Personality tests often separate people into two broad categories: thinkers and feelers. Thinkers are people who make decisions based on logic and hold truth over fact.  Feelers, by contrast, base their decisions on the emotions of themselves and others. In order to persuade an audience, knowing the type of person or peoples that the speaker will address will greatly aide in the overall outcome. More specifically, a feeler will respond to pathos while a thinker will respond to logos.  When President Obama delivered his remarks on a World-Class Education to the McGavock Comprehensive High School in Nashville, Tennessee, his speech depended heavily on pathos over logos in order to persuade the public to be in favor of his own opinions. President Obama, or whoever wrote the speech, must have determined that the best way to persuade this audience was to tug on their emotional stings rather than lay down hardcore, cold facts. Toward that end, the president used personal stories of himself, praise and recognition of the achievements of the community, and a final tale about a person from the community.

Ethos is to convince by the character of the author. In this case, the author is President Obama whose title alone puts forth a high standard of credibility, but only in relation to any factual information he presents. In other words, no one will really doubt a statistical fact that he states because he probably has his facts right. Although another kind of ethos the president presented was of an experiential credibility of sorts; for example, one would place more trust in someone who has changed a tire before than someone who has never changed a tire. President Obama built this experience credibility, a type of ethos, by telling multiple jokes and stories of his own childhood; the humor made for better communication since everyone likes a joke now and then. Such projections influenced the crowd to see the president as not only the leader of the free world, but as someone that has been through what they are going through and therefore can be trusted in judgment. Obama emulated this compatibility factor by relating himself to struggling students, families of low income, and single-parent households. By giving the audience the chance to relate to President Obama, he might not have only played a sympathy card, but also created a level communication field. People in general will openly listen more to their equals versus those above them because they won't feel a threat of personal power struggle; Obama eliminated this threat by using personal stories to create compatibility and foster open communication.  His story continued to include his mother's persistence on education, even overseas, and was able to relate to students how tough school was. The final point of this personal story was that every young person in America should have the same chance to attend the best schools in the country and get a quality education no matter what. Without this story of his personal struggle with education and then his revelation of how important education is, people wouldn't be able to emotionally connect with what he was saying.

Tennessee is a red state, so the challenge presented to President Obama was how to appeal to an audience that may already be harboring negative feelings. This situation is similar to an animal that is ill-mannered towards you; the way to get them to like and listen to you is through praise and goodwill. Barack Obama did exactly that and opened the minds and hearts of his audience through emotional praise. This pathos persuasion concept employed here is that when the subject feels good about themselves they find no loss in openly listening to what is being said by someone they initially do not like. By opening with many thanks to a lot of members in the community, he builds the audience's pride in their community. For instance, he says, "I wanted to come here today because I've heard great things about this high school and all of you." This first instance of praising the audience is followed by more detailed examples of the audience's success. By the end of such praise who would not be glowing with satisfaction. Through this use of pathos, Obama is emotionally priming the audience to be more open to his opinions on where a world-class education should head; this increases the chances of agreement because of their good mood and open-mind.

President Obama closes his speech with an emotional story about the success of a member of the community. By pointing out Sara and Mr. Randall in the crowd, he creates a tangible connection to partner with the emotional connection he has already created. This story connects the success the community has experienced, the good feelings from praise, and the concept of a good education. Sara, her story, and her end result is what Obama wants everyone to remember as the lasting result that his plans for education will create. The audience is feeling good about themselves and they have been told how education has affected the President of the United States, so now they are seeing firsthand how a good education affected one individual close to them. Obama is tugging on the emotions of others with Sara's story in order to make one last push for positive feelings of agreement towards his remarks on world class education.

While some arguments are best with facts, there are some audiences that would glass over when overloaded with logic. President Obama saw this fault in trying to persuade teenagers, parents, and teachers with facts on education. Where he could have stated the statistics of how Tennessee, or Nashville, or just McGavock Comprehensive High School were doing well in terms of education, graduation, and success, he used emotional stories. By using this pathos-heavy strategy with stories from his own past, praising the current success of the education system in Tennessee, and then a personal success story from the community, President Obama succeeds in creating good feelings of emotion, and ultimately agreement, towards his remarks on a world-class education. Barack Obama was able to take any ill-feelings towards him and set them aside through the use of praise. Obama was able to firmly place good thoughts towards his ideas for education. Final good will towards Obama's education ideas were hammered home with the personal success story of someone close to them in the community. Barack Obama was able to effectively persuade his audience to agree on what is a World-Class education through a pathos-heavy method of emotional connections and persuasion.
