations of courts and legislators, schools and universities, and all of us here at Cornell this year, have wrestled with the fundamental contradictions of this fundamental right.

And a conundrum that has defied simple solutions for hundreds of years will not yield to them in the complex moment we inhabit now.

If we curtail speech on the basis of its content, then we head down a dangerous path—of handing over to others the right to decide what we can and cannot say, hear, learn, or know. That is something that we, as an institution dedicated to discovering, pursuing, and disseminating knowledge, can never accept.

So we seek other paths forward. We call out speech that is offensive. We speak up in defense of those it affects. We draw a line between speech that expresses ideas, and speech that crosses into threats or unlawful harassment.

If we curtail speech on the basis of its content, then we head down a dangerous path.

And we put into place policies that, however unpopular, are content-neutral, designed to protect the health and safety of our community, and ensure that our teaching and learning can proceed without undue disruption.

One of my favorite stories of Cornell’s early years involves our first president, Andrew Dickson White, who wrote a letter in 1874 responding to a question about whether Black students would be welcome at Cornell, and whether he was concerned about backlash. President White’s response was that the University would be “very glad to receive any who are prepared to enter ... even if all our 500 white students were to ask for dismissal on that account.”

There are moments like those when the University must demonstrate its commitment to its cherished values: even when they are in tension with each other, even when members of our community disagree on the right path forward, even in the face of great political and financial risk.

We are at such a moment now: a moment where we must be an institution that first and foremost seeks academic excellence; that upholds the highest level of commitment to free and open expression; that stands firmly and clearly against all forms of hatred and bigotry; and that strives always to create a community of belonging, where any person can find instruction in any study.

I have been in higher education, as a student, a researcher, a faculty member, and an administrator, for nearly half a century, and I want to tell you that there has never been a more critical moment for our universities than there is today.

We are facing gale-force political winds, and a sped-up political culture that moves from outrage to outrage with no space for reasoned discourse, consideration, or debate. We need to push back against that with clarity and resolve, with intellectual humility, and with an openness to always improving to meet the moment.

Higher education—with its culture that demands evidence and reasoned argument, and a commitment to truth—is a bulwark against the threats of authoritarianism faced by our nation and the world. And it is critical that we continue to educate students in ways that enable them to foster our free and democratic way of life, and to advance our society.

We are facing gale-force political winds, and a sped-up political culture that moves from outrage to outrage with no space for reasoned discourse, consideration, or debate.

The work of the University—the work of Cornell—has an impact that reverberates across nations and generations.

It continues on in the lives of our graduates—generation after generation of Cornellians, who bring our Cornell ethos, and our Cornell values, out into the world with them.

Graduates, as you and I end our time here together, and head out on our next adventures, I want to give you the same advice I gave at my first Cornell Commencement address, seven years ago.

Live a value-driven life. Think hard about your values: know what matters to you, and what will help you become the person you want to be. Whatever values are yours, make them your north star.

And remember that as much as your values will help you in your life, they’ll also challenge you. When they do, use the skills and the habits of mind you’ve learned here: the ability to see different perspectives, to deploy evidence and reason; to understand that sometimes, we can hold two truths in tension, and also hold them in balance.

Graduates, congratulations. Cornell will always be a part of all of us, just as we will always be a part of Cornell.

All images by Cornell University photographers Sreang Hok, Jason Koski, and Ryan Young .

Published June 4, 2024

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In the past, the g.o.p. could’ve prevented a candidate like donald trump from running. but daniel schlozman and sam rosenfeld argue the party structure has been “hollowed out” over the years..

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

For all that Donald Trump’s politics are soaked in nostalgia, his political career could only exist right now. That’s partly because of the media forms that led to his 2016 campaign. He is a creation of modern reality television. That really flowers in the ‘90s. He joins with “The Apprentice” in 2004. He’s a creation of Twitter, which launches in 2006. He joins in 2009.

Donald Trump, celebrity candidate — people know that story. But at most points in American history, he still couldn’t have succeeded. Even if Trump had all that notoriety, all that money, he never could have become a major party’s nominee for president because the party would have stopped him. That would have been its job. Until the 1970s, there was one way, and one way only, to win a presidential nomination.

He had to win delegates at the convention. And you actually had to win them. They didn’t walk into the convention committed to vote for you. Delegates were members of the party, party regulars, party politicians. They were gatekeepers. And over and over and over again in American history, they locked the gates against people like Donald Trump.

But by the time Trump ran in 2016, those days were over. There were no gatekeepers at the convention. There was no gate. If you won the primaries, you won. That change in rules reflected something larger, a hollowing out of what political parties were, a collapse in the legitimacy of what they once did. Americans, we’ve never liked parties. George Washington’s farewell address was a lengthy warning against their predations.

He said, quote, “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual.”

So that’s an argument that parties create so much disunion, so much dissension, so much fury that eventually, they lead to a despot, a monarch, a strongman. There’s obviously a feeling of prescience in that now. But in an important way here, Washington was wrong. The founders were wrong. Their arguments against parties were, at the very least, unrealistic.

Washington warned that parties bring disunity. But the disunity, it’s already there. Parties, when they work, what they do is they make disunity manageable. They turn political conflict into politics. It’s when they fail that political conflict becomes violence or collapse.

The Republican Party is failing. Donald Trump is not a uniquely dangerous person. A few years ago, he was a comic figure in American life. He was of interest to tabloids and television executives who might want him for a Comedy Central roast. Donald Trump is dangerous now because he’s taken over the Republican Party. It’s his control over a political party that controls the Supreme Court, that controls the House of Representatives, that controls dozens of governorships and statehouses and so many local election boards.

That he has been able to bend that party, and through it so many of those institutions, to his will, That is what makes him dangerous. That, in March, he installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to run that party, that is what makes him dangerous. That he could ride the Republican Party’s support and money and supporters and ballot access back to the White House, that is what makes him dangerous.

That is why he matters. The problem is not Donald Trump. The problem is the Republican Party. It always has been. But how did the Republican Party get so weak that he could take it over? That’s not a story that begins in 2016 or 2015. It’s a story that begins decades ago. It’s a story that the political scientist Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld tell in their new book, “The Hollow Parties: The Many Paths and Disordered Present of American Party Politics.”

We happen to have our interview fall on the morning after Donald Trump’s conviction as virtually every major figure in Republican Party politics was lining up to defend him. We really couldn’t have picked a better day to talk. As always, my email — [email protected].

Sam Rosenfeld, Daniel Schlozman, welcome to the show.

Great to be here.

So we’re talking here the day after Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts in the hush money trial. This is, excitingly, only one of the four trials he is facing. So let me start by asking a question that I know the answer to, not how I normally try to begin. Will the Republican Party replace him on the ticket, Sam?

Ooh, I got that one. No.

To the extent that in 2016, the “Access Hollywood” tape provided a moment of seemingly contingent point in which elites could have made one move or another to coordinate around Trump, eight years later, we are far, far down a line of development where you saw every single Republican leader from Congress, from statehouses, line up yesterday, articulating the notion that this is, just as Trump says, in fact, aping more and more the language and rhetoric of Trump himself, that this is the work of a cabal out there of them that are after your leader. And if they can go after your leader, they can go after you. And they’ve been absolutely uniform in that position.

Let me ask you the same question, Daniel. I mean, there’s some way in which what is a party for, if not before a convention has even happened, to replace a candidate who is both relatively unpopular and is now under criminal conviction?

That would require that the party, apart from its leader, if we can call Donald Trump that, and I think he certainly thinks of himself that way, and most Republicans think of him that way, to exercise collective capacity to do that. And they haven’t done that in 2016. There’s no reason, as Sam just said, that having made all those choices — and as we’ll talk about having reached a point where he was even nominated, that the party got to the point where he would be the nominee — that magically now so very, very, very long into this process that that would happen.

You all are party scholars. What did you think when you saw Lara Trump get elected as R.N.C. chair in March?

It was part and parcel of the 2020 decision by the Republicans to just not have a party platform. They just copied and pasted what they that from 2016 and then said, what Trump would like is what we stand for. A party platform passed by quadrennial conventions, for a long time people make a punchline out of how meaningless it is or how much it doesn’t bind anybody. That’s a perennial problem with American parties.

But that is a perennial thing that dates back to the 1830s. It is a truly venerable institution. And they just got rid of it. It’s a very short step from that kind of dissolving of all the attributes of parties as actual organizations that go beyond an individual to become something entirely personalized, and at this point, patrimonialized around his literal family.

You have a quote in the book from William Rusher, the longtime publisher of The National Review. And he says — and this is decades ago — “Conservatism is the wine. The G.O.P. is the bottle.”

Now, it feels like Trumpism is the wine, or, I don’t know, the moonshine, the bleach, the something. And the G.O.P. is the bottle. For people who have grown up in modern party politics, the idea that the party would be anything but the bottle for whoever is in charge of it.

I mean, I would say the Democratic Party was more or less the bottle into which Barack Obama poured his presidency. I would say that that was not untrue for George W. Bush. What would it look like, what did it look like — because this is a big part of your book, Sam — what did it look like when parties were more than a bottle?

There was an ethos, a principle articulated explicitly going back to Martin Van Buren and the other architects of the first mass political party in the world in the 1820s and 1830s, the Jacksonian Democratic Party, that they served this really important value. And Van Buren saw party as protecting the Constitution, protecting Jefferson’s vision of the country from strongmen and demagogues.

They articulated the idea that parties subsume individual ambition, that you commit to the party and to the cause, never to the man. That’s what inculcates a lot of discipline, a lot of the attributes of the 19th century party model that fall under a lot of strain by the 20th century. But it’s in part a principle that political scientists tend to try and instill in students, with varying success, and to other normal people out in the world, that there’s something about political parties that is valuable in and of themselves as an essential mediating institution between atomized individuals and the government, and that you actually want to protect and strengthen that form above and beyond whatever particular ideology or particular leader happens to be at a given moment.

Let me hold on that quote for a second — the party and the cause, not the man, because it gets at something that was on my mind reading the book, which is this question of what gives a party meaning. You hear in that two things, the cause. So, I mean, I think most people now think of the Democratic Party as a liberal party. Republicans are theoretically conservative, maybe a little less obviously ideological right now.

Then there’s the party, the people in it. I think we understand this as machine politics or somewhat corrupt, people there who want to get something out of being part of the party. They work for it. They get some kickbacks from it, or they get a job from it, patronage. Early on, patronage was a very important part of parties.

You can imagine constituencies as one of them. Parties are an organizer of different groups into coalitions. And because we have a two-party system, you need to do that. So it’s really about the coalitional groups in them. I think that has felt true on the Democratic side. What are the sources of meaning are there for parties? And at what points have different ones been dominant?

Part of the argument we make is that there are profound variation in party formations across American history, and it’s kind of irreducibly historically contingent. So there’s not one thing that we say is party organization and you see it all across, and that there’s always this bottle, and then it just depends on what kind of ideas you pour in as the wine.

In fact, form and substance are inextricably linked. And one of the things we talk about is different party formations at different times have different what we call privileged partisan actors. Sometimes they are the kind of party activists you’re mobilizing through patronage, and that’s the quintessential machine politics. Other times, you have much more —

You have a great quote. I just want to stop for a minute because I love this quote from the book, where somebody from Tammany Hall is basically saying about him and a guy in the opposite machine, he’s like, look, we disagree on everything, but we agree that if you work in politics, you should get something for it.

Yeah, exactly.

George Washington Plunkitt.

Other times, there was the short-lived Progressive Party, state-level reformists, postwar Democratic parties in the North. Policy-oriented, issue-driven activists actually have a real driving force. The McGovern-Fraser reformers had a vision of social movements as much more permeable and influencing parties, but giving them strength.

Different formations at different times are acting at the behest of different kinds of actors. And sometimes they’re more what we think of in 21st century terms as ideological and programmatic. And sometimes they’re not.

So I got into covering politics. I came and worked at The American Prospect with Sam in another life in 2005. And the conventional wisdom was that the Republican Party was a stronger and more ideological party than the Democratic Party. And if you think of the Obama era, there’s this idea then that the Republican Party has become maybe extreme, but its extremism is ideological. It will not compromise on cutting taxes for the rich.

People are very upset about the anti-tax pledge Republicans all take. They’re extreme compared to other modern conservative parties across the world in terms of their approach to the welfare state, in terms of their approach to economics. And then within a matter of just a couple of years, this party that seems like it is uncompromising on behalf of its ideology — there’s a whole big important political science book, “Asymmetric Parties,” written about this — becomes, I don’t want to say nonideological, but becomes uncompromising in service of, I think, what you would identify as conflict.

Trumpism is — Trump himself is a candidate of conflict. How do you understand that? Because the rapidity of that change, what the Republican Party was about, I still think is somewhat unremarked in politics.

You know, the aughts, when we were starting out, had an air at that time of an electoral juggernaut on behalf of a rigidly and impressively programmatic, disciplined ideological agenda. And it was just bestriding the country. That was pretty temporary, it turned out. It all kind of fell apart due to Iraq, due to Social Security privatization, due to Katrina, et cetera. And I think post-Bush, you see how much to a certain extent that moment was a bit of an aberration and that there is more continuity to this politics of populist socialist resentment in coalition with what we call the pro-capital strand, getting tax cuts, getting what you can get out of government economic policy.

And that coalition is much more haphazard and not electorally efficient and all-powerful and much more of a careening beast than what we saw in the peak Bush-Rove

There’s not a Rove of — Trump has been electorally successful without a Rove. Steve Bannon does not have, in the way Rove did, a sense of what are the demographics who are going to power my majority? It’s, let’s throw a lot of resentment at the wall and see what sticks.

I go in for zero, zero of the liberal strange new respect for George W. Bush and Karl Rove. And I’m glad they come into this because I blame them and their presidency for where we are now. There’s this moment, this very weird moment, where after George W. Bush loses the popular vote and gets in based on some chicanery with butterfly ballots in Florida but then is president during 9/11, and there’s a strong “rally ‘round the flag” effect. They have a strong 2002 midterm where Rove, with their ideological plasticity, tax cuts, but they’re going to do Medicare prescription drugs for seniors, they’re going to do immigration reform to win over more Hispanic voters, there’s this weird idea that they’re going to pass three or four or five of these big bills, and that’s going to be the end of the Democratic Party.

What actually happens is they fail at governance so unfathomably catastrophically in invading Iraq, in mismanaging financial regulations so there’s a huge financial crash, that my read of Republican Party politics to some degree since then has been that — I don’t want to call them like the center, but what you used to think of as mainstream Republicans have been functionally discredited.

And there were some gasps of it still. Mitt Romney won the nomination in 2012, but part of why he loses is Republicans are still blamed for the financial crisis and all the Republican views on it are attached to him. And Obama runs against those views. And then Donald Trump emerges and runs against George W. Bush. He doesn’t just run against Barack Obama. He runs against the Iraq War. He runs against all these idiots who sold out the country. He runs against free trade. And you’re historians. History is at least somewhat contingent. It does seem to me that a lot of our history turns on the failures of George W. Bush, and particularly a lot of the Republican Party’s history turns on the failures of George W. Bush and what emerges as the actual disgust and willingness. Republicans have to see somebody come in and destroy their own establishment, theoretically, on their behalf.

I would say two things. On the mismanagement story, that’s in part the wages of and the costs of a party program that has been dominated by a conservative movement, what we call a party blob of think tanks, activists in the Republican side. Media is a huge force, even in the early aughts. That infects how decision-making happens in the Bush administration, both in terms of ideologically extreme and politically disastrous efforts to do things like privatize Social Security in a technocratically unsound way, deciding to invade a country for no reason and do it in an incompetent and disastrous way.

All the stuff we used to talk about in the aughts, about the groupthink that seemed to be infecting everybody, the inability to hash out and put things to the test of reality as they were making decisions, that is in part the story of a conservative movement that had gotten very bad at coming up with an agenda that was actionable.

On the flip side, though, and here it’s less contingent on competent management, a lot of that agenda — you see it much more clearly with Romney and Ryan — the agenda of elite movement conservatives had become so detached from the priorities of their own Republican base, particularly the economic agenda of that party, even as they were making deft moves with prescription drugs, et cetera.

It was Trump sniffing out this huge gap that had emerged between what it is that movement conservatives who had controlled the commanding heights of the Republican Party by the 2000s wanted and pursued in office and what their actual voters cared about.

I would have called the Republican Party — I have called the Republican Party an engine for turning social resentment into tax cuts. That’s what it looked like to me for a long time. How much of what we’re seeing is simply that that uneasy and somewhat illogical equilibrium broke, and the ability to keep the social resentment power in service of the tax cut end, while it might still happen — in fact, Donald Trump made clear that he’s going to keep cutting taxes — there is still an effort to make tax cuts happen. So that part of the party still gets served.

But it does feel like the social resentment energy now serves social resentment conflict. It’s not cleanly moved into conservative economics in the way that Paul Ryan or, in an earlier guise, Mitt Romney was trying to do.

Go back another round, go back to, let’s say, Newt Gingrich, the key figure in, from his first election in 1978 to Congress, through the speakership, and he has all these ideas. He’s a font of everything. He’s a futurist.

But what he wants is power. Here’s Newt Gingrich. This is 1978. He’s talking to college Republicans. “You’re fighting a war. It is a war for power. But what’s the primary purpose of a political leader above everything else?

In this system, it’s to build a majority capable of sustaining itself. Because if we don’t do that, we don’t make the laws. We don’t write the taxes. We don’t decide how to start war. We don’t keep the country strong. We don’t do nothing except carve from these people’s ability. And in my lifetime, we have not had a single Republican leader capable of doing that.”

But even in the quote you give from him, he’s saying, you get power to do these things. You get power to make tax policy. You get power to make budget policy. You get power to be the person who decides whether or not — or the party that decides whether or not we’re going to go to war and in what way. And by the time you get to Trump — I’m not saying there’s no policy content. And I think it’s easy to underestimate his policy content. He really does have policy content on immigration, on trade, but it feels a lot more flexible than it was under Gingrich. It does feel like the policy structure of the party has become unsettled, even as its level of resentment, its appetite for conflict, its sense of embattlement has become stronger.

So I’m curious first, if, Dan, you agree with that, and if you do, what you think is the force that is leading the party’s policy impulses to weaken.

One thing we haven’t talked so much about is the role of media and the increasing role of right-wing media, the quote, “third generation of conservatives,” as they titled themselves begins in the 1980s. And they see themselves as media figures first and conservative ideologues second. And the extent to which conservatives see themselves as engaged in the public game of lib owning with that as the real forum rather than the forum of policy I think is an important piece of that.

The other is just the sheer unpopularity of a lot of the substantive agenda. And so as they are looking more plastically, then if lib-owning works in a system that is geared toward conflict, that’s where you go.

You had described the mobilization of social conflict into tax cuts, and it continues to be the test that was never in the first term — and it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be for his potential second term — the test that was never exercised was would, in fact, this decaying remnant of a Republican establishment and their big donors have, in fact, revolted against Trump if it turned out he wasn’t lying about raising taxes on hedge funders or something?

If he had pivoted on taxes, it would be a measure, a test of the true plasticity of this post-policy era we’re in if, for whatever reasons, whether it was going after his enemies or it was electorally beneficial, he actually did that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Let’s go back another round, because I think Gingrich is a great figure to bring into this. And I also want to bring Nixon into this. Because when you’re thinking of Republican presidents who do criminal acts, I think Nixon comes pretty quickly to mind. But Nixon is conducting Watergate in the context of a very different Republican Party and a Republican Party that sounds very different.

So I mentioned earlier, Lara Trump is — again, I really want to keep emphasizing this now — the chair of the Republican National Committee. But back then, it was George H.W. Bush. And this is how George H.W Bush talked about Watergate as R.N.C. chair.

Here’s the key on this Watergate thing. The criminal justice system in the United States is going to work. It is working. It takes some time. In the meantime, the rights of individuals must be assiduously protected. And I’m confident that the guilty will be found guilty. I’m confident that the innocent will be proved innocent.

And long after the cast of characters of Watergate has been forgotten, what will be remembered is, and what’s fundamental to our system is, is that the criminal justice system works. And there’s no partisan advantage in that.

And Watergate has this other feature, which is that congressional Republicans participate in a very serious way in the investigation. They ultimately participate in a serious way in the impeachment. Nixon is convinced to resign by a delegation of Republican senators that includes Barry Goldwater. So, Sam, why is the Republican Party, at this point in the ‘70s, willing to treat the crimes of its own president as a matter worthy of investigation?

I mean, the simple answer is, you have in the early 1970s a Republican Party that has not been captured or predominated by the conservative movement. Conservative movement actors were much more staunchly on board defending Nixon come what may. But like George H.W. Bush is very much an actor in Republican politics who doesn’t come out of the conservative movement and what we call the Long New Right, a tendency and an approach that is more ideologically plastic, that is more populist, and that is much more ruthlessly instrumental towards all sorts of institutions, political parties, the rule of law.

That’s a continuity that just comes to be, by ideological sorting and party polarization, far more predominant by the 21st century. So Larry Hogan is one of the very few Republicans yesterday who came out with a statement that was not full-throated pro Trump. And there was a pile on among co-partisans about his statement. I mean, there are far fewer Larry Hogans in the Republican Party now than they were —

Which is funny, too, because Republicans should be — I mean, maybe piling on him is actually good for them in this way. But they should want Larry Hogan to attack Trump as hard as possible because he’s the popular former governor of Maryland. He is running as a Republican for Senate. If Hogan can pick up a Senate seat for Republicans in Maryland right now, that’s like Joe Manchin holding the Democratic Senate seat in West Virginia.

It’s a very unlikely thing to have happen, and you need to really sharply break with the party. But it increases Republican power in the Senate and over politics really dramatically if it happens.

I mean, here you see the politics of social resentment, also the politics of what we call the populist strand, a tradition of approach to politics in the US that cleaves society between a people and their enemies and that holds up the only person standing between the people and their enemies is a leader, a strong leader. Here, you see that commitment to a strong leader, and the incapacity of a party to act like a party in any kind of strategic way, swamp even their own short-term mercenary electoral incentives.

Donald Trump’s not interested in having Larry Hogan bash him to maximize the seats of Republicans in the Senate, because Donald Trump wants an entire party subservient to his own personalist ends.

And an effective party, a party that has some kind of capacity, apart from its leader, in fact, will have some of its members deviating from the party line, as it were, so that they can maximize their electoral advantage, because that’s the system we operate in, in which candidates are elected individually on a party label rather than some kind of party list.

But there’s also an — I don’t want to call it an aesthetic, but something that really struck me as true but I want you to expand on, Daniel, in your book, is your association with the politics of the New right, the right that ultimately does take over the Republican Party. As a politics built around conflict, not a politics built around ideology, I do think of that as a different story than is often told.

I think that when many people tell the story of conservatives taking over the Republican Party, they tell it as a story of ideological fanatics for low taxes and anti-communism and so on taking over the Republican Party. When you separate out conflict as almost an end unto itself or a politics unto itself, what are you separating out?

So in 2016, in her final presidential endorsement, months before her death, Phyllis Schlafly, who’s been involved in politics on the right for well more than half a century, prominent for Barry Goldwater, lead Stop E.R.A., she endorses Trump, not Ted Cruz. Donald Trump.

Why? she says, because Trump is the only one who can stop the kingmakers. So she has the same analysis in 2016 that she had of Goldwater, that there are these mysterious kingmakers, and they are the key to the Republican Party, and they need to be stopped. And if you think about stopping the kingmakers, then each of these moments we’ve been talking about of what’s happening on the right looks a little different because you see a through-line that is not how ideological are they and then what’s an ideology of how do all issues come together, but what comes together is that they are using issues to get what they want. And that is to stop the kingmakers and to put their vision to power.

I don’t think I understand the kingmakers idea here. And I mean that on two levels. So one, during much of this time, I would call Phyllis Schlafly a kingmaker, a conservative elite in a period where conservatives have taken over the Republican Party. But it also brings to the center this question. When you say the Republican Party is taken over by people for whom the point is conflict, conflict with whom and based on what?

William F. Buckley wrote a book called “Up From Liberalism” that articulated the case for fusionism, bringing together moral traditionalists, free marketeers, and anti-communists into a new conservative movement. And there’s all sorts of work to try and make that intellectually and ideologically coherent.

But his argument was entirely about what all three of these tendencies share is a common enemy, liberals and liberalism, that at the very essence of this project is owning the libs. And that’s where you get a very, in terms of policy and ideology, a plasticity. And you also get Schlafly feeling like she’s the aggrieved victim fighting the kingmakers as late as 2016 is of a piece with the Republican Party continually not being able to hold on to a speaker of the house of their own party because you get this endless cycle of recrimination. Whoever is in charge and has to do anything to govern immediately falls victim to this same sort of story.

There’s also this period, and I think this is interestingly embodied actually by Buckley, where one of his first books, and a book you spend some time on in your book, is a, I would call it a defense of Joe McCarthy. And this defense of Joe McCarthy is particularly angry at pearl-clutching Republicans who agree with McCarthy’s hunt for communists in the American government but don’t agree with the crudeness, the rudeness, the brashness of his methods. It presages a lot of what we end up hearing about Donald Trump.

How much is this desire to have a Republican Party that treats liberals aesthetically as the enemy versus a Republican Party — maybe you could associate this more with the sort of George W. Bush compassionate conservatism approach, certainly what he ran on in 2000, but a lot of members of the Republican Party, just like members of the Democratic Party, who want to compromise, who understand party politics as a legitimate contestation of ideas, who, as George H.W. Bush had in that clip I played, a kind of attachment to the institutions of American governance, there are political styles that are fundamentally — that fundamentally believe in both the legitimacy of the system and of the antagonists in the system.

And then there are political styles that are more the Flight 93 election. This whole thing is going to crash. We’re in the final years of Rome, and either you functionally wipe the other side out, maybe permanently, or you’re going to lose everything you hold dear. This is a more apocalyptic style of politics.

The Long New Right, the continuity of the Long New Right is a continuity of style and approach. And that approach is always, it does not go in for thinking of parties as articulating partial visions, that you have a vision for the common good but ultimately other people disagree. You’re going to win some, you’re going to lose some, and the system is about a clash of partial visions.

It rejects that. It rejects the norm of mutual toleration, and it is prone to existential, apocalyptic rhetoric about what the other side is going to do. And so “McCarthy and His Enemies,” that’s the name of the book William F. Buckley writes with a guy named Brent Bozell, who becomes a major movement conservative as well. Also, his grandson got arrested at January 6. So —

A storied political family.

Yes, exactly. And it is so instructive, that book, that does not deign to directly defend McCarthy but instead makes what we call an anti-anti argument, that it is politically bad. It is morally cowardly to have all these namby-pamby hand-wringers siding with the enemies of the republic rather than standing by this guy who might have crude tactics but is on the core right side of the political battles of the day.

That anti-anti approach to argumentation is all over the Trump era. I mean, you saw it just last night. Some conservative lawyer tweeted that he has not voted for Trump in either election, but he’s going to crawl through broken glass to vote for him in November because of this conviction, because of how much of an illegitimate abuse of the law this conviction of covering up a porn star dalliance was. That’s an anti-anti politics.

And the Trump campaign says it raised — I mean, by the time we walked into the studio at 11:00 a.m. the day after the conviction, it says it raised $35 million in small donor donations, which is just an absolutely huge haul.

And another piece of the Long New Right is to understand just how much small donations have been, especially in the online era, But back to direct mail king Richard Viguerie, who’s really important for putting the infrastructure of this together. The power of the right and that small dollars giving by direct mail, often with various pieces of grifting involved, advertisements for gold coins, that much more than the much discussed Kochs and Mellons and Scaifes and Coorses, are the financial forces behind the Long New Right.

Well, wait, expand on that. I think that’s an important point. When I hear liberals complain about what the Republican Party is or assign blame for it, they tend to think about the big donors, the Kochs, the Adelsons, et cetera. When you say small donors were a more important force in hollowing out the Republican Party and making this possible, lay that out for me.

So Richard Viguerie is an important figure here. He arrives in 1961 from Houston as executive secretary of Young Americans for Freedom, which is this group founded at William F. Buckley’s estate of right wing activists. And the Yaffers, as they’re known, their descendents are everywhere in modern Republican politics. And Viguerie decides that he’s going to go into direct mail.

And what he does is starts off and copies by hand all the donors to Barry Goldwater’s campaigns, and then he seeds single-issue groups. And what he does is, using new magnetic tape technology — that’s the big thing in the 1970s — he figures out how donors to one right-wing cause can give to another. And so he gets George Wallace’s donors, and he will send you an anti-abortion mailer. He’ll send a mailer to individual right-wing candidates and seed all these different causes.

And the people who are sending money through the mail, this is not Mellon and Scaife money. This is little old ladies who see a mailer and give. And that is the motor of the single issue politics of the Republican Party in the 1970s. Karl Rove gets his start by beating Viguerie at his own game in direct mail. That’s his origin story.

And the scammy quality of this direct mail is absolutely part and parcel with its success. And so the gimmicky stuff, when read now you have to give automatically every month unless you uncheck some box, and all these poor people are, why am I giving Donald Trump 10 months in a row? Sam and I laugh and think ah, plus ca change, these techniques — I mean, they’re often with — there’s gold coins. There’s subscription by mail, multilevel marketing.

This is the technology that powers the right. And for whatever reason, the kind of popular story of rise of the right has missed it. And yet just inductively, when you want to figure out any given puzzle of how did this person come to prominence, what was the source of that person’s success, the stories of direct mail, grift.

Small donors just keep coming and keep coming and keep coming to prominence. And just in addition to the scamminess, the quintessential style of direct mail is appeal to emotion, appeal to negativity and conflict. That’s what works. And that continues to this day in endless online small donors.

Endless appeals with lots of conflict, so that by the end you might turn off. I mean, I think that was the Trump speech that we were watching this morning before we started recording.

And fear, right? I mean, one thing about all direct mail — not all, but a lot of it — and now direct email, is the apocalyptic tone, which also, I think is a reflection of having to stand out in a mailbox, or in an email inbox. I mean, everything now has sirens in the subject line.

Oh, my god, did you see this? And then you realize it’s from the D.C.C.C.?

Yeah, and it’s from Democrats, sure. Like, Ezra, I’m on my knees begging. And it’s like Chuck Schumer. I’m like, I don’t think Chuck Schumer is on his knees begging.

Liberals and conservatives learn from this. Morris Dees, later at the Southern Poverty Law Center, invents some of this stuff for the McGovern campaign, and Viguerie picks it up. But it is the right much more than liberals who are able to take these direct mail appeals and really make something of them ideologically.

The McGovern campaign, that brings something up here. So 1968, there is a devastatingly violent, catastrophic Democratic Convention. This is what leads in part to Richard Nixon becoming president. After that convention, there are a series of reform commissions, but very importantly, McGovern-Fraser, which changes American history.

I’ve been thinking a lot about political conventions this year for a number of reasons, but changes in American political not just history but structure. Because before that, presidential candidates are chosen by party regulars at conventions. And after that, they are chosen at primaries. So, Sam, tell me a bit about McGovern-Fraser, what it actually says and does, and also how its effects maybe are not exactly what was anticipated.

Sure. So this is the pre-reform era is what’s known as the mixed convention system, because quadrennial conventions been with us since the middle of the 19th century. They bring together delegations sent by state parties. Well into the middle of the 20th century, it just varied how they selected those delegates.

Some states had what we think of as direct primaries. Other states had state party conventions that chose the delegates that went to the convention. Others is just the state party leadership just chose it. After the divisive primary battles of 1968, in which Hubert Humphrey ends up winning the nomination famously without having contested any actual primary because he had all these other delegates, their support locked up, the antiwar candidates’ forces, as they lose trying to get an antiwar platform plank, they lose the nomination. As a sop to them, the Humphrey forces agree to this commission that the D.N.C. is going to authorize and give a pretty forceful mandate to, to reform nominating procedures into 1972.

Long story short, what that commission institutes is uniform national base line requirements for all state party delegate selection, that they have to be procedures that are transparent, that are open to participation from anyone who wants to participate. You have to actually have clear procedures publicized so people know when these decisions are being made. Unintentionally, inadvertently, the practicalities of implementing and adhering to these rules lead to a total proliferation of just direct primaries.

But Donald Fraser, the chairman of the commission after McGovern leaves the commission to go run for president, is on record saying, I think primaries are terrible. He comes out of Minnesota in a tradition of issue-driven activists powering actual formal party conventions at the state level, and they make these decisions. And that’s what he has in mind. And a lot of McGovern-Fraser reformers have in mind of not getting rid of parties and just having a big free-for-all direct election for who the nominee should be but empowering social movements to really influence and issue-driven activists to influence these decisions at the state level.

But what you get instead is first among Democrats. And then because this is a creature of state law and it ends up applying to Republicans as well, a pretty rapid transformation of the system to one in which formal party actors no longer have any say in this at the state level. The conventions no longer perform any meaningful deliberative function because the delegates are all pledged to particular candidates based on who won the primaries and open caucus — or open caucus in their state. And you get the modern nomination system, which is a completely open, free-for-all, uncoordinated gauntlet of one state primary or caucus after another.

This is a part I’ve never understood, and you just maybe explained it to me, but I still don’t understand why this would be true. Which is, OK, you have the McGovern-Fraser Commission. The next election, which is the first under these new rules, McGovern wins the Democratic nomination. He wins it through primaries, and then he gets completely annihilated in the general election. I mean, one of the worst runs in modern political history.

And meanwhile, the Democrats don’t go back to the old system or cap the new one. And the Republicans seem to adopt the same primary structure. And I’ve never quite been sure why it spreads to them.

Well, on the first point, what the political scientists critical of this as it’s happening, led by Nelson Polsby, say, is the old system, sure, it wasn’t democratic, but it was a mechanism by which the national party could arrive at a lowest common denominator point of consensus within the party for a nominee. And you’re going to get mainstream nominees that way.

This new system is going to be good for ideological extremists or just outsiders who can ride media momentum and potentially capture a nomination. In ‘72, you get a good example of a more ideologically extreme candidate capturing the party based on the enthusiasm of movement activists. Then he loses very badly.

You then get an outsider who wins. In 1976, Jimmy Carter and his presidency lays bare the costs of someone who has no relationship with key factions in the party and didn’t have to build those relationships to win the nomination. He becomes an ineffective president. And so Democrats do — people forget, Democrats do learn from this. And through another commission, the Hunt Commission, in 1981, they implement this thing called superdelegates, which is the idea there was it’s important to think of a national party as an institution that has actors, including elected officials, who have some knowledge about how to read the electorate and long-term party loyalists and stalwarts who have been leaders in the party.

They should be a part of the decision-making process. So we should incorporate a fraction of delegates at the convention and empower them to be unpledged and perform a kind of deliberative gatekeeping function. And there we go. They got a really popular thing that we all love, superdelegates. That was very popular. So — but then the story of the superdelegates is one we can keep talking about.

But I to pick up on the gatekeeping function in a second. But why does this spread to the Republicans? You said it’s because it’s a function of state law. I don’t understand why that would be.

There’s not truly fascinating answer, but mechanically, that parties are this complicated amalgam of their — Leon Epstein, political scientist terms — private utilities. And they are therefore amalgams of state law and party rules that are outside the jurisdiction of the courts. And parties are least subject to state or federal law at the national convention because states can’t govern what happens at a convention that has delegates from all the states.

So as states set rules for primaries to meet the requirements of McGovern-Fraser, those rules apply both to the Republican Party as well as to the Democratic Party, that state legislators would enact, we’re going to have a primary. It’s going to be open to all comers. It will have delegates who will be pledged, and those apply to both parties. That’s the mechanical answer.

There’s a, I think, deeper and more important side of what happens on the right. And that goes back to kingmakers and Schlafly, which is Republicans have their own and much more powerfully set of actors who do not want the long-established figures at the top of the party to have too much influence in delegate selection. And therefore, they are perfectly happy with a system that takes away the old state chairs and time servers who had been electing, in their view, too moderate candidates and hadn’t paved the way for real movement conservatives.

And so in a world in which Democrats do not have McGovern-Fraser, it’s hard to imagine the mixed system surviving with such forces on the right.

And with McGovern-Fraser implemented, you get Ronald Reagan’s very potent challenge to Gerald Ford in the 1976 primary.

And so then you have the loss of, I think, a couple things here. I mean, I’m not somebody who believes the old eras in American politics were great. Machine party politics were very corrupt. You really did have this hammerlock of the party regulars. But these things have their virtues as well as their vices. And one virtue might be that there is a tendency to try to choose candidates who you think will appeal to a broad part of the electorate.

But the other tendency is the gatekeeping tendency. The other virtue is the gatekeeping virtue, a point that Levitsky and Ziblatt make in “How Democracies Die,” which is big book a couple of years ago that, at least as lore, in part, leads Joe Biden to run for president. They make this point that you’ve always seen figures like Donald Trump in American life.

You can think about Henry Ford. You can think about Father Coughlin. You can think about Huey Long. But figures like that couldn’t make it through the convention. And so even if you had these people who had an intense adoration of 30 percent of the electorate, they couldn’t make it through the convention. And so they didn’t rise to the top of American politics.

And that absent the gatekeeping function, the gatekeeping function of the conventions, obviously, there’s a real irony in Trump winning through the Electoral College because the Electoral College was also meant to be a gatekeeper against a Trump-like demagogue. But absent the gatekeepers of parties and, arguably, the Electoral College, you now have this vulnerability to Trump-like figures. Did we lose too much in losing conventions?

Well, look, you’re talking to two political scientists. Political scientists, generally speaking, much more skeptical of open primaries and. freewheeling systems, much more supportive of parties that actually have the ability to make their own internal decisions as to who is going to be their nominee. Political scientists tend to adhere to some version of E.E. Schattschneider’s claim that democracy exists between the parties. It should not exist inside the parties.

And so, yeah, I think you did lose something. Now, one thing we try and make clear in the book is that we don’t think the mechanical changing of the rules over the course of the mid-1970s is the decisive, pivotal point. That on the one hand, what’s going on with the right is eroding. In a much more fundamental way, the legitimacy of the very ideas of gatekeepers, the very idea of drawing lines against extremism or outside anti-democratic elements within the conservative movement.

They’re eroding their own capacity to make those arguments regardless of what the rules are, and which is why we think there’s a real force unto itself that would have broken through whatever the rules were, whether or not McGovern-Fraser actually got implemented. But on the Democratic side, the problem is parties are only capable of doing things if there’s some degree of legitimacy and trust and respect and loyalty among their own members.

And what you see with the superdelegates, which I think we would be perfectly happy to say we thought were a good idea, they never exercised actual, pivotal decision-making. They never proved to be the decisive block that gave the nominee to someone who wasn’t the pledged delegate winner. And they didn’t because they knew if they ever did that, it would just tear the party apart.

They didn’t have legitimacy.

Yeah, they didn’t have any legitimacy.

And in turn, party actors never did it. The political scientists are not powerful enough to defend parties. If party actors believe in parties —

They’d have to do it.

It’s always struck me — it’s always struck me as very telling that between 2016 and 2020, so after watching Donald Trump capture and take over the Republican Party, that the way Democrats changed their rules is to weaken the superdelegates, the exact group of people who could, in theory, prevent something like Donald Trump on the left, Democrats — and I mean, they’re doing this because of the Bernie Sanders experience and the anger of Bernie Sanders supporters.

But what Democrats do is weaken the party’s gatekeepers.

And this could be a story for a different kind of left that said, maybe in a Corbynite way, although that didn’t end very well for them, that we are going to take over this party, and we are going to make sure that the superdelegates, all the members of the D.N.C., are our people. Instead, it was tear it all down.

In 2016, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then D.N.C. chair — it was in 2016, right?

February 2016.

Democrats are having discussion about superdelegates and the legitimacy. The head of the party, if anyone’s going to speak on behalf of the party and its rules, presumably it should be the Democratic National Committee Chair. How did she defend or describe what superdelegates even were?

She said that there were so many grass roots activists who wanted to be delegates, and having superdelegates give more of them the chance to go to the convention, which is completely fake, phony, stupid. She did not say, members of the party with long-term interests, members of the D.N.C., members of Congress, big city mayors, governors, should have a right to and the party is better off when they have their voice at the convention.

She knows that. She wouldn’t say it.

This has all been on my mind this year because I have argued [LAUGHS] for an open Democratic Convention. I think I really liked Joe Biden as a president in a bunch of different ways, but I think he’s at this point a quite weakened candidate. Obviously, I think Republicans are picking their functionally weakest candidate. Like if the Republican Party were any kind of functional organization, they would not be going into war with this guy.

That Nikki Haley or any number of other Republicans would win this election easily. And so Republicans cannot, on the one hand, and will not change course from Donald Trump. I think we see that. Donald Trump is weakened but dangerous and in the lead. We’ll see what this does, if anything, to his poll numbers.

Democrats, I think you could easily imagine a convention in another age, choosing a candidate well suited to taking advantage of Trump’s particular weaknesses. One thing I heard back after the convention piece I did was just from a lot of Democrats who are superdelegates or would be the kind of Democrat who would have power at a convention, just saying, we don’t have the muscle for that now. We don’t know who the delegates are. We haven’t done that in a long time.

Even if I agree with you that there’s a real weakness here, I don’t trust a convention because we just have not run one in the memory of functionally any of the people who would be there. And it just feels like a year to me when the hollowness of the parties to make strategic decisions late in a election year is really on view.

I mean, it just — that we are going to end up here with someone as dangerous and flawed and compromised as Donald Trump running against somebody who is as weakened as Joe Biden, with the stakes being what they are for Donald Trump winning again, it really speaks to parties not acting strategically any longer in a way that has, I think, now become a genuine danger to American democracy.

But I find it’s almost hard to even put it in those terms because people hate the party so much, and they’re angry at them for this. The idea that you would then give them more power, it feels like empowering the very culprits of the thing you’re mad at. But that’s where we are.

Why write a book that is in so many ways a defense of party? It is to say that, no, these guys are good. And why have a chapter about the glories of free labor Republicanism? It is to say that the best thing this country ever did since the founding, to save the Union, free the slaves, reconstruct the Constitution, was fundamentally a party project.

And all these ways through American history that we’ve seen parties do vital, important work, to give ardor to supporters of parties. More specifically on the challenges of this year, ever since — this is Daniel Klinghard’s book, a political scientist at Holy Cross. Ever since presidents took over national committees at the end of the 19th century, presidents who want to win renomination have won renomination. However, the circumstances under which the parties restrained them, the choices that they make, cognizant of the possibilities of renomination, those have all changed. And so we have not seen anything like the world of 1944, where the high figures of the Democratic Party told a dying Franklin D. Roosevelt that Henry Wallace was not going to work and Harry Truman turned out to be, with great consequence, the one figure who could bring together Southern conservatives, labor, the famous clear with Sidney Hillman of the C.I.O., Northern machines.

And maybe Sam can talk to this. The circumstances of Joe Biden’s nomination in 2020 set up the party for failures that were not apparent in 2020 and I think very apparent in 2024.

Yeah, I mean, you articulated a great sales pitch for our book. If anyone wants to make sense of both why we’re at a point where the parties are so — have such glaring incapacity to do things like nominate their most effective candidates and also why, unfortunately, it’s not a book that’s a how-to in the next couple of weeks, how to put all of it back together again because it’s the product of decades now of eroding capacity, eroding trust, eroding legitimacy that puts us in this state.

Which is to say, the specifics right now with Biden do date back to contingent developments in 2020. I think there’s come to be the idea that Biden managed to capture the nomination in 2020 as a reflection of the Democratic establishment being strong and in control. But I remember that as much more of a haphazard drift and stumble of Joe Biden. People could count. They knew how old he was in 2020 and could think ahead where —

It was a demonstration of hollowness in 2020, where there’s a complete — there’s 20 candidates. There’s some potential moderates out there, but they either have crazy lack of background, like Pete Buttigieg, or for whatever reason, no one gets a signal to coordinate who the non-Sanders candidate is going to be.

And then you get in a period of a weekend, this scramble after South Carolina for Buttigieg and Klobuchar to drop out. Maybe it was because Barack Obama made a phone call. And then all of a sudden, there’s a cascade towards Biden as a coordinating function. That’s real late in the game. To the extent there was any coordination, it was held up as illegitimate.

Like oh, my god, did you hear Barack Obama made a phone call? What kind of a smoke-filled room, anti-democratic system is this? And then we get the president we get. Then he chooses the running mate he chooses. And — Chooses without the long-term interests of the party. He has some short-term reasons that he wants someone with Harris’s background. But this is not a pick that is made a la 1944 thinking about what are the factions that I need to assuage in my party, and how is this going to work after I’m gone? And then —

Well, I think it might have been. I think they might have just gotten what factions were going to need to be worked with wrong. I mean, I will say about the Joe Biden moment in 2020, I give everybody involved a little more credit. I do think it reflected something that you don’t see in the Republican Party in this period, which is party activists converging, if in a haphazard way, and party regulars listening.

The voters wanted — they were looking for a signal.

The voters were looking for a signal, and they took the signal. And I also think, though, and this to me is one of the places where I’m a little bit more frustrated with Biden and his team than other people, there were a series of signals sent very clearly that he was going to very seriously consider not running for re-election.

There were all these stories written where, in fact, people named as advisers to him, said that he was going to only serve one term. It was not a pledge he made. People talked about him making that pledge. He didn’t. But the expectation, I think, among Democrats and Democratic elites was that if age became an issue, a significant issue for him, he was not going to run.

Everybody knew how old he was. Running an 81-year-old is going to be a very risky endeavor. And things have teetered on the edge of that. He is able to fulfill the job of the presidency, and he has trouble routinely and effectively performing the job of the presidency in front of cameras in a way that has become a huge and so far not really solvable political liability for them.

And given that they have not done the thing I think they signaled they would do, which is take that seriously and either figure out a way to solve it or he doesn’t run, the fact that Harris didn’t work out as a V.P. politically that well, and they have not figured out a way to make her work that well or replace her, has also created a lot of static about what to do.

I think people could see that this would happen, but they expected Biden and his team and some of these other party elites to do something about it if it happened. And the thing is, they didn’t. And then nobody else was able to.

Right, you say they and —

There’s no “they.”

That’s right.

There’s just Biden.

There’s just Biden. And it turns out politicians, they’re driven to lead, and they want to keep leading. And they’re not going to listen to people telling them not to lead.

And we go back to Martin Van Buren, then. Having leaders who are unconstrained by party, even when they are fundamentally responsible leaders, is dangerous. And in a lot of ways, “The Hollow Parties” is an argument against the presidentialisation of our politics.

I try to end every podcast on Martin Van Buren. So I think that’s the place to finish here. Always our final question — what are three books you’d recommend to the audience? I think we said we’re going to give each of you one and then a joint pick.

I’ll start with, speaking of the Jacksonian era, Aziz Rana was a law professor. He has a giant new book out about Americans’ views of the Constitution. But he, in 2010, wrote a very substantial and brilliant book called “The Two Faces of American Freedom.” That is a good synthesis of a master theme in American history that goes back in scholarship to people like Edmund Morgan. That grapples with the idea that it’s precisely in a settler society that creates mass democracy in the world, pioneers it — it’s precisely the commitment to equality and freedom among a country’s citizens that intensifies and sharpens the violent subjugation and exclusion of those who are outside of that citizenry.

And so it’s precisely the most small D democratic forces across American history that are also often the advocates of the most eliminationist, genocidal, or tyrannical treatment of those not included. And grappling with that duality is a huge part of making sense of 19th century America, but it’s a kind of duality that plays through all the way through American history.

We’ve talked today plenty about, as conversations about party politics tend to do, the political machine, which is typically alluded to more than it’s actually understood, whether as the kindly ward healer giving away Thanksgiving turkeys or as the nasty engine of patronage. And to actually understand what the political machine did, wonderful book by Steven Erie, “Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985.”

What a great title.

It is a great title, and it also has the all-time best academic book cover I’ve ever seen, which is it’s a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago. And there are all these patriots guys with, just after Richard J. Daley dies, and they all have posters and they say, with Daley’s image, our friend and in our hearts and minds forever with the shamrock. And so when we were asked to come up with ideas for a cover, we said like “Rainbow’s End.”

And it’s a real model for us.

They didn’t listen to you, I guess.

We’re happy with this. But alas, what “Rainbow’s End” offers is a claim of what the machine actually did, which is to direct its benefits, not sprinkled around to everybody, but to core Irish constituencies, that Irish Americans rewarded their co-ethnics and that there was actually less patronage to go around than one might have imagined. But to understand what machine politics is.

And then our third pick is 1968 is much in the air. The best, to our mind, book about an American political campaign ever written is “An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968” by Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson and Bruce Page. And want to talk about it?

Yeah, three British reporters from The Sunday Times. It’s a breezy 800 pages, but it is not only — there’s a lot of books written about 1968. It’s an incredibly dramatic year. This one managing —

A new good one, “The Year That Broke Politics.”

Yeah, exactly. It combines a fly-on-the-wall, all the kind of novelistic attention to the inside players with a really profound grasp of the bigger stakes, the deeper history, what’s going on in Vietnam and the American Empire as a kind of context for all this. It brings it all together. It’s a great read. And it is unfortunately out of print.

So if anyone wants to publish a new edition, we’d be delighted to write a foreword.

Sam Rosenfeld, Daniel Schlozman, thank you very much.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon.

The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. We have original music by Isaac Jones, audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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• May 21, 2024   •   1:01:04 A Conservative Futurist and a Supply-Side Liberal Walk Into a Podcast …
• May 17, 2024   •   59:20 The Disastrous Relationship Among Israel, Palestinians and the U.N.
• May 10, 2024   •   1:02:30 This Is a Very Weird Moment in the History of Drug Laws
• May 7, 2024   •   1:04:33 Watching the Protests From Israel
• April 30, 2024   •   1:03:00 Cows Are Just an Environmental Disaster
• April 26, 2024 Salman Rushdie Is Not Who You Think He Is
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Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

After Donald Trump was convicted last week in his hush-money trial, Republican leaders wasted no time in rallying behind him. There was no chance the Republican Party was going to replace Trump as their nominee at this point. Trump has essentially taken over the G.O.P.; his daughter-in-law is even co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

How did the Republican Party get so weak that it could fall victim to a hostile takeover?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Amazon Music , YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts .]

Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld are the authors of “ The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics ,” which traces how both major political parties have been “hollowed out” over the decades, transforming once-powerful gatekeeping institutions into mere vessels for the ideologies of specific candidates. And they argue that this change has been perilous for our democracy.

In this conversation, we discuss how the power of the parties has been gradually chipped away; why the Republican Party became less ideological and more geared around conflict; the merits of a stronger party system; and more.

You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App , Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts . View a list of book recommendations from our guests here .

(A full transcript of this episode is available here .)

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show’‘ was produced by Elias Isquith. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker, Kate Sinclair and Rollin Hu. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

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