the"straw man"device;Bush's attempt to make himself appear reasonable

U.S. News & World Report
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSHS_STRAW_MEN?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-03-20-06-58-37

Mar 20, 6:58 AM EST

Bush's Rhetoric Targets Unnamed Critics

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "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."
.

One strawman after another was set up and knocked down. He was on a roll.

by giving examples from what * says?

I have been calling "straw man" on this president from the beginning. You'd think in all of that time, someone would step forward and teach the American people about this rhetorical device in very explicit terms, using real life quotes from the pResident, and do some comparison and contrast point by point to illustrate exactly what the exaggeration is and how reasonable the truth is in comparison.

but honestly, it works better done on a grassroots level.

I won a couple of people over in the last election when I explained it to them. Keep in mind, these were fairly intelligent, but not politically savvy types, but it worked.

We need to do it ourselves as much as possible. There are some people completely lost to us; don't waste the time on them.

But once fence-sitters see that they are being manipulated as much as Bush does it, you can almost see the light come on in their brains.