Obama: Straw Man Arguments Galore ("my way or the highway")

Obama, the Solver [David Freddoso]


Rep. Scott Garrett (R, N.J.) spoke to NRO late last night about Obama's performance in the presser. Among the things he pointed out was a classical rhetorical device that Obama uses well, even if its origins go back millennia.

I think he gave, on a couple of occasions, a false choice — "Either we do this," he said, and laid out his plan, "or the alternative is, we do nothing at all." I heard that a couple of times, and I thought, that's not a very accurate assessment of the situation. He's assuming that either you do it his way or the highway, because there's no alternative. And we know — or I know, as a member of the Republican Study Committee and as a Republican — that there have been a slew of alternatives proposed, not just by the Republican Party but from I'll say half of America, in the sense of outside groups. There are a number of alternatives, but he just seems to reject them immediately them out of hand.

I thought of a few of Obama's statements along these lines. We choose either his entire program of massive deficit spending or we choose "an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices, and maxed-out credit cards." We either choose his budget, which is "inseparable from this recovery," or we go back to "the very same policies that have led us to a narrow prosperity and massive debt."

Obama frames himself as the man with all of the solutions. Even if America has experienced noteworthy bubbles and busts of some kind in nearly every decade of its existence, we've never had a leader like Barack Obama before. Maybe we can prevent it from ever happening again:

[T]he most critical part of our strategy is to ensure that we do not return to an economic cycle of bubble and bust in this country...The budget I submitted to Congress will build our economic recovery on a stronger foundation so that we don't face another crisis like this 10 or 20 years from now.

Those who have other ideas, who worry about nationalization of the economy, the doubling of the national debt in six years, and who fear that they are watching the nation collectively drink Drano to fix its stomach-ache — we call them "nay-sayers." This is a large part of the Democratic Party message these days — for example, I received this fundraising e-mail from Rep. Claire McCaskill (D, Mo.) the other day:

Dear David,

The people want action. Period.

Senate Democrats are ready to turn President Obama's bold prescription for the country into the law of the land. But Republicans just keep standing in our way.

This does not resemble the bipartisan tone upon which President Obama campaigned. But if you were naive enough to buy any of that in the first place, you're just getting what you deserve now. The more important question is what happens if Obama's historically unique insights and solutions prove disastrously wrong? Where will that leave us?