It was McCain who told a reporter that past gas prices don’t matter. Would you like me to get the quote again?

Oh for heaven’s sake. McCain meant that the last time he actually pumped gas doesn’t matter. The question itself was a suggestive, hostile, irrelevant, “gotcha” type question. I mean, you can practically feel the finger pointed in his face. But he’s right, the fact that he doesn’t pump his own gas doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know about the pain that people are going through, or that he doesn’t know the current price.

And your strawman is a strawman because you presented this nice anecdote about Ford Taurus and the increase in the cost of driving it, but attempted to use it as what McCain was actually dismissing. Again, what McCain was dismissing the notion that being able to understand the situation was somehow directly related to him physically pumping gas.

You decided to change the meaning of McCain’s answer from “No, I don’t think its relevant as to when I last filled my gas tank myself to be able to understand the issue” to “It doesn’t matter to me how much gas prices have gone up”. You have deliberately altered the meaning of his answer to be able to establish a more inflammatory claim that McCain doesn’t care or understand about how raising prices are impacting regular Americans.

THAT is your strawman (as if you don’t really understand that point already).

But the blogosphere will continue to churn out mini-tempests to distract people for 24 hours or so, so that political qualifications start coming down to misdirected quotes or verbal gaffes as opposed to serious discussions. McCain isn’t qualified because he gets angry and says that he doesn’t care about pocketbook issues. Obama isn’t qualified because his minister is a racist, and he thinks there are 57 States in America.

And so it goes…..

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.[1]

Misrepresentation, of course, depends on how you view ones position — this is very subjective. It is my opinion that McCain does not realize what high gas prices really mean to families. I could point out other examples — take his gas tax holiday. It’s a patronizing joke. And if McCain cared so much about gas prices, why hasn’t he championed the development of more alternative fuels throughout his career? ANd why has he become the candidate that those who want to attack Iran will vote for?

Of course, you could call all of these arguments “strawmen” too, I call them opinions based on reason.

To “set up a straw man” or “set up a straw man argument” is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent.

This demeans the fact that my argument was an accurate representation of how gas prices look to Americans, in the face of inflation and wage stagnation. I did not cherry pick one fact out of a complicated situation and claim that the fact represented the whole situation — people really are paying an assload of money for gas these days, and it really is straining their budgets.

Often, the straw man is set up to deliberately overstate the opponent’s position.[1]

It was McCain who told a reporter that past gas prices don’t matter. Would you like me to get the quote again?

A straw man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact a misleading fallacy, because the opponent’s actual argument has not been refuted.[2]

Also, labeling an argument as a “strawman” can serve as a substitute for name calling and character assassination, when the debater otherwise has no points.

I really should be taking this out on TP though. They’re the ones who kick-started this whole charade. Sorry ’bout that.

In writing, there is a concept called “show, don’t tell.” It means that, as a writer, you don’t explain what a character is doing, thinking, or feeling, you show it.

When John McCain says that he’s gone to hundreds of townhall meetings and he communicates with people and they communicate with him, he was telling, not showing. You may feel differently, but I am not going to decide that a candidate understands my concerns as an American and as a voter unless he shows me that he does. Telling me he goes to meetings and talks to people does not do that for me.

On the other hand, he had the perfect opportunity to show his understanding when he was asked that question by the reporter for the Orange County paper. Instead, he shluffed it off as an irritation and an irrelevancy.

Okay. So now I know that he doesn’t understand, no matter how many meetings he goes to or how many people he talks to.

I’d like to point out that in the article in which McCain’s quote is being cherry-picked, he had already answered several questions about the energy issue and the need to provide relief for the American public.

He then is asked a voter-supplied question which quite obviously is meant to touch on how his personal status has removed him from the day-to-day realities of the “common folk”. It was a very straight-forward question of approximately how long it has been since he filled up his car himself and what the cost was:

When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?

“Oh, I don’t remember. Now there’s Secret Service protection. But I’ve done it for many, many years. I don’t recall and frankly, I don’t see how it matters.
I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.”

In other words, ‘I don’t recall when I last filled up my own tank, but I have remained in touch with those who do deal regularly with that issue and I understand their concerns.’

And yes, he knows the current cost for gas. This is from an article on June 18th:

“The price of a gallon of gas in America stands at more than four dollars. Yesterday, a barrel of oil cost about 134 dollars” said McCain. “And various oil ministers and investment firms have confidently informed us that soon we can expect to pay 200 dollars for every barrel, and as much as seven dollars for every gallon of gas.”

In the meantime, incomes have not increased, and high fuel prices have helped lead to other products rising in cost. Coupling this together with the average individual loss of $160 per month to gas prices, it doesn’t take an economic genius to know that this spells B-A-D.

Presidential candidates should not dismiss this.

And if anybody thinks that such thoughts qualify me as being so slimy that I must need multiple showers a day to stay clean, why? How?

Chen, let me ask you this. If you were at a job interview, and the interviewer asked you, “What are your greatest weaknesses?” are you being asked to list all the things you do badly and all of the ways in which your character is flawed?

Meaning is conveyed by much more than just words. When that reporter asked McCain, “When was the last time you pumped your own gas and what did it cost?” he was not asking a nostalgia question. He was not looking for an answer like, “Um, let’s see, last time I pumped my own gas was in 1967 and it cost $1.15 a gallon.”

To begin with, the reporter was asking a question that HE himself had been asked to ask by others — just ordinary Americans. And ordinary Americans are not looking to know what year McCain last pumped gas and what it cost. Ordinary Americans are looking to find out whether McCain and Obama know and understand the seriousness of having to pay $4 a gallon for gasoline — and very soon to be $5, and higher. This is something McCain and Obama do not have to worry about in their own lives. It does not affect their economic well-being or their daily routine at all. I understand that; it’s just the reality of who gets to run for president in this country. But I do want to know that the men who ARE running understand what those gas pump prices mean to ME.

So you can argue up and down all day and all night that the reporter didn’t ask McCain for the current price of gas, and that McCain did NOT say he didn’t know the current price of gas. Because the answer that McCain did actually give the reporter, actually did answer the question the reporter was really asking and the question people really want the answer to.

It’s not about “tact,” Chen. It’s about “getting it.” McCain does not get it. It’s as simple as that. “I don’t see why it’s important to know that” does NOT mean, “I don’t see why it’s important to know what gas cost in 1967.” It means “I don’t see why it’s important to understand the significance of $4 a gallon gasoline to people’s lives.” It means, “I don’t see why it’s important to answer your question seriously or thoughtfully, because I don’t spend my time thinking about the millions of Americans who not only can’t find jobs, but can’t get to a job even if they do find one.”

I believe that most Americans hearing McCain’s answer are going to be more struck by the underlying implications of the way he answered the question, than they are going to be struck by the thought that McCain was talking about the price of gas 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

It matters the way a candidate answers a question with as much subtext and underlying meaning as the price of gas. McCain answered the question in a way that clearly conveyed he found the question itself irritating and unimportant. That’s what people heard and saw when they read what he said.

Hey ! ! Hey ! ! Hey ! !
Whaddya say,

I say, “Kathy for President ! !”

I wonder how many showers per day that bloggers who willingly participate in this slimy exercize, have to take to get clean?