Category: 
by Obama Pundit
Hector, Obama certainly doesn’t ascribe the straw man argument in regards to health care to any particular person or party, but he nonetheless uses one when he says:
So, one option is just to do nothing.
That is certainly an easy pile of straw to knock down. Yes, one option is to do nothing. Another option is to depend on Scientology to solve our health care problems. Yet another is to pick dandelions. No serious person with an influence over the health care debate sees any of these options as a solution.
An intellectually rigorous person (as he is supposed to be) would not need to use this straw man technique over and over again. A thoughtful policy wonk (as he is also supposed to be) would at least mention the actual position of the other side on something like the issue of controlling health costs (which in this case would be some kind of market-based reform) before debunking it with his own reasoning.
