Posted on 03/22/2006 10:44:07 AM PST by Alas Babylon!
"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.
Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free."
"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."
Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.
When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.
The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.
He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" - conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.
Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic.
Because the "some" often go unnamed, Bush can argue that his statements are true in an era of blogs and talk radio. Even so, "'some' suggests a number much larger than is actually out there," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
A specialist in presidential rhetoric, Wayne Fields of Washington University in St. Louis, views it as "a bizarre kind of double talk" that abuses the rules of legitimate discussion.
"It's such a phenomenal hole in the national debate that you can have arguments with nonexistent people," Fields said. "All politicians try to get away with this to a certain extent. What's striking here is how much this administration rests on a foundation of this kind of stuff."
Bush has caricatured the other side for years, trying to tilt legislative debates in his favor or score election-season points with voters.
Not long after taking office in 2001, Bush pushed for a new education testing law and began portraying skeptics as opposed to holding schools accountable.
The chief opposition, however, had nothing to do with the merits of measuring performance, but rather the cost and intrusiveness of the proposal.
Campaigning for Republican candidates in the 2002 midterm elections, the president sought to use the congressional debate over a new Homeland Security Department against Democrats.
He told at least two audiences that some senators opposing him were "not interested in the security of the American people." In reality, Democrats balked not at creating the department, which Bush himself first opposed, but at letting agency workers go without the usual civil service protections.
Running for re-election against Sen. John Kerry in 2004, Bush frequently used some version of this line to paint his Democratic opponent as weaker in the fight against terrorism: "My opponent and others believe this matter is a matter of intelligence and law enforcement."
The assertion was called a mischaracterization of Kerry's views even by a Republican, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
Straw men have made more frequent appearances in recent months, often on national security - once Bush's strong suit with the public but at the center of some of his difficulties today. Under fire for a domestic eavesdropping program, a ports-management deal and the rising violence in Iraq, Bush now sees his approval ratings hovering around the lowest of his presidency.
Said Jamieson, "You would expect people to do that as they feel more threatened."
Last fall, the rhetorical tool became popular with Bush when the debate heated up over when troops would return from Iraq. "Some say perhaps we ought to just pull out of Iraq," he told GOP supporters in October, echoing similar lines from other speeches. "That is foolhardy policy."
Yet even the speediest plan, as advocated by only a few Democrats, suggested not an immediate drawdown, but one over six months. Most Democrats were not even arguing for a specific troop withdrawal timetable.
Recently defending his decision to allow the National Security Agency to monitor without subpoenas the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorist ties, Bush has suggested that those who question the program underestimate the terrorist threat.
"There's some in America who say, 'Well, this can't be true there are still people willing to attack,'" Bush said during a January visit to the NSA.
The president has relied on straw men, too, on the topics of taxes and trade, issues he hopes will work against Democrats in this fall's congressional elections.
Usually without targeting Democrats specifically, Bush has suggested they are big-spenders who want to raise taxes, because most oppose extending some of his earlier tax cuts, and protectionists who do not want to open global markets to American goods, when most oppose free-trade deals that lack protections for labor and the environment.
"Some people believe the answer to this problem is to wall off our economy from the world," he said this month in India, talking about the migration of U.S. jobs overseas. "I strongly disagree."
Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
LSM pissed that Bush uses their own tactics against them! SCREW ALL LSM MEDIA and THEIR REPORTERS/NEWS MANUFACTURERS!
LLS
President Bush not only turned the tables on them this time, he shoved it against the wall, walked out the room and locked the door.
MSM are the ones trapped in a bubble which alternative media have been pricking with needles for some time. It escalated with Dan Rather's fiasco where a sharp rapier was thrust into that bubble. The President added his own sharp instrument to the bored partisan condescending MSM's WH press corps bubble.
Popcorn will be at the ready when the bubble's last gasping hiss is heard.
"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.[snip]
Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.
Care to fill her mailbox with examples of just such negativity from congressmen(D) and "journalists"? How about those activists of the antiAmerican War movement?
Or are they all outside of the mainstream?
idiotorial, not editorial.
"Sources close the White House...", wellll actually they served under an earlier administration but they DID work in the White House once...
They're in denial and are still trying to cover their tracks, but with GPS we don't need to follow the tracks anymore.
The President should have held Helen Thomas accountable for media abuses where they completely fabricated interviewees, prisoners, documents, and abuse photos.
What publications do I refer to? Obscure fringe sources like the NY Times, Boston Globe, CBS Nightly News...
"Get Bush" is Zogbyism. FAR worse than McCarthyism ever was. McCarthy claimed to have a list of names (which his critics claim fluctuated) but did they ever see his list? Who did he wrongly identify as a Communist?
The press routinely fabricates evidence. OLD OLD Communist trick.
Make this antiAmerican shill pay for the sins of her crooked industry.
If this is not an editorial, it should be front page news when the author is fired. Please tell me this is an editorial. Otherwise it should be saved for all time as proof positive that the AP is not in any way objective, and never again should anyone question conservatives when they talk about the liberal press.
We can make them ALL pay buy refusing to buy their papers and stop supporting their advertisers.
I kid you not. This was in the Sunday edition of my local small city rag posted in the national News section.
Yes, I remember that well. "The American people understand lying about sex to protect your family's honor". I used to laugh and wonder then how screwing the help did his family any honor in the first place!
Because whenever the president names his critics, the following media story is how "the president is attacking his critics--this from a man who promised to change the tone in Washington." The guy can't win and the media can go to hell.
I would think that unless I've been dreaming for the past couple of years that probably all of the so-called "strawman" arguments are factual. Just not to this moonbat, who absolutely proves the liberal press point.
I can't look them up now, but would love to see her flooded with quotes. I'll try when I have a moment (probably Brent Bozell's site?).
I guess Jennie lives in a bubble if she isn't aware of how many people/entities fall into the category of "some" as the Prez talked. For every claim he made, I'd wager a month's pay that anyone with 10 minutes and a decent internet connection could find a hadful of examples with the sources of who made the statements or insinuated the opinions to each of them.
And women who want to be men love unmanly men...
Get their house organs out of our public schools and libraries as well. The lies of today become the reference materials of tomorrow.
"Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.
[snip]
Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.
Rhetoric ??
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