Is Donald Trump convincing or conniving or both?

"Talking takes practice," says a character in The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett's classic detective novel. "I like talking to a man who likes to talk." 

Well, Donald Trump has practiced talking for  long time, and in many ways he's an amazingly effective speaker -- partly because he seems so unschooled in the art of public presentation. But whether he knows it or not, Trump uses techniques of classical rhetoric to great effect. 

Here's an example. Speaking before one of his large and enthusiastic audiences, Trump remarked that he's often described as unqualified to be President of the United States. He then began listing his accomplishments, which were indeed completely different from any other candidate. But he turned this difference to his advantage by grounding everything that he'd done in "the real world," not just politics. 

He'd gone to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, which he described as "one of the hardest schools to get into." Then "he'd made a fortune." Then he'd written a book, The Art of the Deal, which was a New York Times best seller for many months. Then he'd done a TV show, "The Apprentice," which Trump said was a huge hit. In fact, he added as an aside, he had taken the extraordinary step of turning down a renewal of the apprentice for another season -- even though "nobody turns down a renewal" and doing so "cost me millions."

Trump wound up his little biography with a comically sneering reference to the much less authentic credentials of those who were running against him -- "some senators," he said, s if nothing could be lower. There was laughter and applause. 

The rhetorical technique Trump had used -- defending himself against an attack by comparing himself to his attackers in a faux naive tone -- must have a name. I don't know what it is -- yet. But I can find out by consulting one of my favorite websites. It's called "Silva Rhetoricae," which is Latin for "the forest of rhetoric." It's an encyclopedia of ancient classical techniques of public speaking, many of which are used (perhaps unconsciously) by people in the media today. 

You can learn a lot from this site, even if you can't pronounce terms like acoloutha or conduplicatio. But they're all just different forms of bullshit, which comes in a huge number of varieties, each of which has a name. Here's the link: http://rhetoric.byu.edu/