Essay 3: Social/Political Document Analysis.
Political editorials are notorious for the use of persuasive techniques. Since magazines, such as The New Republic and The National Review, hold strongly biased opinions on politics in our country, it is important to be able to decipher fact from pure persuasion. I have chosen an article from The American Spectator, an opinion magazine that leans far to the right, called "Welcome to the Bush Boom", written by Brian S. Wesbury. This article is not a credible piece of information, and it does not make use of actual facts. Rather, the author incorporates an extensive amount of rhetoric to get his opinions across.
The title of the article alone, "Welcome to the Bush Boom", gives the reader an idea of what is to be examined. Obviously, the article is about Bush. The "Boom", on the other hand, is referring to the economic rise in this country since the 2001 recession, as well as the rocketing market for high-tech devices. These are the issues that the title suggests, but the article itself is a "hopscotch" of political inquiries. This piece begins with an attack on former president Clinton, specifically about the "mess" he left and scandal he caused. Then, the author goes on to praise Bush for making everything nice and neat again. In the second paragraph, however, the author skips off on a tandem about terrorism and how our country has not seen one single attack on its soil since 9/11. Somehow the issue becomes side-tracked once again to a discussion on the market of processing equipment and software. The author is all over the place with political issues, attempting to make them all relate back to the same topic.
Not only does the author refuse to focus on the issue, he also does not offer any factual material for support. The author does give many percentages to back up his claims; however, they are based on his own top-down models of the economy.