The Inquirer, Trudy Rubin, 15 March 2015
_________________________________________________________________________________
In response to Obama's "weak foreign policy," the Republican party has taken initiatives and strengthened their grasp on international communication. Rubin says that their recent letter to Iran is detrimental to our reputation as a country. She notes that the GOP's criticism of Obama detracts more power from our democratic society and displays it as a weaker player in international relations. Tom Cotton, responsible for the atrocity that is the letter, further discredits future presidents by claiming that the authority of presidential choices are invalid due to the Congress' overarching power to undo them. Despite the rare chance that Congress follows through with declining a presidential statement, Cotton reassures the poor authority of the President. Rubin further recognizes Cotton's supporters and their bad influence on him. She concludes by stating that, because of recent actions taken against the White House, it seems as though the conflict in Iran is more of a domestic, partisan issue than an international one.
Rubin, in creating this article, took a number of strategic approaches to assert that the GOP's letter to Iran hurt us more than it helped. She gives a brief summary of the letter and then draws conclusions based off of that information. Much of it seems rather unbiased due to its simple nature. For example, when Cotton argued that Congress can turn down any presidential choice, it detracts from the reputation of the presidential and invalidates our national authority. To make these conclusions and reinforce their rhetorical appeal, Rubin uses many quotes and even statistics. Most notably, however, is a subtle, but effective ad hominem attack she makes on Tom Cotton: "37-year-old Cotton, in office only two months." By making a note about his occupation-duration and how quickly he jumped the gun, she makes a implicit claim that addresses his character and focuses in on how hasty he jumps to conclusions. He's young and new but already he has made a mistake and been praised for it. The idea that he has been praised for it struck Rubin as peculiar and led her to her final conclusion that it is a partisan issue not an Iranian one.
Comment to Author:
ReplyDeleteRubin, the idea that the Iranian conflict is more a partisan issue is an interesting stance to take on the topic. I admire how you utilized different pieces of support to synthesize and argue your claim. You factor in tensions between the parties subtlety and even make note of their supporters. However, do you think there are other factors? Perhaps you are overgeneralizing the entire parties and should only be discrediting Tom Cotton.
I like how this author establishes that there are some problems in government already, because this helps her message of "Republicans are making everything worse" come off a bit more easily. Her argument is relatively one-sided because it doesn't even mention a possible benefit of Cotton sending his letter to Iran, but it uses enough support from other political thinkers and people who have experience dealing with Iran to show that the GOP's letter can only hurt the situation. I usually tend to stay away from authors that are overly confident in one end of the political spectrum, but here, at least, I think that your pundit is sending an important message about the state of our government in the context of international affairs.
ReplyDeleteSo I read Trudy Rubin's posts last month and she definitely loves foreign policy. I have noticed that her arguments are all fairly logical and less biased, which is surprising in some cases based on her subject matter. Nice job spotting the use of ad hominem, your analysis of that in particular was something I did not notice right away when reading the article and after thinking about it in your way I like the piece even more.
ReplyDeleteOf course, those who want to be more involved with foreign policy believe that President's who focus on domestic issues have "weak foreign policy". That's just the nature of politics. I like the structure of Rubin's articles and I'm highly considering her for my next columnist because I find that people who write about politics tend to have some form of a logical fallacy making it more interesting to analyze.
ReplyDelete