The "Management" of Rhetorical Dilemmas

The image of being between a rock and a hard place captures well Western culture's paradigmatic notion of a dilemma. Strictly speaking, says the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, a dilemma is a situation that requires one to choose between two equally balanced, not altogether attractive alternatives. A dilemma, then, is a predicament that seemingly defies a satisfactory solution. Plato presented his disciples with choices between ethics versus expediency, truth versus effectiveness; presumably there was no middle ground and no way of achieving both. Billig and his colleagues at Loughborough have identified ideological dilemmas that permeate Western culture, some reflective of tensions within classic liberalism (e.g., authority versus equality), others inscribed in the seemingly contradictory aphorisms of an earlier folk wisdom ("Charity begins at home" versus "Love thy neighbor"). (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton, Radley, 1988) These and other oppositions become woven into the fabric of institutional life. In a passage that still resonates three decades after it was written, Norman Mailer wrote of a

"schizophrenia on which America is built...a modest ranch-house life with Draconian military adventures; a land of opportunity where a white culture sits upon a black; a horizontal community of Christian love and a vertical hierarchy of churches--the cross was well designed; a politics of principle and a politics of property; a land of family, a land of illicit heat...." (Mailer, 1969), p. 96

Then too there are dilemmas of a pragmatic nature, only some of them reflective of ideological divisions and ambivalences. Leaders of every kind must wrestle with conflicting demands upon their positions, requiring them to calculate tradeoffs, for example , between flexibility and consistency, cooperation versus competition, persuasion strategies versus power strategies--all the while as they may have to appear authentic, sincere, uncalculating. (Simons, 1982) Significantly, those in public life who are called upon to render assessments of Presidential performance--including Presidential apologias--are not exempt from ethical, ideological, and pragmatic dilemmas. (7) 

Broadly speaking, then, the dilemmas Clinton confronted are not entirely unique. They included ethical dilemmas (e.g. truth-telling versus evasiveness of a sort that might enable him to continue doing his good job as President), conflicting role requirements (the need to attack, the need to express contrition), domain problems in the Toulminian sense (the field-dependent logics of law, politics, and clinical psychology being in this case seemingly incompatible), (8) and the problems familiar to every politician of needing to appeal to multiple and conflicting audiences.

Yet Bill Clinton was not without his rhetorical resources. In general, life's dilemmas are not quite as intractable as those represented in the imagery of the proverbial rock and hard place. To philosophers of polarities, such as Plato, rhetoricians have traditionally suggested a third way (and sometimes a fourth and a fifth), usually one that was situated, local, responsive to circumstances. Thus Aristotle's retort to Plato that, rather than being required to choose between effectiveness and truth, rhetoric could be a way of giving effectiveness to truth, albeit a contingent truth. Said Richard Lanham, "Rhetorical man was a dramatic game-player but he was always claiming that the ground he stood on was more than a stage." (Lanham, 1992, p. 47. He adds that "A rhetorical education reminds us of the inevitable circumstantiality of all human judgment, but shows us how we can control and offset that circumstantiality." (P. 48) Likewise, Billig h as observed that social actors are not simply victims of ideological dilemmas; they are also able to manage them rhetorically--indeed to construct arguments out of opposing themes, and sometimes to devise strategies that transform the very grounds of opposition. Rather than regarding such common sense maxims as "Charity begins at home" and "Love thy neighbor" as inherently contradictory, one might better understand them as situated truths, each with its own limitations. Furthermore, there is ambiguity surrounding the terms of opposition which can be exploited rhetorically. Is the risk-taker of "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" reckless or courageous? Is the conservative decision-maker of "Look before you leap" timid or prudent? (Billig, 1991, p. 16) Rhetors can shape perceptions of the dilemma-laden situations in which they find themselves; and when their predicaments remain dire, they can still devise arguments and select framing devices that help mitigate them.

This is not to minimize Clinton's problems over Monicagate; they were monumental. But Clinton was able periodically to keep the scandal off the front page of the newspaper after the initial media frenzy of the first week.. His family had done more than stand by him; Hillary had launched a highly successful attack on the Starr investigation, branding it part of a longstanding right wing conspiracy to bring ruin upon her husband by way of unsubstantiated rumors and allegations. Over a period of years the President had managed to occupy the political center, denying Republicans issues with which to defeat him, and this too provided a cushion for him during the crisis. The continuing vibrancy of the economy helped maintain his high approval ratings, and so to o did such foreign policy successes as the Dayton accords and the agreement over Northern Ireland. Thus, even despite widespread mistrust of the President, and revulsion toward his affair and subsequent cover-up, an overwhelming majority of Americans want ed him kept in office. Finally, William Clinton was not without resources in the preparation and delivery of his August 17th apologia. His speech could have been better, as I try to show. But, with Benoit, I argue that it was "not awful."