Fred Stone and his allies say that Americans don't deserve the Bill of
Rights, I disagree
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/18/politics/main1419363.shtml
The President And The Straw Man
WASHINGTON, March 18, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(AP) "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is
lost and not worth another dime or another day," U.S. President George
W. 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, Mr. 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.
Mr. 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, Mr. 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."
Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. Bush
himself first opposed, but at letting agency workers go without the
usual civil service protections.
Running for re-election against Senator John Kerry in 2004, Mr. 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, Senator John McCain.
Straw men have made more frequent appearances in recent months, often
on national security, once Mr. 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, Mr. 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 Mr. 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 Republican
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, Mr. 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,"' Mr. 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, Mr. 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."
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 2 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2317 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
-----
"Ahhhhhh, yessssssss, ummmmmmm - Alito, Alito, Alito"
-duke (duckgumbo@cox.net), aka PedophilEarl J Weber, 59
year old mateless, heirless biological failure
of Afton Oaks Apartment, Baton Rouge,who pussied
out of the Vietnam draft, showing his gay side
despite his avowed anti-gay bigotry
Contact duke's priest and ask
him why duke is such a racist:
http://www.stpatrickbr.org/
Father Gerard "Jerry" Martin
stpatrickbr<AT>bellsouth<DOT>net
Saint Patrick Catholic Church
12424 Brogdon Lane
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70816
.
|
