Obama and the False Choice argument

Ruth Marcus at Wapo points out that Barack Obama uses the 'false choice' argument in virtually every policy area to persuade.

President Obama has employed the false-choice device in assessing financial reform, environmental regulation, defense contracting, civil liberties, crime policy, health care, the deployment of troops in Iraq, Native Americans, the space program and, most recently, the situation in Libya.

On his South American trip, he pulled off a false-choice trifecta, citing “the old stale debates between state-run economies and unbridled capitalism; between the abuses of right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing insurgents; between those who believe that the United States causes all the region’s problems and those who believe that the United States ignores all the problems.” All three, Obama said, “are false choices, and they don’t reflect today’s realities.”
In his brilliant book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg points out that 'false choice' rhetoric is a form of argumentation very characteristic of fascism.  But of course:  BHO is a corporatist - which is simply a fascist without the jackboots.  Come to think of it, judging from the massive expansion of regulatory police powers and his ever expanding war scope, the jackboots are there too.


This isn’t a false choice — it’s a hard one. There are reasonable concerns about the implications of U.S. intervention and legitimate questions about the match between mission means and ends. To scoff at these as presenting a false choice does a disservice to the seriousness of those who do not come down precisely where the president proposes.

She also points out that Nixon (!) was an early false choicer.

The first presidential false-choicer I have found was Richard Nixon, who used the phrase appropriately in a 1969 commencement address: “Let us not, then, pose a false choice between meeting our responsibilities abroad and meeting the needs of our people at home. We shall meet both or we shall meet neither.”

The phrase, though, has been the particular province of Democratic presidents, with Bill Clinton the undisputed champion. The recent Republican usage has tended to involve a third version: false choice as wishful thinking. George W. Bush maddeningly pooh-poohed the “false choice” between tax cuts and deficit reduction, pretending not only that both could be accomplished simultaneously but that the former would produce the latter.

To truly govern honorably is to choose - between state power and individual power, between money for programs and money for individuals.  Fascists, whose goal is power, not effective governance, are constantly offering everything to everyone if we would only give them the power to decide.  In their world there are no trade offs so long as the center has all of the power.  This is how we've gotten Medicare, Social Security and $100 Trillion of unfunded, un-payable obligations.