With a presidential election coming upon us in the next year, we have seen the campaigns of many candidates take shape. Candidates have been traveling across the country to reach out to the voters. There have been debates and town halls to firmly get an understanding of who we want to be the leader of our country. Perhaps many have narrowed it down to a couple choices, while others may need to take all the time up to election day to decide. What about you? Are you ready to vote?

Let’s take a step back and think about this. Recently, we have been stressed more and more about the power to vote, and we revolve our vote around one main campaign, the Presidential campaign. Ironically, however, we are told that our representatives have the greatest power to hear us. It is with our representatives that our concerns can be addressed most effectively. So why do we put such a great stress on the presidency? It wasn’t always like this.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the dominant culture was to place more emphasis on congressional campaigns. More attention would be payed to the legislators that would be representing your district. Most citizens would know their representatives, and more support (financial or voter) would be directed to them as well. We used to have much more emphasis on those that would write and vote on our bills that directly affected us. Now, we see an emergence of higher focus being placed on the president. We focus most of our time and energy on the presidential campaigns, and we will find the most entertaining ways to understand who we want as our president. Most people will know the name of the president, but they most likely wouldn’t know their representative.

What led to this shift was the increase in understanding the powers held by the president. The Founding Fathers did not want to have strong powers established in one singular person, so they drafted the Constitution that ensured that the legislative would be strongest in its powers. As the years went by since the birth of the nation, president administrations would slowly expand on the powers the president would practice. Some presidents such as Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are known better for establishing the increase in what the president can do. The biggest pivot could be argued to be when President FDR was in office as he was seen as being the most hands on and aggressive in getting tasks done. As he put forward more and more legislation ideas, projects, and reforms, he changed the scope in which the president was involved in the lives of American citizens.

With this increase, many conservatives viewed as intrusion. Resistance occurred strongly from conservative groups as they believed in smaller governments and decreased connections between the people and government. Nonetheless, many of the policies push forward passed and were implemented. This proved successful expansion of presidential powers and it led to a rise in importance towards the president. Today, we see can see the direct impact as we revolve our elections around the President of the United States.

Sharing:

With increasing use of technology in the modern world, we share more and more about our lives everyday. The sense of sharing has become increasingly popular, and we find ourselves in a society where we must share the daily happenings of our lives. We also find ourselves in situations in which companies are able to take this information and analyze it for an optimal virtual experience. We have seen a shift in this idea of what and when it is acceptable to share in society. While there were no easy access, social media platforms in earlier years to share information, it was as not as popular to find “everyday folk” sharing their feelings in life or their accomplishments. As the entertainment industry began to grow with incorporation of up-to-date technology, we began to see a shift in what and how we share. It is a basic understanding, now, that we will see people sharing their life story very easily to the rest of the world. Yet, compared to earlier years this was not as popular to occur.

 

Presidential Importance:

Sitting in my American Politics class, my professor highlighted something very interesting. He mentioned that when the United States was taking its first steps as a country, it was not popular to run for president. In fact, nobody really wanted to be president in the late 1700s. It was deemed more popular and acceptable to run for legislative seats because it was the belief that they would hold the greatest prominence in society. If we compare these ideologies to today, we find a stark shift. Nowadays, It is usually hard to discuss politics or government in the United States without some mention of the president. We have accepted that there has been a shift in whom we believe to hold greater power. The intentions of the Founding Fathers was to see the legislative body as yielding greater power, but this belief has shifted to one where we believe the president to be the strongest face of the American body. It seems to have become easier find the power in one person rather than a whole body.

My second civic artifact is the recent speech given by Greta Thunberg on the issues of climate change and the lack of action seen from political professionals. Overall, we can see a connection to my first artifact, the PSA, because they both discuss the issue of climate change. They both touch upon the effects experienced through climate change, but they also vary due to the exact message they portray.

Conservation International is attempting to inform the audience of the true dynamic held between mother nature and human civilization. This was then further used, along with rhetorical devices, to motivate the audience. Greta Thunberg, on the other hand, offers a more condemnatory speech that can be seen as simply informing the audience of the lack of action anyone seems to be performing. The appeals between the two are very similar, but their specific application and how it’s used is different.

Both artifacts heavily employ the appeal to pathos and speaker tone, so they are more effective in delivering the message I discussed above. The methods of the two are different. The PSA draws upon the audience’s emotion via fear. They draw on the fear to help the audience refresh and understand, by bringing to light the true effects that are occurring around us as a result of climate change. This fear can furthermore be seen as a motivator for the audience to act against the disastrous effects that have the potential to bring mass extinction. Contrarily, Greta used an appeal to the audience’s emotions whilst focusing on her personal expression and hoping for the audience to reflect her feelings as well. We are able to see and understand her passion, and this can be reflected onto us as our passion because we care for the environment as well. However, it is not as effective. Secondly, they share similarity in the tones the speaker attempts to embody. In the PSA, the speaker is paralleling to two tones. One is a tone of seriousness and solemnity to highlight the graveness of the issue and to make the audience realize the severity to which they should pay attention. There also is the tone of condemnation. This is used to appeal to a sense of guilt in the audience, and make them realize the true relationships and effects of our actions. Similarly, this tone of condemnation can be seen in usage by Greta Thunberg as well. However, using this tone seems to place her primary concern towards only the political professionals whom are not acting. It can be generalized to the general audience, but it is not as effective because there is no clear commonplace or shared enterprise established to connect the people.

In general, we can see overarching similarities between the two artifacts. Nonetheless, there are differences between the two as well. They share the common theme of climate change, and they both employ the two devices mentioned above. Yet, there is difference in the manner in which they use the devices and the effectiveness of the devices. It can be argued that the PSA is more effective in their applications of the appeal than the speech given by Greta Thunberg.