It appears as if many people (including some at the NY Times) don’t understand the true meaning of the phrase “straw man argument”. Today’s Teachable Moment will introduce you to two alleged straw man arguments and explain why one is a true straw man while the other is not.

Here’s a good definition of the “straw man” fallacy:

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of “reasoning” has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

A perfect example of a straw man argument would be something like this:

“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.” –President George W. Bush, 2006

See what’s happening there? In order to bolster his own argument, President Bush suggested that his critics believed that “going on the offense” against our enemies “makes us less safe”. The problem? His critics never actually signed up to that point of view. Bush came up with a fictional position in order make himself look better by easily knocking it down.

Why is this important? It appears that Karl Rove (Premier Bush’s master straw man manufacturer) has been successfully peddling the meme that President Obama is a wild straw man user.

The problem? President Obama’s critics are actually saying the nutty things he is accusing them of. As publius explained:

The difference between Bush and Obama’s arguments is fairly simple — Bush just made stuff up, while Obama’s critics are actually making the critiques that Obama attributes to them.

Consider this passage from a NY Times piece, which — amusingly enough — was written to prove that Obama makes straw man arguments:

Mr. Obama’s straw men are not limited to the economy. On his maiden overseas trip, he shot down one after another in quick succession, for the benefit of students in Istanbul. “Some people say that maybe I’m being too idealistic,” he said. “I made a speech in Prague about reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons, and some people said, ah, that will never happen. And some people have said, why are you discussing the Middle East when it’s not going to be possible for the Israelis and the Palestinians to come together? Or why are you reaching out to the Iranians, because the U.S. and Iran can never agree on anything?”

Who would not be ready to cheer the knockdown of such pessimism after all that? “If we don’t try, if we don’t reach high, then we won’t make any progress,” Mr. Obama concluded.

To Mr. Obama’s credit, several pundits, including the Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum (who called his no-nukes speech “quixotic”), dumped cold water on the idea of getting to a nuclear-free world anytime soon. And White House officials pointed to columns in both The New York Times (William Kristol) and The Washington Times (Jeffrey Kuhner) that criticized Mr. Obama for trying engagement with Iran’s leaders.

Do you see now why that isn’t a straw man? Obama said that some people have criticized him for being too idealistic about calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. In the same article, the author conveniently points us to the critics who have been saying exactly that! Instead of proving the point that Obama is a reckless straw man user, the author’s own examples categorically refute this premise!

If you want a pithy phrase to sum up today’s lesson, let’s turn the old saw “you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you” into “you’re not knocking down straw men if your opponents really are saying that about you”.

I’ll let Steve Benen play us out:

It’s just a bizarre case against the president. The article accuses Obama of using straw men, and then points to examples proving the opposite.

I have no idea why articles like these get published.