What makes a good public speaker is exactly what the public needs. One must be able to earn the trust of the audience and in a sense be trustworthy, Being a good speaker obligates you to using your talent for good, because you have the power to influence the thought process of the people in your community. Thus becomes a very important trait of a speaker or a or a leader or a candidate of some sort, because they need to appeal to the majority of the country and at the same time earn the trust of strangers. In Quintilian’s Institutes or Oratory book 12 chapter 1, it is emphasized that “A great Orator must be a good man,” a good man is defined as a good speaker. This is a great attribute that a man of power, a leader, must poses in order to gain the trust of the people and be heard, whether or not what he speaks about is the absolute truth, as long as his intentions are that of a good man, than a fallacy is acceptable for the better good of the public. This becomes evident in Quintilian’s book 12, “A good man, doubtless, will speak of what is true and honest with greater frequency, but even if, from being influenced by some call of duty, he endeavors to support what is fallacious (a case which, as I shall show, may sometimes occur), he must still be heard with greater credit than a bad man.”

In THE SECOND ORATION OF M. T. CICERO AGAINST LUCIUS CATILINA, we see an example of the deliberate fallacy by Cicero:

Cicero was aware of his motions, and knew that he had previously sent a quantity of arms, and military ensigns, and especially a silver eagle which he had been used to keep in his own house with a superstitious reverence, because it had been used by the great Marius in his expedition against the Cimbri. However, he thought it desirable to counteract the story of his having gone into exile, and therefore summoned the people into the forum…….”But as I saw that, since the matter was not even then  proved to all of you, if I had punished him with death, as he had deserved, I should be borne  down by unpopularity, and so be unable to follow up his accomplices, I brought the business  on to this point that you might be able to combat openly when you saw the enemy without  disguise. But how exceedingly I think this enemy to be feared now that he is out of doors,       you may see from this—that I am vexed even that be has gone from the city with but  a small retinue. I wish he had taken with him all his forces. He has taken with him Tongillus, with whom he had been said to have a criminal intimacy, and Publicius, and  Munatius, whose debts contracted in taverns could cause no great disquietude to the republic. He has left behind him others—you all know what men they are, how overwhelmed with debt, how powerful, how noble.”

From this exert we see Cicero trying to bring back the trust of the people, he is trying to expose Catalina as a bad man by finding holes in his previous speech and using them to insert dishonesty and distrust, when in fact he is fully aware that he is delivering a fallacy.

In modern days this is a commonly used practice, trying to find weakness in your opponents speech and using it against them to hinder their trust with the public. We see this most often in presidential debates. Fallacies are powerful when used correctly and for the better good.

httpv://youtu.be/at_gzkwSF4k

We see in this example that Obama has taken something Romney said in a previous debate and has used it out of context to shift the focus of the crowed.