President Obama’s critics (including me) have complained a lot that his speeches are littered with intellectually dishonest and politically slanderous straw-men arguments. Now, in a must-read analysis piece in this weekend, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper agrees:

To listen to President Obama, a veritable army of naysayers has invaded Washington, urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country.

“There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more,” Mr. Obama told a town-hall-style meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., on March 18. “Well, I say our challenges are too large to ignore.”

Mr. Obama did not specify who, exactly, was saying America should ignore its challenges.

Similarly, the next day in Los Angeles, Mr. Obama took on Wall Street and Washington, two of his favorite straw men. …

Obama’s reliance on straw-men arguments is one of the reasons I’ve written that Obama’s communications-abilities are over-rated, since a great communicator can advocate his or her own positions without mischaracterizing others’.

Tags: communications, myths, new york times, obama