2014: The Political Year in Review by Doyle McManus (4:1)

Doyle McManus' 2014 hits and misses


LATimes, 26 December 2014
______________________________________________________________________________


McManus, in this post, demonstrates great self-criticism and reflection. He marks moments in the 2014 year where his predictions shifted and political campaigns set the country in a figurative civil war. He starts chronologically--beginning with the end of 2013 and where exactly Obama stood as a president. It is here that McManus acknowledges either end of  the spectrum, admitting the failure of Obamacare but displaying faith in the future of Obama's presidency. After his brief analysis of the nation's president, he draws his next argument from elections across the country. McManus inspects the political strength of the senate and its shift from democratic powers to republican powers. Democratic parties lost heavily in Alaska, North Carolina, and a few others, including Louisiana. Following his rather lengthy review of the senate, McManus shifts his gears and moves towards his own predictions over the course of 2014. He makes note of his ability to find out who was running for president very early into the year and even noted the unremitting recurrence of "global chaos" and our willingness to establish it as normal, possibly even exacerbating the problem. Despite these unpleasant realities, McManus makes an effort to end on an optimistic note--revisiting the decrease in unemployment and the end of two wars offers an insight unto where we, as a nation, are headed under Obama's presidency.

Like any other pundit, McManus utilizes many rhetorical strategies to make his central contentions much more believable. In this article in particular, he reviews the 2014 year through a political lens and, in doing so, analyzes his own character. "It's correction time" starts off his article with a small but strong phrase. It quite explicitly states his own ability to self-criticize and attributes credibility to his person. Furthermore, it brings his exigence to the forefront--authors often take years and look at them in review. By beginning near the end of 2013, McManus sets up a strong transition that makes the paper flow seamlessly and click together. He visits the year before briefly to make note of what 2013 prepared for 2014: this is only one of the few clever tricks he uses to structure his paper. However, these strategies are often overshadowed by other effective techniques within his paper. An appeal to logos, in the form of opinions backed by political events, appears more readily to the average reader's eyes. Rhetorical questions often set up and helped execute his arguments. The broad and general questions made elaborating easy but focused. For example, "So how did Obama do? Two out of four" exercises all of the rhetoric mentioned above in two terse phrases. Despite having these opinionated claims, his tone remains humble and grounded but with an air of credibility and reason. "I didn't stay that smart for long, though" summarizes his willingness to accept his faults throughout the year. Self-scrutiny is important to any persuasive argument as it indicates a knowledge of  both sides and attributes credibility through this knowledge. He even notes one of his articles in particular where he abused his literary license to populate his audience: "What went wrong? My journalistic bias kicked in. In terms of structure, this piece seems to border informality and formality. It is, as I mentioned before, inflated with opinions. These opinions are occasionally placed in awkward one line paragraphs that dedicate extra attention to the phrase but seem rather inappropriate. While his opinions were both insightful and interesting, they could have just as easily been placed at the start of the following paragraph, which often addressed his opinion and backed it with evidence.

Regardless of how the article was executed, I can tell that I will enjoy what Doyle McManus has to offer for the rest of January. His writing is excellent: it is riddled with interesting, opinionated perspectives and I find his tone both apt and appealing.