Reply #19: Actually, he DOES do this [View All]

repeatedly, as a rhetorical device. In certain situations it is very effective, but I was actually thinking myself that he overdoes it, even before I saw the Safire article.

Obama has a habit in his speeches of trying to come across as the moderate, reasonable voice in a pit of fierce partisanship. If you look at his speeches, he does repeatedly set up the extreme views of the right and the left as strawmen and then places himself in the middle somewhere between them, as a reasonable voice. If I had time to google some of his speeches, I would try to give a bunch of examples, but I am pressed for time here.

The problem with this approach is, first, that it becomes almost a predictable rhetorical trick, thus opening the door to columns like Safire's that will make people disengage when he does it again. The second problem is that he does it even in situations where taking a middle ground is NOT reasonable, and he ends up making caricatures out of his base in order to appeal to the middle. In a recent speech, for example, he tried to stake out a middle ground on abortion which I think unfairly mischaracterized the motives and reasoning of those who favor full choice without lengthy debates about morality and religion.