Mike Myer uses Donald Trump's acceptance speech as the starting point for another one of his bash-Obama-for-everything-wrong-in-America columns. He ignores what the fact-checkers (see previous post) said about Trump's speech and adds a few of his own pet grievances. He also doesn't fail to note that Hillary Clinton, if elected, will be even worse.
As with most of his columns, Myer often switches the burden of proof to the reader, doesn't explain how he arrived at his conclusion and provides no evidence. Here's a sample:
Our military capability has been weakened during the Obama administration, by any measure you choose.
Myer is making the point and so it's his job, not ours, to provide a "measure" that proves that our military capability has been weakened. He doesn't provide any yardstick nor does he offer any proof; the point is simply an assertion.
Are you more afraid of Islamic terrorists now than when Obama took office?
Built into the question is an absence of any historical context (for instance, it says nothing about Bush's destruction of the Iraq army and the vacuum it created for the terrorists) and a supposition that Obama and the United States can diminish terrorism by unilateral action.
A fair and balanced column that uses evidence? Not today.
Why the lack of evidence (here and in most of his columns)? A possibility is that Myer believes that what he says is so obviously true that he needs no proof. More likely is the possibility that anything negative that he asserts about the president or Clinton will be readily accepted by most of his audience whether it's true or not. A recent Public Policy poll's conclusion would seem to support this (emphasis in mine):
President Obama's approval rating stands at 49/48, the first time we've had him with a positive approval spread in a considerable amount of time. There continues to be a lot of misinformation about what has happened during Obama's time in office. 43% of voters think the unemployment rate has increased while Obama has been President, to only 49% who correctly recognize that it has decreased. And 32% of voters think the stock market has gone down during the Obama administration, to only 52% who correctly recognize that it has gone up. In both cases Democrats and independents are correct in their understanding of how things have changed since Obama became President, but Republicans claim by a 64/27 spread that unemployment has increased and by a 57/27 spread that the stock market has gone down.
Yeah, Myer is preaching to his Republican right-wing choir -- why bother to find and use evidence when your audience only wants its biases reinforced? In fairness, we all like our biases reinforced. Myer, however, does it on a weekly basis.
