Negative Ads - Syllogism

We’re all supposed to loath the phenomena of negative campaigning, especially the dreaded “hit-and-run” 30-second TV spot - coming soon to every television commercial break near you (at least if you live in Ohio).

I’ll admit that there is a lot to dislike about negative ads, from their use of manipulative language, tone (including music) and imagery, to their reliance on out-of-context quotations or quotes from third parties (such as that ordinary guy on the street) to put a campaign’s talking points into the mouth of someone other than the candidate.

But from a critical thinking perspective, I actually like negative ads much more than positive ones.  This may seem ironic, given all of the tricks these ads seem to play to short-circuit reason.  But if you look at a positive ad, one that usually extols the virtue of a candidate using warm-and-fuzzy images of the candidate surrounded by a loving family, or listening intently as voters share their concerns, all set to background music designed to create an emotional state (“He cares!”, “She’s strong!, etc.), you realize that these positive ads have avoided reason altogether by creating a presentation based solely on pathos (emotion).

In contrast, negative ads (for all their faults) actually try to present an argument. Yes, that argument may be truncated to fit the 30-second TV format.  And yes, this argument may be illogical or unfair.  But if we can tease out the argument an attack ad is trying to make, we might discover or construct a legitimate, logical and even substantial argument that can be used as the basis for some serious thinking.

As we did with stump speeches, we’ll use negative ads from each party to explore one of the critical thinking subjects we’ve talked about more generally elsewhere.  So let’s start by looking at a spot put out by the Republican National Committee (called “Doing Fine”) to explore how principles of classical logic can be applied to our consideration of the Presidential candidates.

To get a few obvious things out of the way, clearly this ad suffers from most of the abuses of the genre, from ominous background music to a clipped news image (repeated twice) that screams “out of context quotation” to even the untrained eye.  But rather than dismiss the content of the ad out of hand due to these abuses (something many people do – although only with ads put out by candidates they don’t like), let’s try to assemble the argument the ad is trying to make in more detail.

Like most of the messaging coming out of the Romney campaign (and its surrogates and supporters), this ad focuses on the US economy which Republicans claim is doing very poorly.  And the statement that anchors their “Doing Fine” ad was spoken by President Obama during a press conference in which he says “the Private sector is doing fine,” which the ad presents as indicating the President is out of touch with the genuine state of the private sector economy.

If we were to organize the key points of the ad into a classical syllogism, it might look something like this:

* The President says that the private sector is doing fine in the current US economy

* The private sector is, in fact, not doing well at all

* Therefore, the President is out of touch with the reality of the current economic situation

This syllogism is linked to a general argument that underlies the Romney campaign which says that someone who is out of touch with economic difficulties (and is responsible for many of those difficulties) should not be elected President.  But for purposes of this discussion, the three statements in the syllogism above give us a good starting point for doing further research (and thinking) about some important subjects.

The first thing we can do is to look at the original context in which the President made his “doing fine” statement which we can fortunately do easily using this newfangled Internet thingee.  Now, by definition, anything less than a full rebroadcast of the original press conference would constitute a partial presentation.  But abridged does not always translate to “out of context,” and if you read or watch President Obama’s press conference in its entirety, I think it’s fair to claim that he demonstrates a comfort level with the current state of the private sector economy.

It’s also clear that he understands the struggles the private sector has done through over the last 4-5 years.  And, more importantly, he is making a case that other economic issues (the crisis in Europe, challenges in the public sector) are more problematical (and thus need more attention) than problems in the private sector.  So if we look at the original first premise of the argument drawn from the “Doing Fine” ad, a more accurate revision might say “President Obama thinks the private sector is doing better than other parts of the economy and thus needs less attention from government.”

Moving onto the second premise, the TV ad provides just three pieces of evidence (shots of newspaper clips discussing fears associated with slow job growth).  But problems with these sources of evidence include: (1) they are just snippets from three newspapers (only two of which are identifiable); and (2) none of these stories clearly focus on the subject at hand, which is the current state of the private sector economy.

Further examination of these sources might show that they do support the RNC’s second premise of a struggling private economy.  But even if they do, they do not provide sufficient evidence to support the argument as a whole.  So in the case of the second premise, we have an obvious avenue (do some research ourselves on the state of the private sector economy) to confirm or deny the second premise in the argument.

We should also keep in mind that even if the first two premises prove absolutely true, that does not necessarily mean that the conclusion follows from those premises.  But they could help us develop a more reasonable conclusion (such as that the President feels that government support for the private sector is a lower priority than helping shore up the public sector or supporting Europe). 

Depending on your political point of view, this might be a good thing or a bad thing.  But at least it demonstrates how a limited or truncated argument derived from the lowly negative TV ad can be used as the starting point for constructing something that is actually worth thinking about.