Editorial: Some might say it’s unfair

Thursday, March 23, 2006 | 7:22 a.m.

In a political climate increasingly influenced by blogs and talk radio, political analysts say President Bush is relying more heavily on publicly winning rhetorical arguments with nameless critics to whom he merely refers as "some."

According to a recent Associated Press analysis of Bush's speeches and comments on various issues, the president has increasingly used the so-called "straw man" technique to present his position as preferable to that of his critics.

The device's name refers to a person stating an opposing view - often exaggerated - and attributing it to a vague person or group of people, then strongly disagreeing with that viewpoint and presenting his or her own opinion. Thus, the person defeats a straw man of his or her own creation.

It is a device long used by politicians, but Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenburg Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, told the AP that frequent use of the word "some" suggests that the number of people supporting a particular viewpoint "is much larger than is actually out there."

Wayne Fields, a presidential rhetoric specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, told the AP that Bush's liberal use of generalities in referring to his critics presents "a bizarre kind of double talk" that compromises legitimate discussion of the issues. "It's such a phenomenal hole in the national debate that you can have arguments with nonexistent people," Fields said. All politicians use the device, he said, but "what's striking here is how much this administration rests on a foundation of this kind of stuff."

What kind of stuff? For example, regarding the war in Iraq, Bush said, "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," and, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free." Speaking on health care earlier this year Bush said, "There are some really decent people who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."

Hardly anyone in mainstream politics, the AP points out, has made such assertions. But the president would have Americans believe that the vast number of his opponents represent the most extreme positions.

The technique isn't simply unnerving, it is unfair to Americans whose futures and lives are at stake and who deserve to hear open and honest discussion and criticism about the measures that affect them. And it shows just how far this administration will go to gloss over its questionable decisions, from taking our nation to war, to abandoning sound environmental policies to burdening our children with a record-breaking national debt.