digitalghost - 4:14 pm on Mar 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

Apart from the obvious orator that nearly everyone agrees was a fantastic speaker yet loathsome, I've found a couple of politicos to have flashes of brilliance. Tony Blair comes to mind. Ronald Reagan's inaugural speech was pretty good, Clinton's "Education of Youth" was fantastic but most of the recent politicians seem to lack any enthusiasm for speaking, let alone any training in rhetoric.

Do you think rhetoric is even recognized by the audience now? Or do listeners just assign a pass/fail grade to speeches? Recently, it seems rhetoric has been given a bad rap. As witnessed by all the "just rhetoric" condemnations in the media. Of course, in those cases, I'm not sure the people making the "just rhetoric" statements are using the same definition I use.

Is rhetoric part of the instruction for trial lawyers?