Trump the Aristotelian: Why he's winning

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the Greek philosopher, founded communications theory some 2,500 years ago and articulated it in his work on both politics and rhetoric. The two go together.

He said that persuasion comes from combining three elements in the right degree. Donald Trump has borrowed this magical elixir and is using it to get elected president. Trump is an Aristotelian – perhaps without knowing it.

What are those elements?

Any speaker (consider Trump on the stump) makes speeches on certain occasions (today in person, online, on television and in print) to a given audience (targeted to location, theme and group) in order to have effect (get votes to win an election or sell a bill of goods).

The process is linear and simple. The model in politics and business is speaker-centered. Trump has become expert at tailoring his comments to make a defined set of arguments to a very targeted audience and in a very specific situation. His objective has been to persuade. His rhetoric is emphatic. He has or is convincing the voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and soon the entire country that he, alone (well, with their help), can do one thing, namely: "make America great, again."

What is Trump's Ethos? In other words, what makes him credible? What is his "street cred," in the modern vernacular? You need this to establish a first line of communication, and that has to be believable. Trump 's credibility is tied to his business acumen and success. It helps that he is universally recognizable as the chairman of the board on a popular TV reality show.

What is Trump's Logos? He is employing the means of persuasion by using logic, data and facts to get people to understand the situation we are facing as a country in decline and by saying he, as speaker and potential president, has a sense of reasonableness. How is he demonstrating that he knows what he is talking about and that he is in command of the present political and economic reality? He is doing that by stating figures on where we have gone down the wrong path and how that could be righted.

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What is Trump's Pathos? His art of appealing to people's emotions is working. The emotional bond he deploys is captivating audiences as they feel connected both to him as leader and to his message. He is one of them. He gets their predicament. He is able to make voters see he can do something no one else can. Clearly, he is going to do things differently. He gets things done.

Have you heard of the 60-40 Rule?

It is simply this: You need 60 percent of your message to be Pathos to succeed. And for Trump that means he is emotively tapping into something the American public feels. They feel it because it surrounds them and angers them. It is ignored by the mainstream media and the majority of political leaders who have gamed the system to benefit themselves and the special interests that put them into power.

Here's what Trump comprehends that other politicians don't seem to get this year. Trump knows that to persuade is to influence someone by appealing to reason. But it gets you only so far. This is where emotion fits in. Trump is passionate, and his popular appeal to a future state of "greatness" is something America and Americans once enjoyed and long to again.

The voters want to have economic growth, military resolve, cultural integrity, national sovereignty and prosperity – again. It is both enlivening and powerfully optimistic. As Trump says, America is "crippled" – but doesn't have to stay that way. We did it to ourselves, and Washington, D.C., is the reason why. Change the way Washington works and most all of Obama's policies, and we can revert to our past default path: greatness.

Trump knows that without stories you can't convince people. He knows this is why his own story is paramount. So, too, is that of all the entrepreneurs and all those who benefit in their wake. He utilizes theses stories to encourage people. The electorate has come to believe for the first time that only a businessperson, not some lawyer cum politician, can get us out of this mess and into a new cycle of American nirvana.

Logic alone doesn't work. Dale Carnegie said so in his many books on how to succeed. He was the premiere American pioneer in public speaking and personality development. He is perhaps the most well-known author in the field of communication and public speaking. Born in Maryville, Missouri, he grew up on a small farm and endured the struggles and poverty of rural life. He had a strong belief that the quickest way to develop a person's self-esteem was by public speaking. His book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" was published in 1930 and has now sold well over 10 million copies.

Carnegie truly believed in the saying, "Believe that you will succeed, and you will." He said, "There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it." Trump seems to have tapped the spirit of Carnegie and resonates his formulas. People like success. They like confidence and want to be with a winner. They also want a country that succeeds.

In recent times, brain scans have shown the same thing Carnegie intimated, only with more scientific backing than intuition. MRIs studying brain activity demonstrate that the brain lights up when a person feels success. Trump may be the only candidate who realizes this. He may be smarter than anyone else running – give him credit for that – and his "outsider" status in an election cycle that seeks to throw off the mantle of the insider "political class," no matter which party it represents, is also both good fortune and good timing.

But without Ethos, Logos and especially Pathos, it wouldn't matter. Get those right and you win. Trump has discovered the right formula and is on a roll. Only hubris, the dreaded Greek disease of ego, could take him down a notch. Showing some degree of humility may therefore be on order for The Donald as he moves to the general election.