John L. Sullivan (letters, 5/9) asks an intriguing, if rhetorical, question. How DID President Bush manage to persevere through Yale and Harvard? It wouldn’t be contingent upon mediocre grades and family legacy, would it?
Mr. Sullivan also creates what is known in debating circles as a straw man (several of them, actually): describing one’s opponent as a simplistic, cliché-ridden caricature then proceeding to eviscerate with minimal effort. Thus, liberals hate America, worship France, and insist that Social Security is peachy keen with absolutely no tweaking into infinity, no matter that those falsehoods have been dispelled many times over.
George W. Bush is Karl Rove’s Pygmalion, but apparently Mr. Sullivan believes he can win the debate by continuing to chant preposterous mantras in an atmosphere of ignorance mixed with willful misinterpretation until the lies become reality through sheer repetition. Either that, or he believes his own hype.
Oh, okay.