When scanning the spectrum of President Obama’s presidency, it’s difficult to find anything that he does with any kind of competence or skill.
That said, when it comes to erecting straw man arguments, it’s hard to find an equal to President Obama. As demonstrated before, Obama routinely engages in this practice by making a claim and then presenting an alternative or a solution to a problem that does not exist.
The President recently participated in a panel discussion on poverty with Arthur Brooks from The American Enterprise Institute, Georgetown University President Joe DeGioia, and Robert Putnam of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; during his remarks, Obama raised scenarios that simply did not exist. The first was a recall of the good old days when rich people and poor people co-mingled in the same neighborhoods, contrasted with the current “reality” where successful people separate themselves and thus have no clue about life in the middle class:
Later on he is asked about the role of faith based organizations in dealing with poverty, and while he acknowledges their role in combatting poverty, he makes the claim that they spend more time talking about abortion and gay marriage than they do serving the poor:
President Obama doesn’t mention any of these organizations by name. His goal was merely to take a shot at organizations that don’t agree with him on gay marriage and abortion. The effectiveness of aiding the poor is not hindered by faith based organizations taking on certain political and social issues. The Catholic Church doesn’t have problems servicing the poor and less fortunate through their network of charities despite their opposition to the birth control mandate.
Americans gave over $335 billion to charities in 2013. Some of those charities are churches and organizations owned by churches. Despite some of them opposing abortion and gay marriage, they still do a great job servicing the poor.
President Obama might want to just focus on that, instead of erecting a straw man he can then destroy in order to proclaim some kind of moral “victory.”
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