Senator Jeff Flake's Anti-Trump Speech of January 17, 2018, Part 2: Did His Conservative Credibility Help? Or Hurt?

Senator Jeff Flake, from his Senate website

I did promise to talk about Senator Jeff Flake's credibility. He gave a fire-breathing speech on the Senate floor about what he described as President Donald Trump's attack on truth. Aristotle said that credibility--ethos--was a speaker's most powerful mode of persuasion, and modern research has tended to confirm Aristotle's insight. Thesis: Flake's credibility as a conservative made his speech more credible, but giving the speech cost him credibility with his fellow conservatives.

Credibility gets complicated. Credibility means that a speaker is believable. That is different from being accurate. Unfortunately, audiences sometimes believe people who are not accurate, and refuse to believe speakers who tell the truth. One thinks of the Greek myth of Cassandra. Apollo cursed Cassandra so she would always tell the truth, but never be believed. She was accurate and reliable, but not credible. It comes down to audience perception: it's not whether a speaker is accurate, but whether the audience thinks that the speaker is accurate.

In his book The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle explained how speakers can present themselves to improve their credibility or ethos. In contrast, modern rhetoricians often talk about ethos as pre-existing, that is, they figure that the audience already knows things about the speaker and has formed ideas as to whether they want to believe what the speaker says. Also, credibility is relative to the audience. A Catholic audience might find the Pope to be more credible than would a non-Catholic audience.

1. Flake Spoke to Enhance His Own Credibility

Flake did, indeed, say things in his speech to enhance his ethos as a real conservative. He started by quoting Thomas Jefferson:

"Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident...' So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth." 

Conservatives often express great reverence for our nation's founders, although, unfortunately, they often do not really know what the founders said or believed. Quoting Jefferson helped Flake to establish his conservative bona fides.

Also, Flake pointed out that when Trump called the press the "enemy of the people," he echoed Josef Stalin, whom conservatives have traditionally considered to be a fount of evil.

Flake also mentioned "American values: "Mr. President, every word that a president utters projects American values around the world." American values are, of course, conservatism's touchstone.

2. Flake's Previous Work Made Him More Credible

Flake had for years advocated the Republican Party's most thoroughgoing fiscal and government conservatism. A liberal Democrat who complained about Donald Trump could be dismissed as a partisan hack. But Flake was a conservative Republican. That makes his complaints harder to dismiss. (Not that Mr. Trump's supporters won't dismiss him! They will!).  He spoke against his own party, which makes him more credible.

3. Speaking Out Reduced Flake's Credibility

Since people make political decisions in partisan ways, Flake conservative bona fides are not unlimited. Once he came out against Mr. Trump, conservatives could either (1) admit that he had a point and that Mr. Trump was, indeed, attacking truth, or (2) simply dismiss Flake as no longer a real conservative. Conservative Arizona politician Kelli Ward said that it was "appalling" that Flake would compare Trump to Stalin.

Or, to put it another way: if you lack interest in truth, then you will not want to believe Senator Flake. Still, think how much better things would have gone for Troy if the people had believed her when  Cassandra warned them about the Trojan horse!


In an upcoming post, I'll talk about how people on both sides interpreted Flake's speech through a partisan lens.