“Better than Cicero”

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Heh—I just encountered a bit of news from before the debate, when each campaign was saying what a great debater their opponent was. (The idea being to reduce expectations for one's own candidate, while also providing a handy excuse for losing, should that unfortunate event transpire.) The Kerry campaign said that Bush had never lost a debate. As for the Bush campaign:

Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, said in an interview that Kerry "is very formidable, and probably the best debater ever to run for president. I think he's better than Cicero," the ancient Roman orator. "I'm not joking." Dowd added.

That's from a September 27 Washington Dispatch article by freelance political writer Vincent Fiore.

. . . And (speaking of writing errors, as I was in the previous entry) boy could that article have used a proofreader. "Kerry needs solutions, which he has thus far lacked for most issues, and not attacks, with which he has depended on far too often." And: ". . . he also attempts to energize the Independents and 'security moms' by striking a pose on Iraq. It is a pose—one of victory and one of failure—that he has vacillated between since the Iowa Caucus." (Vacillating between a single pose takes a lot of skill, especially if that single pose is one of both victory and failure.) And: "John Kerry will let in all out on that Florida stage. . . ."

Where are the proofreaders of yesteryear? What would Cicero do? (Assuming, y'know, he could read and write modern English.)

2 Responses to ““Better than Cicero””

  1. Will

    I think my friend Hanah may have discovered one of the all-time worst examples of proofreading recently:

    This forgery [The Protocols of the Elders of Zion], first penned by members of the Czarist secret police, the Okhrana, has been used by tyrants throughout the last 100 years to justify the persecution of Jews, including Adolf Hitler. –Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

    As Hanah comments, “Adolf Hitler was a Jew???”

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  2. Wendy

    One of my high-school Latin teachers used to say that John F. Kennedy’s best speeches were very Ciceronian. Certainly, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” is a pretty classic Ciceronian chiasmus.

    Cicero would certainly never have anyone vacillate between a pose, or depend on with an attack. (Actually, that first sentence you quoted is clearly an attempt at a very Ciceronian paralellism. Like many such attempts in English, it trips over its own excess of pronouns and prepositions. Latin is often a much tidier language than English, which means that a lot of Cicero’s best zingers sound totally lame in translation.)

    I just went back and reread a bit of one of Cicero’s speeches – one of the things that’s most striking about it is the rhythm of it. Maybe if he were around today, Cicero would be rap star.

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