Ethos and Prior Reputation

Aristotle gives his readers an introduction to his views on ethos in the first portion of his Rhetoric, wisely noting that "we believe good men more fully and more readily than others" (182). He then goes on to inform his readers that "this kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of this character before he begins to speak" (182). His view of ethos, at least in this part of the text, is that character is built within each rhetorical situation and that audiences either ignore or should ignore any preconceived notions of character. Is this view of ethos close to how character is really interpreted in rhetorical situations, or does reputation coming into situations actually have a distinct and notable effect?

Most of the modern sources I have read tend to note the importance of ethos both as portrayed in the rhetorical act and as it is understood by the audience due to prior reputation. John Ramage, Johanna Schmertz, Nedra Reynolds, and Michael Halloran (links go to summaries or articles) are few of the academics whose work, at least in my opinion, supports this view. Sure, speakers can slip into different readymade identities during individual speech acts. However, their societal positions also have an impact on which identities they can assume.

Take Barack Obama as an example. What do you think when you see him? Do feel prepared to evaluate his character and ethics only according to what he says, as Aristotle advises? I know I'm not; as a relatively conservative individual (at least when compared to most people in a college environment), I'm already assuming that most of what he has to say will be useless politicking. It may not be fair, but it's true. Ah, the power of prior reputation.