Aristotle famously writes at the beginning of his Politics that “man is by nature a political animal.” This is because “man alone of the animals has speech [logos].” Logos is typically translated as “reason.” But it is also accurately translated in different contexts as—among other possibilities—speech, word, argument, or account. The King James Version of the gospel of John memorably opens:

In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word [logos] was with God, and the Word [logos] was God.

The Greek text could reasonably be translated:

In the beginning was Reason, and Reason was with God, and God was Reason.

As speech, logos is not just an uttered sound, but a sound carrying thought—speech with reason. And not just incidentally reasonable or thoughtful speech, but chosen or selected thoughtful speech, carrying the meaning of the Greek verb lego, to which logos is related. Our English words “select” and “elect” and “collect” are all etymologically related to this word. So logos was intrinsic to the recent election and is intrinsic to all elections.

The logos that makes man a political animal is not just an utterance expressing pain or pleasure, or even merely asserting advantage or disadvantage, but an utterance indicating in some way what is right and wrong, just or unjust—ultimately, an utterance indicating what is good. The political community is the community of those beings exercising this faculty together to determine the justice by which they will live together and the good at which together they will aim—a good for the sake of which we do all the things we do, alone and together. 

Logos may be intrinsic to all elections, but there was some strange logos in this historic election. In his disastrous debate with his challenger, president Biden’s speech (logos) seemed to lose all connection with his reason (logos). That was the beginning of the end for him. In the famous “word salads” of Vice President Kamala Harris there seems no intended connection between logos as reason and logos as word. The words flow out randomly, rhythmically, repetitiously, apparently unburdened by any concern for meaning.

Donald Trump has his own remarkable logos. In his case, there is a lively and active connection between logos as reason and logos as word, but it is a highly unconventional connection. Christopher Caldwell has an entertaining and instructive essay in the forthcoming issue of Claremont Review of Books, titled “Speaking Trumpian.” There is no doubt that Donald Trump possesses or invented a unique brand or tempo of political speech and that his political speech has had a profound influence on American politics.

Typically his words come in fragments of reason or thought, which interrupt one another in rapid succession in a series of tangents. Trump is so conscious of this pattern of speech and thought that he has given it a name, “the weave.” When you accumulate too many tangents and they don’t tie back together and get resolved, then “your weave is too wide.” At his rally in Madison Square Garden, Trump was explaining to fans in the highly enthused crowd that Kamala Harris needs a teleprompter just to say good morning to her husband, and that any serious politician must be able to talk without a teleprompter. A fan called out, “You gotta do the weave!”

Trump even has a very recognizable “body language,” which went viral after the election. The whole world is doing “the Trump” on camera, that signature move he developed on stage at his rallies—easy right-left arm pumps to the tempo of YMCA or whatever music is going at the moment, sometimes with a smooth golf swing to cap it off.

Two of the most promising voices to gain national prominence in this election are J. D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy. Among the many notable things said by Ramaswamy was that politicians should stop using teleprompters. We have much cringeworthy evidence from the election—especially from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—of the complete disjunction caused by teleprompters between words and thought. As Caldwell points out, Vance adds another dimension to the word and thought connection: crafting stories. Socrates—the greatest merely human connector of thought and word—jokes at the beginning of Plato’s Republic that reasoned words can’t persuade someone who won’t listen. Vance suggests that crafting stories may be an effective, even necessary, way for reason to break through all the irrational noise pervading and distorting our public discourse in these woke-addled times.

Both of these smart, articulate, young political men effectively broke through the almost impenetrable propaganda barriers and engaged hostile interviewers and political opponents in something verging almost on actual conversation. If I understand the numbers, over 75 million people watched Trump have a three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan. Everybody in the world recognized that neither Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden are capable of … conversation. The mere possibility of conversation in American politics could be revolutionary. It is grounds for hope that it may yet be possible—within reasonable limits!—for logos, as reasoned speech, to govern a country, even to make it great again.