•  ”I — I don’t think that Senator Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power.”
• “What Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand that if without precondition you sit down across the table from someone who has called Israel a “stinking corpse,” and wants to destroy that country and wipe it off the map, you legitimize those comments.” (see enthymemes below)
• “He doesn’t understand that Russia committed serious aggression against Georgia. And Russia has now become a nation fueled by petro-dollars that is basically a KGB apparatchik-run government.

 The implication is that if someone doesn’t agree with you, it is because they are stupid.

2. Take whatever steps necessary to show that you can pronounc Ahmadinejad correctly, even if it means trying three times:  

“Here is Ahmadinenene (ph), Ahmadinejad, who is, Ahmadinejad, who is now in New York, talking about the extermination of the State of Israel, of wiping Israel off the map, and we’re going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.”

3.  Use enthymemes with questionable premises. Because who is smart enough to wonder about the connecting premises?   

Example: ”we’re going to sit down, without precondition, across the table, to legitimize and give a propaganda platform to a person that is espousing the extermination of the state of Israel, and therefore then giving them more credence in the world arena and therefore saying, they’ve probably been doing the right thing, because you will sit down across the table from them and that will legitimize their illegal behavior.” 

Missing premise: If you talk to someone, you condone and legitimize  their opinions. 

So, by extension, we should just not talk to people with whom we disagree, because that would be legitimizing their opinions. 

And if someone disagrees with you, it is because they are naive/stupid/crazy anyway.  

So there’s really no purpose or reason for persuasion in McCain’s world, is there?     

It’s a total non sequitor, which we know thanks to this article: Kimble, James J., and Lester C. Olson. “Visual Rhetoric Representing Rosie the Riveter: Myth and Misconception in J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” Poster.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9.4 (2006): 533-69. Kimble and Olson conclude that the feminist message of this poster was limited in WWII; it was basically produced for internal use at Westinghouse alongside many more posters that depicted women in traditionally feminine wartime roles. 

On second thought, the comparison may be more apt than I thought.In World War II, women were encouraged to apply their domestic skills to the technical workplace with such jinglas as this one from the Women’s Bureau bulletin, “What Job Is Mine on the Victory Line”?

If you’ve sewed on buttons, or made buttonholes, on a machine

You can learn to do spot welding on airplane parts.

If you’ve used an electric mixer in your kitchen,

You can learn to run a drill press.

If you’ve followed recipes exactly in making cake,

You can learn to load shells.

Maybe this poster is implying something similar: 

If you’ve been a beauty pageant winner,

You can learn to give speeches in front of millions.

If you’ve slaughtered and dressed a moose,

You can learn to lead our country in battle.

If you’ve been mayor of a small town,

You can learn to be vice president of the nation.