#4 - When politicians describe their opponents’ positions,

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[graham0220]

Hello!

Could someone please help me by elaborating the differences between ACs A and D? I was between these 2 and ultimately chose D. My thought process was that it is possible the politicians are not aiming to persuade, since that was not mentioned in the stimulus. However is this just to be assumed since of course politicians want to persuade you of their views? I understand why A is correct, but am wondering what part makes D wrong.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Two problems arise with answer D, graham, and you've found one of them. It seems reasonable, rather than a problem, if the author took for granted that politicians want to persuade. You can imagine the author of the argument responding to this criticism by saying "yes, I did that - so what? I'm still right."

The other problem is that the author actually did NOT take that for granted. The author said only that they COULD persuade more if they tried another approach. This doesn't require that the politicians ARE trying to persuade.

Here's an analogy: if I stopped eating at restaurants and made all my meals at home, I could save enough money to retire in two years.

Does this argument require the assumption that I WANT to retire in two years? Nope - it's just about what I COULD do. The same thing is happening in the stimulus.

The correct answer to a Flaw question has to do two things: 1) describe something that actually happened in the stimulus (which answer D does not), and 2) that thing has to be a problem for the author (which answer D also is not, even if he did do that). Answer A, meanwhile, passes both parts of that test - the author DID fail to address that possibility, and that failure IS a problem. Try that approach the next time you are stuck between two answers to a Flaw question!