Argument efficacy: evaluating the public argument of President Bill Clinton's impeachment crisis.

• Author: Miller, John J.

For only the second time in the history of the United States' presidency, a sitting president was impeached by the House of Representatives and stood trial in the Senate. Charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, Clinton's 37-day trial culminated in a 55-45 rejection of perjury charges and a 50-50 rejection of obstruction charges (a 2/3 majority or 67 votes is required to remove a president from office). Immediately after the vote, Clinton again professed his repentance and contended that the nation must move beyond the ordeal. Not only did the "Teflon President" survive a political tempest practically unscathed, he baffled his opponents when his approval ratings actually increased to an amazing 73% (The Clinton Presidency).

This media-portrayed "Presidential Days of Our Lives" tantalized, repulsed, and bewildered the public. Like any good soap opera, there was a villain, hero, temptress, antagonist, a predictable "shocking" twist, and an anticipated conclusion. Unlike a television soap opera, however, the designation of villain, hero, temptress, and antagonist depended on the storyteller and competing storytellers offered opposing interpretations.

According to Bennett (1975), understanding politics requires understanding the processes of political definition. He argues, "We do not respond to events politically of analytically, we respond to their meanings. An event may 'happen', but its meaning is constructed" (23). Likewise, Page and Shapiro (1992) maintain that "events seldom speak for themselves" and that the rhetoric of competing advocates imposes contrasting interpretations to influence public opinion (340). Hahn (1998) goes so far as to claim that most major political questions are actually definitional arguments.

The definition of happenings, or the assignment of meaning, in Clinton's impeachment crisis ultimately impacted its outcome. Clinton's opponents described the happenings as evidence of Clinton's immorality and used such descriptors as "deceit," "sexual scandal," and "obstruction of justice" (Labaton, 1-22-98 & Bronner, 1-23-98). They attempted to define the happenings as gross presidential immorality, which necessitated his removal. Conversely, Clinton supporters defined the situation as a destructive, partisan witch-hunt. Hillary Clinton portrayed it as a "concerted effort to undermine his (Clinton's) legitimacy as president ... when he could not be defeated politically" (quoted in Bennet, 1-22-98, 2).

Despite this significance, few investigations have focused on the actual process of meaning development in public disputes. The question remains, how should public definitional arguments be evaluated? This study develops a new perspective of argument criticism, argument efficacy. Developed through an analysis of The New York Times' coverage of President William J. Clinton's impeachment crisis, argument efficacy explains Clinton's surprising success and his opponents' shocking defeat. Further, the analysis reveals that argument efficacy joins normative argument constructs with critical practices.

WEAKNESSES OF CURRENT ARGUMENT PERSPECTIVES

As argument critics have moved away from traditional notions of formalism, of applied logic, the necessity of identifying new evaluative standards have likewise developed. When answering the question, "when is an argument worthy of acceptance?" current evaluative standards tend to focus much more on the utilization of social knowledge. With argument form (traditional logic) no longer the basis of evaluation, the critics have turned to evaluative criteria based on socially established relationships of knowledge. According to Wenzel (1992), the primary focus of the rhetorical perspectives is the identification of an argument's persuasive means. Wenzel contends, "Arguments are construed as one mode of symbolic representation that has certain unique potentials for influencing people" (127). Since the focus of rhetorical perspectives stem from the audience, evaluative standards are related and relative to specific audiences.

Rhetorical validity provides the standard and analytical method most often associated with rhetorical perspectives. McKerrow (1977) states that rhetorical validity "operate(s) on the assumption that arguments justify rather than verify their claims" (134). Accordingly, argument becomes a non-analytical response to a rhetorical situation involving uncertainty (133). Farell (1977) contends that this position permits a more rhetorical perspective of argument since argument validity stems primarily from "conscious compliance" with "established relationships among terms, thoughts, and things through the judgment and action of an audience" (143). Therefore, argument form does not (unlike formal/deductive logic) guarantee a "certain" conclusion, but only justifies audience conclusions; "they (argument forms) provide neither arbitrary nor compulsory reasons for the truth or rightness of a given perspective of position" (McKerrow, 134). In fact, the relevance of argument form only depends on how the audience utilizes that form.

Consequently, argument evaluation is an "after the fact" process and offers little predictive value; there is no clear way to determine the potential acceptance of an argument until the argument has been presented to the audience. Rhetorical validity does not judge the "soundness" of argument but rather its justification. McKerrow (1977) posits that "justification is not simply a product of given reason, but of offering those reasons that will satisfy the hearer that adherence is an acceptable choice" (135). Likewise, Ehninger (1968) contends that a valid argument "forces a fundamental readjustment in the thinking of the person to whom it is addressed;" audience members must be able to cite "reasons" for acceptance (219). From this perspective, a good argument carries rhetorical validity, of effectively influences audiences, when the audience accepts of rejects a claim.

This perspective relegates argument criticism to either description or societal criticism. Since argument acceptance based on the advocate's use of social knowledge is the primary standard, critics are forced to accept an argument because the audience accepts the argument. While these are important endeavors, the perspective fails to instruct society about the strength or reliability of an argument. The relativistic nature of social knowledge leaves the critic with relativistic standards of argument.

Zarefsky's (1981) concept of "reasonableness" perhaps escapes this charge through its combination of argument form and audience acceptance standards. "Reasonableness" holds that good argument escapes formal defect and develops from premises that an audience would see as reasonable. This concept, however, lacks the crucial mechanism for making final conclusions about arguments. The co-existence of reasonable premises with an "incorrect form" begs the question of argument strength or weakness. Zarefsky's dual evaluative standards illustrate a mutually exclusive dichotomy between form and audience. Formal standards emphasize the relationship of ideas while de-emphasizing the audience's role. Conversely, audience standards highlight audience acceptance while downplaying formal components. Zarefsky's effort to develop a compromise becomes problematic by failing to provide mechanisms for combining the two evaluative foci.

Formal argument components rely on linguistic objectification. Words contain objectively testable relationships and stem from rationalistic ideals found in Plato and Aristotle (Hunt, 1961). From this perspective, anything short of rational (formal or informal logic) impedes reasoning and deserves rejection (McGee 1975, 237). Conversely, audience standards rely on the audience's subjective acceptance or anticipated acceptance. Valid positions are derived from social knowledge of a specific audience (Farrell, 1977, 147). Consequently, an argument, whether it is formally correct or incorrect, becomes rhetorically invalid, or unreasonable, when it does not generate audience acceptance. Conceivably, an argument may be formally sound but rhetorically invalid; this leaves the critic with a difficult conundrum.

The combination of argument form and audience standards requires a fundamental adjustment. To merge argument form and audience standards, argument form must adapt to become consistent with current linguistic understandings. Traditional logical analysis entails a conception of words as possessing meaning. Logic, after all, resides in relationships between words. For example, inductive reasoning requires serial prediction where combining two or more conditions leads to a probable conclusion. As a serial prediction, it requires the "objective existence apart from the perspectives of the social actors" (Willard, 1978, 122). Burke (1968), Richards and Ogden (1989), and other symbolic interactional theorists, however, argue that reality is socially constructed and events become their definition; without a reachable objective reality, words cannot possess definite meanings. Formal standards, then, must be re-conceptualized in light of this linguistic understanding.

Zarefsky (1997) argues that definitional disputes involve a frame of reference or, as Cox's (1981) illustrates, the process of framing. Not only should evaluative standards combine form and audience acceptance standards to address relativistic standards associated with rhetorical validity, they should also address the framing nature of these disputes. With its grounding in contemporary linguistic understanding and its focus on the process of framing, the theories of Kenneth Burke may enable the development of a perspective to assess definitional disputes. The following section presents a potential perspective of argument, termed "rhetorical efficacy."

Argument efficacy utilizes Burke's linguistic grounding and framing analysis to offer critical standards for assessing...