My dear friends at Reason Magazine’s Hit & Run blog — specifically Web editor Tim Cavanaugh — recently struck a tone a bit too cynical for my liking.

A small army of political pundits, Web geeks and others from the left, right, center, top, bottom and other corners of the political universe joined forces to demand “question time.” They want for the United States a public, televised and Web-streamed version of the U.K.’s Prime Minister’s Questions. They want more of what we recently saw in Baltimore.

Cavanaugh writes:

Demand Question Timers, I am with you in spirit, but not in reality. Question Time, or more precisely, “Prime Minister’s Questions,” is a habit of a parliamentary system based on majoritarian consensus, in which the head of state is a monarch. The U.S. government is a republic built on divided branches, in which the head of state is a temporary official. There’s nothing wrong with conflating the two in an informal way, but why should anybody believe this will improve Washington, D.C.’s cycle of making and enforcing laws? While it’s true that the exchange was “substantive, civil and candid,” government is not about candor, civility or substance. No minds were changed in this debate, nor should they have been, because the president and the Congress are, by order of the Constitution, natural opponents.

Nobody came away from the q&a with any new information or insight into the Health Care Reform debate, or the stimulus, or any other topic other than the loveliness of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s family. That all these talented and persuasive people did a vigorous job of defending their positions is not surprising, but were we somehow lacking in vigorous defenses of their positions before?

Obama and the Republicans over the last year have not lacked means, motive and opportunity to get their respective messages out. Getting these messages out is the dedicated task of vast media and public relations machines that continue to grow, sucking dry the marrow of our nation. [emphasis mine]

No, Tim, Obama and his political opponents do not lack the opportunity to “get their messages out.” That’s not the point of a regular, public “question time,” though — and if anyone suggests it is, he’s short-sighted. The point, at least in part, is to give the voting public an opportunity — a regular, highly visible opportunity — to hear those messages in a longer form. In a form more substantive, more meaningful and more genuine than those conveyed by the typical direct mail campaign, television advertisement or PAC Web site.

I can’t wait to write more about this book in the future, but for now, I’ll leave you with this: In “Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America,” James Davison Hunter closes with a set of “practical steps” for easing the rhetorical and social tensions between opposing groups he describes as “progressive” and “orthodox.” The first and perhaps most obvious is “changing the environment of public discourse.”

The reason is plain. Genuine debate, whether public or private, is always dialectic; always a direct and immediate exchange. Positions taken and accusations made can be challenged directly by rebuttal, counterpropositions, cross-examination, and, inevitably, the presentation of evidence. [...] Needless to say, extremist rhetoric is extremely difficult to maintain in this discursive environment. The very context of genuine debate predisposes actors to rhetorical moderation and forbearance. But it is impossible to generate these dynamics in television commercials, in political print advertisements and proclamations, and issue-oriented direct mail.

Written nearly 20 years ago, this book is perhaps more meaningful today than it was when Hunter’s pen met paper. Did Obama’s appearance in Baltimore significantly change the level of discourse in the United States? Probably not. But happenings like that have the potential to, so let’s not write them off too quickly.

(By the way, that link about to the “Culture Wars” book is an Amazon Affiliates link. If you buy something, I might make a few pennies off the purchase. You’ve been warned.)

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“Things I like are cool.  Things I hate suck.”

Never mind the circular reasoning, nor the a priori consequences. For most of us, we live with the inconsistency anyway.

However, when it comes to policy and governance, we expect a little better. Particularly when the argument at hand is squarely on the shoulders of defining the Objective from the Subjective.

Which brings us to this fascinating article from the New York Times, about the growing war between the White House and the part of Fox News that does news instead of opinion.

In recent weeks, Fox has been snubbed by the administration. The story details a frank and secret meeting between David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, that appeared to have cooled things a bit – until flaring up again.

Telling, is this admission about the squabbling:

“We simply decided to stop abiding by the fiction, which is aided and abetted by the mainstream press, that Fox is a traditional news organization,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director.

There are two issues loaded into this simple declaration.

First is the use of the phrase “aided and abetted.” True, competitors like Jake Tapper questioned the administration about how Fox was being singled out. But “aiding and abetting” sounds like criminal language, and was not used by accident. It’s a clear hint that opposing this administration is akin to being rogue, if not downright illegal.

But let’s get beyond the connotations of the phrase, and instead focus on the circular reasoning it represents. The nature of the argument is thus:

• Fox News is not objective, but brings a subjective slant.
• ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS are all objective.
• ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS all agree that Fox News is a news organization.

Now, if several news outlets are in agreement on a set of facts, you would think they are objectively telling you the truth.

Yet, in this case, while accusing Fox of carrying a subjective agenda, the Obama White House also accuses the rest of the media for perpetuating that fiction.

Who is being Objective and who is being Subjective here?

Exacerbating this sentiment was the admission by many of those mainstream outlets, including the Times, that it was not sufficiently in touch with what was being reported on Fox:

Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn.

The real complaint, then, is that Fox news has an agenda that the “mainstream (non-partisan) media” then adopted as worthy of interest.

I guess that must be the enabling aiding-and-abeting behavior.

The Moderate Voice (and if there were ever a time for them this is it) runs down a laundry list of reactions to President Obama’s address to schoolchildren.

The polarization is just plain silly, and downright dangerous. Quoting the post:

The present frenzy suggests that the seeds are now being sowed for a mega-polarized America that could be almost ungovernable in the 21st century if this trend continues unabated.

If Republicans and conservatives make the very legitimacy of Obama his patriotism — even the safety of allowing little kids listen to him tell them to stay in school and think about helping their community — the issue, and link his name to Hitler and/or Nazism, precisely how do they think Democrats and the left will respond next time a GOPer is in power? How will the next Republican President be treated in terms of legitimacy and doing what he/she feels is in the best interest of the country? The bar on discourse is being lowered and lower and right now it’s touching the soil.

The only problem I have with the above is the blame for conservatives and Republicans for “lowering the bar.”

The seeds were planted with eight years of complaining about “President Select” and “stolen Florida” and Lord knows how many other attacks on the process. The Left never treated Bush-the-younger with any degree of legitimacy, borne out in the way they portrayed him.

How many Bush=Hitler references can you find?

Do you think the Left – in any manner – gets a pass?

We’ve been going down this road for a long time, and we might actually get to see the flip side of John Edwards’ “Two Americas” vision. Only this time we’ll get two radically polarized factions that can look at the same set of objective facts and see two wildly different realities. They will, of course, be mutually exclusive – yet both completely consistent with the worldview and premises of the factions.

Now — my response to the people who are pulling their kids out of school today?

Why don’t you teach your kids how to think for themselves? There’s a far greater chance that your youngster will be introduced to spurious views, partisan ideology or religious rhetoric coming from the mouths of teachers and administrators. Don’t get spun up by the idea that the President will somehow hold more sway than the people who know your kid on a first-name basis.

Inoculate them with the ability and desire to think for themselves, and to ask questions about the implications of ideas. For instance, if the idea is that “no one should do without X,” then teach your kids to ask how much X-for-all would cost, and who would pay for all that X, and what kind of world we’d live in with free-X.

Quit whining — put on your big boy pants — and take responsibility for your kids.

Rosenberg writes:

Think about this for a moment: If our members of Congress aren’t inserting spending into spending bills, who’s supposed to be doing it? The reason all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives is that the representatives understand their districts and their needs. As long as spending bills stay within established budget guidelines, doesn’t it make sense to let our representatives direct the spending where it’s needed most?

That’s not to say that earmarks aren’t abused to create real pork-barrel spending. But just because a Congressman inserts an earmark into a bill for a local spending project doesn’t make it “pork.” Pork-barrel spending occurs when that earmark is used for spending that doesn’t really meet any need other than shoveling money to the Representative’s district.

Read the original: “Pork: The most meaningless word in politics.” And thanks for writing it, Jeff.

Photo courtesy of kuow on Flickr

The Libertarian Party has been publishing a series of “Monday Messages,” both in e-mails it sends to folks who’ve signed up for such info and on its own Web site. The message from this past Monday contained a bit of a logical confusion I wanted to share here.

The Monday Message picked apart, roughly point by point, an article written by Fred Barnes about the “ten things the president got right.” I became too distracted by an illogical argument and had to stop reading after this (plain text is from the LP’s message; bold text is the LP quoting Barnes):

The following are a handful of assertions made by Barnes as achievements of the Bush administration in the last eight years, and my responses to these statements:

Second, enhanced interrogation of terrorists. Along with use of secret prisons and wireless eavesdropping, this saved American lives. How many thousands of lives? We’ll never know.

The idea that Bush has saved lives in the so-called “War on Terror” isn’t exactly logical, and it isn’t exactly true. Data compiled by the RAND Corporation actually shows dramatic increases in deaths caused by global terrorism following the election of George Bush to office.

There’s a lot to argue with in the LP’s message and in Barnes’ original article, but I’m hung up on one item that seems to be a glaring violation of logic.

“Data compiled by the RAND Corporation actually shows dramatic increases in deaths caused by global terrorism following the election of George Bush to office.”

That does not mean George Bush did not prevent thousands of deaths, nor, of course, does it mean George Bush caused any deaths. George Bush was president when this typhoon struck and killed hundreds of thousands — not to mention, Tony Blair was at the helm in England, as well. Are they to blame for the typhoon?

Remember: Correlation does not equal causation.

Maybe that’s the fear that prompted Air America founder Jon Sinton to express his objection to the Fairness Doctrine in the ultra-liberal Wall Street Journal:

When we founded Air America, we aimed to establish a talk network that lived at the intersection of politics and entertainment. Of course, we were motivated by our political leanings. But as a lifelong broadcaster, I was certain that at least half the American audience was underserved by conservative talk radio. Here was an opportunity to capture listeners turned off by the likes of, say, Sean Hannity. The business opportunity was enticing.

It never occurred to me to argue for reimposing the Fairness Doctrine. Instead, I sought to capitalize on the other side of a market the right already had built.

Or maybe it’s just a realization that there’s no need for it.  Sinton lays out a great case for the circumstances surrounding the original Fairness Doctrine, and how none of them really apply today.  In doing so, he has positioned himself well as a voice of reason.

It’s often assumed that the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend. Many liberals would like nothing better than to see the Fairness Doctrine if for no other reason that the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world will have a dent in their reach. However, Sinton takes a broader tack that speaks from a position of strength — he’s not afraid of the marketplace of ideas. He’s convinced his worldview can win on merit.

Tactically speaking, there are often openings you can exploit in your opponent’s statements and positions. Just don’t assume that every one of them needs to be employed, as some can backfire and others may leave you in a stronger position because you took the higher road.

To summarize, Lilla laments the apparent rejection of intellectualism that initially attracted him, a self-described liberal, to the world of conservative political thought.

Coming of age politically in the grim ’70s, when liberalism seemed utterly exhausted, I still remember the thrill of coming upon their writings for the first time. I discovered the Public Interest the same week that Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and its pages offered shelter from the storm — from the mobs on the street, the radical posing of my professors and fellow students, the cluelessness of limousine liberals, the whole mad circus of post-’60s politics. Conservative politics mattered less to me than the sober comportment of conservative intellectuals at that time; I admired their maturity and seriousness, their historical perspective, their sense of proportion. In a country susceptible to political hucksters and demagogues, they studied the passions of democratic life without succumbing to them. They were unapologetic elites, but elites who loved democracy and wanted to help it.

But as a response to what many conservatives saw as a uniformly hostile environment in the media and on university campuses (“campii”?), the tide began to turn:

They [then began to] mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

The issue is not that “regular folk” are bad. Lilla’s concern with populism is that, in this manifestation, it has become less about the people and more about pandering to the people. The thinkers and the politicians leading the Republican Party — or, of course, any political party or movement — are supposed to be leaders, not panderers. They’re supposed to raise the level of thought, the level of discourse, not play to the lowest common denominator.

There’s a rather fine line between being elite (which has similarly been twisted into a slur) and being exclusive. One certainly can be elite — which, I’ll remind you, simply refers to being of the cream of the crop, not favoring those who are the cream of the crop at the expense of others — without being exclusive, and that an important distinction in a functioning democracy.

A great thinker of our time, Jon Stewart, summed up well the case for elitism: “If you don’t actually think you’re better than us, what the ____ are you doing? … Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me.”

Thanks to my partner in blogging crime Gary Hornseth, one of several contributors to The Same Rowdy Crowd, for bringing this WSJ article to my attention. Great find.

Photo courtesy of Gaetan Lee on Flickr

“As the nation slouches toward disaster, the level of political discourse is unworthy of this moment in history.”

Read it, not for any partisan message you might glean, but rather for the way she describes how easy it is to control the dialogue with language designed to obfuscate the issues.  Especially this part:

“This back and forth is posturing, a charade, and a political game. These lines are what I refer to as “hooker lines”—a sure thing to get applause and the press to scribble as if they’re reporting meaningful news.”

The best way to avoid being manipulated is to learn from those who aim to steer you.

This article originally appeared at The Same Rowdy Crowd, a blog written by a bunch of Minnesotans who get worked up about politics, communication, PR, journalism and the like. I happen to be one of those writers. My Rowdy colleague, Joe Loveland, kindly allowed me to republish this here.

Of all the errors that reporters and voters make in political communications, the most prevalent and dangerous may well be the error of false equivalence.

False equivalence – also recently described in a terrific Washington Post piece as “the symmetry of sin” — works like this: Candidate A has made an error. Candidate B has made an error. With little or no exploration or thought, the errors are judged to be equally egregious, and therefore the candidates are equally damned.

The problem is the errors committed by Candidate’s A and B are almost never equally egregious. The errors are only treated as equal because reporters and voters are too lazy, uninformed, dim and/or self-righteous to form and express an opinion about which error is more significant.

What types of errors am I talking about?

• Candidate A votes with a particular interest group 5% of the time. Candidate B votes with the same interest group 90% of the time. Therefore, a judgment is made that “they both vote with that interest group, and are therefore equally bad.”
• Candidate A makes an argument that is correct at it’s core, but contains a relatively small technical error. Candidate B makes an argument that is at its core is completely, knowingly and demonstrably false. A judgment is made that “they both are liars and equally untrustworthy.”
• Candidate A has been fighting for Issue Z as part of a political institution. Candidate B has been fighting against Issue Z as part of the same political institution. Therefore, a judgment is made “that the candidates are equally blameworthy because they are part of the institution that failed to enact Issue Z.”

By the way, I’m stating these as abstruse hypotheticals in a probably futile attempt to focus on the method of reasoning, and not get bogged down on the factual basis of particular debates.

As a frequent practitioner of false equivalency, I can tell you it feels darn good. It makes us feel wise, noble, and above the fray. It makes us feel more mature and measured than the people with those messy opinions. It makes reporters feel “balanced.” It liberates us from the brain cramps and pulled Googling muscles associated with digging below the surface rhetoric.

But the error of false equivalence may be the most dangerous phenomena facing our democracy, because it frees us from the burden of thought, robbing democracy of its most essential fuel.

Joe Loveland of The Same Rowdy Crowd

Conservatives and liberals have different blind spots for the fallacies they employ.

We’ve all seen the spokespeople who go on TV representing political candidates. You know the types:

I represent Sally. Steve is scum. Sally will cut taxes; Steve will raise taxes — and eat your babies. Did you know Steve wants to take away Social Security benefits and give them to Wall Street big-wigs?

Of course, Sally probably has her flaws, and Steve isn’t scum. He’s has different values, which include no desire to eat babies. And of course, no significant discussion of changes to tax law can take place in sound bites, so nobody has any idea what the truth is on that front. Social Security? Steve actually voted for a bill to give taxpayers the option to invest part of their Social Security payments in stocks or mutual funds. This, of course, does come with some amount risk, and it’s probably possible that a Wall Street big wig could make money off of your losses. Sally’s spokesman, though, felt compelled to misattribute Steve’s motivation, saying he “wants” to “give” your money to those big-wigs.

The point is, these people make for great talking heads on TV, but they’re terrible communicators. They put up a façade of infallibility, operating as if their candidates have never made a mistake or demonstrated even a hint of poor judgment or policy-making regret. Their opponents, on the other hand, hope to see the country handed over to socialists/fascists hell bent on taking all of your money/controlling your life.

But if Sally’s spokesman continually operates if Sally is always right and Steve is always wrong, people quickly start to see that Sally’s spokesman if completely full of bullshit. No one is infallible, and no one should ever feel compelled to try to be.

Thus my premise: Being wrong, occasionally demonstrating human qualities like fallibility and humility, is the only way to ever be right. If you’re never wrong, you’re full of shit. If you’re full of shit, you’re never going to be right. If you admit mistakes, sincerely explain decisions that have been smeared as “flip-flops,” and address dissenters’ concerns by answering to them without trying to convert them, you’ll be seen as a straight shooter.

People like straight shooters.

“Imperfections” courtesy of Rickydavid on Flickr

Here’s an example I see playing out right now:

Saturday Night Live did a skit this past weekend which clearly lampooned the New York Times.  A large gathering of Times staff was brainstorming about possible stories about Sarah Palin, and the need to send a large contingent to Alaska to “dig up” whatever they could. Playing off the notion that Times reporters are clueless about Alaskan culture, guns, snowmobiles, or life without a nearby therapist, the skit was downright funny.  (Upon seeing a picture of a shotgun, a know-it-all reporter proving his mastery of Middle America spouted ‘that is clearly a derringer, also known as a Saturday Night Special’, or something to that effect.)

However, some on the right are howling mad that a fake reporter – in a sketch about how overboard the media might be in finding dirt on Sarah Palin – suggests following “rumors” that Todd Palin molests his daughters.  The way in which this is described is clearly a parody, and the target of the humor is the mainstream media, not the Palin family.

By whining about something that has never been alleged – and was served up as an absurd counterpoint to skewer the mainstream media – those on the right diminish their ability to be taken seriously on any assertion of media bias.

Grow a thicker skin, and show that you can at least comprehend a joke before reflexively flailing away at every possible grievance.  It makes for a better discourse.

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler, perhaps no surprise, isn’t a huge fan of Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin. What surprised me were some of the words chosen to express that lack of fanaticism.

Fowler kicks things off with a solid pot-shot. She said it seems as though Sen. McCain has chosen a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

“Only”? Really? I’m sure the hyperbole works in front of a friendly audience, but it’s not much good for making a persuasive argument, at least not in this case. This, however, was told to a reporter in an interview setting. Couple that with the inclusion of a widely recognized hot-button issue and you have yourself one hell of a lightning-rod comment.

The subsequent apology gets even better. Her apology statement said:

I personally admire and respect the difficult choices that women make everyday, and I apologize to anyone who finds my comment offensive. I clumsily was making a point about people in South Carolina who may vote based on a single issue. Whether it’s the environment, the economy, the war or a woman’s right to choose, there are people who will cast their vote based on a single issue. That was the only point I was attempting to make.

In a way, there’s some logic to this apology as an explanation for why she said what she said. McCain is notoriously less-than-perfect in his positions over the years on certain issues of great importance to voters referred to as “social conservatives,” abortion certainly being one of them. By choosing the firmly anti-abortion Palin, according to Fowler’s thinking, McCain is shoring up those voters to whom abortion is an important issue.

But with this apology, Fowler seems to step in another cowpie by implying people who vote primarily based on a single issue — or who can at least be perceived as doing so — are of lesser intelligence or of diminished rational capacity. One-track minds. Stupid. Sheep-like.

Again, a statement that might work well in front of a friendly crowd, but one that’s not smart to make when your primary focus should be singing the praises of your preferred candidate — not putting yourself in a position to apologize and clarify and backpedal.

Photo courtesy of kromatic on Flickr

This is a perfectly acceptable tactic in argumentation, provided the subject is indeed the man being attacked.  It is not valid, however, when used to attack the messenger or a related circumstance.

Acceptable attacks:

John McCain is too out of touch with the average American.

Barack Obama does not have enough experience.

Of course, those are extremely subjective and would not be convincing without evidence.  The fact that you’ve made an assertion about an individual is not in and of itself Ad Hominem.  It’s when you introduce ‘facts’ about a person as evidence to back up your assertion that ad hominem comes into play.  Here are unacceptable attacks that abuse the ad hominem fallacy:

John McCain is lying about drilling, because he took money from Big Oil.

Barack Obama is from Chicago, and is therefore part of a corrupt machine.

In this case, McCain’s acceptance of funding does not equate to proof that his statement is false.  Both statements could in fact be true.  The degree to which you want to believe him might be a fair question, but that is a subjective call and not an objective proof.

To another degree, it might well be that Obama is part of a corrupt machine.  But it does not follow that everyone from Chicago automatically is.

I mention this because Ad Hominem is a great ‘gateway drug’ into the world of self-induced political haze.  Every party has its shady characters, and all you have to do is tie your opponent to the worst of the other side and make political hay.  It’s a technique that shortcuts real causation and proof — it’s the slippery slope that leads to greater polarization and decreased understanding.

The classic examples come about with those who have become highly-charged and demonized.  Mention Al Gore or Michael Moore with just about anything, and watch the right go apoplectic trying to denounce it.  Likewise, see what happens with Karl Rove or Rush Limbaugh are tied into anything by the left.

It’s amusing actually.  I’d like to see them all issue individual statements about the sky being blue at noon on a cloudy day — just to see who cites it as proof you should carry your umbrella.

Facts are facts, and information is information.  Doing nothing more than attacking the source isn’t a solution, it’s a copout.  Ideas stand on their own.

On its face, it seems like a reasonable question to ask.  With greater media scrutiny and an easily accessible archive of news, it’s more difficult than ever to change or refine a position without earning the wrath of your political opponents, tagged as either a Waffler or a Flip-Flopper.  However, there are a number of reasons why such arguments don’t hold water.

Too many external factors.

It’s one thing to say “Are you for private charity?  Or against it?”  The answer would be simple for most.  However, once you find out that the particular charity in mind provides free heroin to middle-school students, then you might blink.

This happens more than you might think in Congress, as Senators and Congressman play games with bills.  They mark them up, tag them with riders, and bloat them with pork.  Sometimes, they manage to sneak in a “poison pill,” an amendment so onerous or self-serving that it gets the whole piece of legislation killed.  Since there’s no official vote other than Yea/Nay/Present, you can be for something and still vote against it.

Personal Growth

We all change.  Most of us, if open-minded, will adjust positions over time.  The key to believability here is the sincerity present in the description of the life-changing moment.  Maybe it’s a loved one who gets terribly ill whose experience gives a politician a different perspective.  Maybe it’s the new friend or co-worker who helps destroy a long-held stereotype.  Maybe it’s losing your religion, or being born again.  It takes a story that rings true, though.

Improper Context

The sound bite culture is too prone to abuse by those who are careful editors.  The stripping away dependent clauses can destroy the context of what someone was trying to communicate.  In other instances, the written word lacks facial expressions or verbal tone that indicate irony.  Beware someone who tries to back up an assertion while attempting to deny you the source material.

Verbal flubs

I’ll dip to a concrete example here.  Sen. Obama and “my Muslim faith.”  It’s clear in the context of the conversation that Obama meant to say “Christian.”  George Stephanopolous brought it to his immediate attention for a quick correction.  The Monday Morning Freudians will try to tell you that Obama’d guard was down, and he was expressing a hidden desire.  Such a question might have merit if the word “Muslim” had not already been uttered.  Words and ideas can do a somersault between the brain and the breath, and those isolated aberrationgs are not an arbiter of truth.

Fair Game

So, what is Fair Game?  Unexplained shifts in position.  Changes in attitude that come with suspicious or opportune timing.  Waffles that attempt to completely deny the existence of a previous stance.

On matters of importance, we deserve to know what drives the distinction, and then it’s up to us to determine as individuals if that explanation is valid and sound.

Case in point, the previous article about 4 Modern Arguments that Suck.  That piece was written quite some time ago, but rings ever more true when you find letters like this one to Salon.com:

Watching Republicans makes me insane | Salon Life via kwout

Evil?  (we’ll accept ‘racist.’)
Greedy?  It’s in there.
Stupid?  Bingo
Sheep?  Can’t find it.

Score this a 3/4 on the Sucky Argument scale.  It does not persuade, it does not enlighten or illuminate.

There’s an old story about a young lawyer getting sage advice from a senior partner. “When the law is on your side, pound the law. When the facts are on your side, pound the facts.”

“What if neither are on your side?” asked the newbie.

“Pound the table.” And as it turns out, these four techniques are right there on the table for the pounding:

1. Evil
   We’re all reasonable people, in our own minds. So it stands to reason that anyone who does not come to the same conclusions that you have must have a diametrically-opposed set of values. Therefore, they are evil. Those who disagree with us must be intent on raining down brimstone and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Why else would they advocate for the Apocayplse, unless they were Evil? And since they are Evil, we are justified in using any means necessary to remove their flawed influence. (my opponent is Evil because I am Good; see circular reasoning.)
2. Greedy
   Next down on the list is the belief that your opponents – lacking visible horns, pitchforks, and pentagrams – must be on the take. It’s not that they spew evil with every exhaled breath, they are merely weak servants who have prostituted themselves to the highest bidder. Anyone (say a scientist who pursues a line of research) can be dismissed as a paid flack if we can properly assail the source of the funding as Evil. (my opponent is Greedy, and nothing they say can be truthful because they are associated with Evil; see ad hominem, association fallacy.)
3. Stupid
   Lacking any hooks to hang the Evil and Greedy tags, you may want to insult your opponent’s intelligence directly. Look for any inconsistencies, no matter how far removed in time, place, or subject matter. All you need to do is confuse things long enough to render your opponent non-credible. It’s not that they have different values, nor are they so weak as to sell them. It’s just a simple simpleton who can’t logically connect A to B to C. (see circular reasoning)
4. Sheep
   Sheep are blind followers. They might or might not be stupid, but they are through some circumstance surrounded by those who would lead them astray. Maybe they are tainted by the magazines or websites they read, or maybe by the people they communicate with. Our classifying them as “sheep” is not a deep insult, but rather an announcement that if only they spent more time with enlightened people like us they’d snap to their senses. Or better yet, become our sheep. (see Package Deal fallacy)

Originally posted at Occam’s RazR.

At one point, Maddow, an established presence on the network who just last night hosted the first installment of her own show, compared McCain’s talk of a new brand of maverick-y, change-oriented Republicanism to the earlier calls for “compassionate conservatism” we heard fromm the current president during his initial presidential campaign. (The merits of that comparison can be discussed later.)

Maddow and Benen then call George W. Bush being branded as “a different kind of Republican” and his father before him who ran under the auspices of being a leader of a kinder, gentler nation. They make no mention, however, that both of those men won in the elections being recalled here. They do, however, mention that, in this current case of McCain representing change, “it’s a tough sell, especially if you look for the substance.”

Maddow later transitions from how the campaign seeks to represent itself to how those messages will be received. We’ve seen this type of rebranding before, she says. Do you think Americans will be too smart for this type of politics this time around. Benen recalls a campaign stop at which Barack Obama said, “Americans aren’t stupid,” and Benen goes on to explain that he believes that’s Obama’s not so subtle way of suggesting the McCain campaign is simply trying to fool voters. To pull the wool over their collective eyes. In effect, he’s saying:

So Americans aren’t stupid. They won’t fall for this merely superficial rebranding. I mean, you know, they did, I guess, because how else do you explain George H.W. Bush winning in 1988 and his son winning in 2000? I mean, that was just good branding and vicious Karl Rove attacks. So maybe American’s were stupid — but no more! This time, when my party really needs them — again — voters will be too smart to fall for this.

Yes, and perhaps they’re also smart enough to notice that you’re quite literally calling them stupid for having “fallen for it” before.

Ideology is closed.

Theory is a framework for making predictions, and when outcomes do not match the framework is tinkered, tweaked, or scrapped.

Ideology is a framework for explaining everything, and when outcomes do not match the framework is retained by explaining away the surprise as part of the ideology all along.  In other words, never let the facts get in the way of your story.

Much of what is discussed in political circles comes down to a difference in ideology.  And if you want to know why nobody is successful in changing another’s mind (particularly on the internet), it’s because both parties can walk away at any time knowing they are right.

This brings us to the problem I call “No Safe Harbor.”  It’s the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario multiplied several times over.

Let’s say candidate X steps up to issue a plea for his supporters to stop berating candidate Y over something that is considered personal.  While some might laud X for that statement, others might accuse X of cynical timing.  “X was too slow to denounce,” or “X just said it to further the rumors.”

In fact, you could drill down even further, saying that an hour was too long, or not long enough.  Or you could say that candidate X jumped in too soon, instead of waiting to see if the rumor died on its own.

The worst piece of cynicism is to say “Candidate X only did it for the sake of appearances.”

Reversal of Fortune

The litmus test is one of introspection: if the roles were reversed, what could my candidate have done to avoid criticism?  And what potential line of attack would come from each of those directions?

If you see no way out, then you’re trapped in an ideological loop.  To criticize under such circumstances is unfair because there is no Safe Harbor.  To be critical of a course of action, you must outline what the proper course of action should have been — and be honest about the tenability of that prescription.  If you find yourself advocating a tactic or statement that would leave your candidate vulnerable, then you’re beyond being reasonable.

Of course, in this era the game is often played to score political points with little regard to the possible contradictions involved, because you can generate heat for your base and motivate them to work harder.  However, that heat will not produce the light that is required to persuade the undecided.

Do you know of any recent examples of No Safe Harbor?  Add them to the comments…