Move over, Socrates, Cicero, and Cato; make room for Bob Dole. He joined these classical masters of rhetoric during the debates by employing a favorite tactic of theirs: It’s called praeteritio (translation: “the process of passing over”). The speaker promises not to mention something, but by saying so, he allows himself the opportunity to mention exactly what he wants. He makes the point by “passing over” it.
Best example from Dole in the first debate: “And I won’t comment on other things that have happened in your administration, of your past, about drugs.” From the second debate: “I have a little foundation for the disabled called the Dole Foundation. We don’t talk about it.”
Dole could stay on this tack in order to keep the attacks on Clinton’s character and behavior above the belt: “I will not mention the fact that Clinton violated campaign-finance laws by allowing an Indonesian family to donate $ 425,000 to the Democratic party,” or “I will not discuss the lowlife pothead who gathered 900 FBI files for the Clinton White House?’
Also on the Latin watch: In Charles Krauthammer’s “Bibi’s Tunnel, Yasser’s War,” in our Oct. 14 issue, we made the mistake of assuming that the plural of casus belli was casi belli. How foolish we were! Casus belli is the plural as well, because casus is, you guessed it, actually a fourth-declension noun. We thank Professor Harvey Mansfield of Harvard for calling this to our attention and for defining grammar up.
