Bob Woodward points out one of BushCo's favorite rhetorical devices

[Pirate Smile]

to bash critics - The Straw Man.

Woodward was interviewed on Russert's CNBC weekend show. He pointed out one of the WH's little tricks that they have used to argue against his book. They have actually used this against almost everyone.

Woodward states in the book that Laura Bush was concerned about Rumsfeld. The WH mischaracterizes (lies) about what the book says. WH states that Woodward claims Laura Bush wanted Rumsfeld to resign, that is not true. Laura Bush denies that she wanted Rummy to resign, Tony Snow does too, so does ... blah, blah, blah.

Of course, the book never said she wanted Rumsfeld to resign. It says she was concerned. Laura couldn't deny that she was concerned but she can deny she called for Rummy to resign. Everyone rails against this mischaracterization of what is actually in the book.

These guys are experts at battling straw men.

The President And The Straw Man

(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.

-snip-
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."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/18/politics/main1419363.shtml

Shockingly, the press actually called Bush on this during the past week. Bush said Democrats don't want to listen to terrorists telephone calls but when the press asked the WH to name one Democrat who had this position - they couldn't name one.

We need to figure out a good way to call them on all their strawmen arguments. It is one of the ways they have turned Democrats into caricatures of themselves.

[Sparkly]

1. Strawmen, false dichotomies, "Some Say,"....

Who HASN'T been aware of these for YEARS??

Is the MSM claiming this suddenly dawned on them, I wonder? If not, why didn't they point it out years and years ago (or at LEAST in 2004??)?!!

Oh well, better late than never, I suppose!

[MADem]

2. Yep, it's a TOTAL surprise to these reporters! They never NOTICED it

...until their corporate bosses took the muzzles off, I guess...

[Sparkly]

4. Reminds me of this Gary Larson cartoon...

[Pirate Smile]

5. The article was from last March. I googled and found a bunch of

articles on Bush's love of the straw man.

Woodward's interview just reminded me of how often and effectively they use it.

[chill_wind]

21. Yes-- here's quite a few. **Where were they for the first 6 years??**

(quickie googling.....)


Making Hay Out of Straw Men (washingtonpost.com)
It is an ancient debating technique: Caricature your opponent's argument, then knock down the straw man you created. In the 2004 campaign, Bush has been ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4757-2004May31.html

Bush's Imaginary Foes - washingtonpost.com
By using this absurd straw-man, Bush leaves that issue unaddressed. Bush: " The terrorists fight us in Iraq for a reason : They want to try to stop a young ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/27/BL2006092701022.html


The President And The Straw Man - CBS News
Mr. Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, ...
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/18/politics/printable1419363.shtml - 67k - Oct 13, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages - Site info

Brendan Nyhan: Post fails to combat latest Bush straw man
The Washington Post quotes the latest absurd straw man argument from President Bush, which he made during a speech in California yesterday: ...
www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/10/post_fails_to_c.html - 22k

Brendan Nyhan: NYT finally covers Bush straw man rhetoric
NYT finally covers Bush straw man rhetoric. The political reporters of the New York Times have consistenly failed to challenge the dissembling of the White ...
www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/09/nyt_finally_cov.html - 24k

The Horse's Mouth
NEWSWEEK FLAGS BUSH STRAW MAN RHETORIC. President Bush loves to beat on straw men in his speeches, so it was great to see Newsweek's Richard Wolffe and ...
www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/09/post_356.html - 34k

Media Matters - Now they tell us: AP exposed Bush's use of straw ...
In addition to those examples of Bush straw man arguments that Loven cited, ... Bush again rolled out the straw man argument during his 2005 campaign to ...
mediamatters.org/items/200603210009 - 42k - Cached - Similar pages - Site info

Bush Using Straw-Man Arguments in Speeches

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 ...
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/03/18/national/w095252S08.DTL&type=printable - 13k

[GreenTea]

7. Perhaps, the reporter saw Keith Olbermann's brilliant rant a couple

of days earlier, pointing out the obvious; name a Democrat, Mr Bush...and that's where the reporter got the idea...most of these mindless reporters can't think of anything on their own...usually they just write what is told to them by Bush, Rove, etc...

If you haven't seen KO's soliloquy, you really are missing some very progressive brilliance...

It's on "Crooks and Liars"

[Pirate Smile]

9. Keith should start having a "straw-man of the day or week" segment.

I'm just trying to think of a way to point these out instead of letting them just be reported like they are a valid statement or argument.

[GreenTea]

13. I think if you suggested it to him...He'd seriously consider it.

It's an excellent idea...However, KO already does "Worst Person in the World"....Still, I'd like to see him do the "Straw Man of the Week"!

[sandnsea]

16. That's an excellent idea

Send it to the DNC, DSCC, DCCC etc too.

[Pirate Smile]

17. Everybody send it. The more, the better.

:)

[chill_wind]

20. Excellent idea! Hammer it every day until more people get it! nt

[cui bono]

3. I hope they keep calling him on his BS. I hate how they do that and how

they don't answer questions yet keep talking anyway and never get called on it. Froomkin had a good column on it recently...

President Bush's angry nonanswers to two straightforward questions yesterday were among the best illustrations yet of his intense aversion to responding to his critics' actual arguments.

Rather than acknowledge and attempt to rebut the many concerns about his policies, Bush makes up inane arguments and then ridicules them.

Here's the transcript of Bush's appearance yesterday alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Let's take a close look at the president's answers to two questions. I've highlighted key passages:

"Q Thank you, sir. Even after hearing that one of the major conclusions of the National Intelligence Estimate in April was that the Iraq war has fueled terror growth around the world, why have you continued to say that the Iraq war has made this country safer?"

"PRESIDENT BUSH: I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent. I'm not surprised the enemy is exploiting the situation in Iraq and using it as a propaganda tool to try to recruit more people to their -- to their murderous ways.

"Some people have guessed what's in the report and have concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree. I think it's naive. I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe."

OK, that's straw-man number one. Nobody I've heard of is suggesting that going on the offense against terrorists is bad. The question at hand is whether going on the offense against Iraq -- which had nothing to do with 9/11 -- made us less safe. By using this absurd straw-man, Bush leaves that issue unaddressed.

<snip>

Bush: "You know, to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience."

Here, Bush paraphrases his critics somewhat accurately. But his ensuing argument is bizarre.

Bush: " We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th. We weren't in Iraq, and thousands of fighters were trained in terror camps inside your country, Mr. President. We weren't in Iraq when they first attacked the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the Cole. We weren't in Iraq when they blew up our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. "

David E. Sanger addresses that one in the New York Times this morning -- in the last two paragraphs of his story: "Mr. Bush has grown increasingly insistent that nothing he has done in Iraq has worsened terrorism. America was not in Iraq during the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, he said, or during the bombings of the U.S.S. Cole or embassies in Africa, or on 9/11.

"But that argument steps around the implicit question raised by the intelligence finding: whether postponing the confrontation with Saddam Hussein and focusing instead on securing Afghanistan, or dealing with issues like Iran's nascent nuclear capability or the Middle East peace process, might have created a different playing field, one in which jihadists were deprived of daily images of carnage in Iraq to rally their sympathizers."

And yet Sanger is being too gentle, because this is perhaps the ultimate Bush straw-man argument, this one so absurd is almost defies description.

No one is suggesting that the invasion of Iraq was responsible for terrorist act that predate that invasion! The argument is that invading Iraq has made the threat of terrorism since then worse than it otherwise would have been. Reciting past terrorist acts is almost laughably nonresponsive. And yet it's a staple of Bush's argument. Let's return to the transcript:

Bush: " My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions. "

But was it a mistake to give them such a powerful and motivating excuse? Bush won't address that one.

more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/09/27/BL2006092701022.html

[boobooday]

6. Why do these strawmen hate America? n/t

[vixengrl]

8. When the press corps has hold of Tony Snow,

they can can call it easy with the "Name One" Maneuver. It's very simple:

"In yesterday's press conference, the President said 'Some say...XXX Madeup straw argument'--can you you name any person the President had in mind when he made that statement?"

The Pres. *should* get called on it directly, but I think Snow's easier to get at.

[Pirate Smile]

11. True. They just have to do it and they let him get away with it for

so long.

It was great when they called them on it. It was actually mentioned quite a few times on CNN and MSNBC. Hopefully, it was plugged other places as well.

[vixengrl]

14. I think that they've got away with it is their disadvantage

if ever/whenever the press decides to really do their job. Sometimes they remember--the point is if they never forget. The politicians, they should remember, are not friends just because they set up a barbecue pit or a dessert table. They remain the focus of the story because what they vote on, what they decide, impact the lives of...well, newspaper readers, t.v. watchers, the guys who they are supposedly doing it for.

But if there was an actively engaged, determined, dogged press looking for good stories to inform and rile the people--muckrakers in the best possible meaning of the term--man alive, our First Amendment would be working like our Forefathers wanted it to. To inform, educate and activate a citizenry. To make democracy more effecient.

[Sad4world]

10. How about

Some say I'm an idiot but Laura don't.

Some folk say I'm a sadist. I'm a happy person.

Some people think I couldn't care less, but I could.

There are some in Washington.

The war is going well somewhere.

Terrorist are yea, well, uh somewhere.



Feel free to make up your own.
I'm feel so proud to be an American.

[Ravy]

12. Some say Bush is an idiot.

Actually, many, many people say that.

[TankLV]

24. I say that - and you can quote me and mention me by name on that...

[sandnsea]

15. They're afraid to debate real men

"They’ll try to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men – or women. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their lies."

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/speech.html?id=17

[fooj]

18. I'm so tired of playing games with these treasonous, rat bastards!

[Felinity]

19. Been noticing this Jr. High debate tactic for a while now K&R nt

[Canuckistanian]

22. Remember this one?

"Some say that brown skinned people can't govern themselves".

Even some Republicans were scratching their heads over that one.

[The Brethren]

23. they've been playing the word-game

since the beginning and getting away with it as long as people are foolish enough to buy it.