March 18, 2006

The Strawman

Bush talks about him all the time.

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.

...

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."

Now, if we could just do something about the use of the Strawfeminist.

Posted by binky at March 18, 2006 08:03 PM | TrackBack | Posted to


Comments

And the beat goes on. Rummy in the Post:

Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.
That's not a conclusion -- it's a hollow apothegm. But then the administration has been confusing the two for as long as it's been in power. More:
Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.
I'm sorry, but that does qualify as a variation on Godwin's law, no? Anyway, turning our backs is what we do -- on Pakistan, on North Korea, on Islamo-fascism in Uzbekistan, on the brewing disaster in Saudi Arabia . . . . Of course, because we have not warred with them, we have not vanquished them, and hence the analogy to any "post-war" nation is inapt. When it comes to those countries, it's more like we never engaged Germany at all. Not quite as tidy, but at least as true. Posted by: moon at March 19, 2006 09:12 AM | PERMALINK
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