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I'm planning to take this site in a slightly different direction over the summer, so it may be down now and then over the next few weeks and when it re-emerges, it will likely be different than what you've seen up until now.

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Negative Ads – Mapping Arguments

Having looked at one of Governor Romney’s negative ads in our last entry, in the interest of fairness it’s time to review a negative ad produced by the Obama campaign targeting his presumed Republican rival. 

In this instance, we’re looking at this TV ad which is was designed to portray Romney, who served as the CEO of the large private equity firm Bain Capital, as being responsible for the closing of the century-old CST steel mill with the result of numerous lost jobs and ruined lives. 

Others have discussed the effectiveness of the ad, and we could certainly analyze it in terms of its use of pathos to lead viewers towards a specific conclusion (specifically, the ads use of moving emotional testimony from people affected by the plant shut down and powerful images of a ruined landscape where a thriving enterprise once stood – illustrating both the theme of devastation and hinting at what the American landscape might look like if the Republican candidate is elected).

But today we are continuing our look at argumentation and, as mentioned previously, negative ads – for all their manipulativeness – must be premised on some kind of logical argument (as opposed to positive ads that can rely just on warm and fuzzy pathos).  And if we can figure out what argument a negative ad is making, we can use that understanding to determine our next steps towards drawing our own informed conclusions.

This time, we are going to make use of the Toulin method for diagramming arguments that I mentioned in a previous post.  It’s worth reading that original piece over to understand how Toulmin breaks arguments down into Grounds (evidence) leading to a Claim (a conclusion) with a Warrant providing the support that links Grounds to Claims.  (We’re going to keep this example simple by skipping over Backing for now.)

The Bain ad actually starts with a simple argument that can be presented in Toulin fashion as:

By breaking the argument into these linked components, it becomes easier to determine which elements can be supported or challenged.  For example, the Grounds cannot be challenged on the basis of fact since Bain was indeed the owner of the firm during its slide towards bankruptcy. 

On one level, Mitt Romney’s role in the firm (the Warrant) also looks like a statement of fact, but this is deceptive.  Like many complex real-world situations, not all truths resemble “All Cats are Animals” with regard to judging truth or falsehood.  For example, one could look at the timing of decisions related to CST and map them to the timing of Governor Romney’s changing roles within the organization (which take into account his leaves of absence when running the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 or running for the Presidency in 2008).  One could also challenge whether Romney’s role in a large organization such as Bain was directly responsible for the mill being shut down.  In both cases, you would be challenging whether the Warrant is sufficient to support the Claim (that Romney is responsible for the shutdown of the mill) regardless of the accuracy of the Grounds.

It’s at this point that the Warrant ends up turning into a Claim to another argument which expands our Toulin diagram to look like this:

Again, one can challenge the Claim and/or Warrant of this new argument (digging further into the reasoning behind certain decisions, for example) or questioning the responsibility of the CEO for the consequences – expected or unexpected – of every decision.  But putting aside details of how such challenges might be made, you can begin to see how mapping the logical argument hidden within the original seemingly emotion-driven negative ad gives us something substantial to discuss when either supporting or challenging its fundamental call to action.

And what is that call to action?  Well if we expand our Toulin map to include the critical hidden argument that sits on top of the entire persuasive effort, it would look like this:

While it took a little work to tease out the argument underlying the Obama ad, now that we’ve done so we have a number of ways to explore or challenge the entire argument, with research from news sources like this one being useful to help us accept or reject certain Grounds, Claims and Warrants.

For those who feel negative ads to be unpleasant or manipulative, the effort needed to turn them into a coherent logical argument (leveraging tools like Toulmin to make sure such arguments take into account more than Aristotelian syllogisms can) helps us do something the makers of such ads would prefer we don’t do: think for ourselves.  

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.

Stump Speech - Rhetoric

Just as we used the stump speech of the presumed Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, to illustrate the concepts of logos and pathos, we can now use a speech of his likely rival, President Obama (in this case, his 2012 campaign kickoff speech – which you should read through before continuing) to look at another critical thinking concept: the use of persuasive language (referred to earlier as “rhetoric”).

Most commentators would agree that President Obama is a highly skilled orator, which means his use of a number of rhetorical devices comes off more naturally than they would if used by a less talented speaker.  While such ability comes with some perils (notably, a tendency to talk too long or pack too many rhetorical schemes and tropes into a single speech), audiences tend to become more uplifted and transported when listening to a speaker who brings a skilled use of rhetoric to his or her presentations.

Let’s start by looking at some of the linguistic devices that tend to make the President’s speech “easy on the ear.”  First, you can find many instances of alliteration (the repeating of initial consonant sounds).  Thus we are reclaiming a “basic bargain that built” (B-B-B) and dealing with “a house of cards that collapsed in the most destructive crisis” (C-C-C), which is why we are at a “make-or-break moment for the middle class” (M-M-M).

Similarly, the President makes extensive use of anaphora, the repetition of the same word at the start of multiple linked sentences or phrases, which is why your children should get the chance to do better “no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what your last name is.”  On the written page, all those extra “or’s” would be superfluous.  But when spoken, they add life to an otherwise flat sentence, which is why we need to “make sure we aren’t taken advantage of by credit card companies and mortgage lenders and financial institutions” (as opposed to credit card companies, mortgage lenders and financial institutions – a less threatening group without that extra “and” replacing the comma).

Triplets abound within his speech, signifying how much we like examples, concepts and phrases to be grouped into threes (such as those aforementioned credit card companies, mortgage lenders and financial institutions).  Or take a look at this paragraph, in which the anaphoric phrase “Why else” is repeated at the beginning of three sentences to pull us through a particularly damning set of accusations:

"Why else would he [Governor Romney] want to spend trillions more on tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Why else would he propose cutting his own taxes while raising them on 18 million working families? Why else would he want to slash the investments that have always helped the economy grow, but at the same time, stop regulating the reckless behavior on Wall Street that helped the economy crash?”

Before moving on, keep in mind that the use of these types of rhetoric flourishes by a skilled speaker is not necessarily manipulative, or even a conscience choice by a speechwriter or speaker.  Every speaker wants to both convince and move an audience and devices like alliteration and anaphora are often what turn a dry speech into engaging oratory.  And a skilled writer or speaker has likely internalized these techniques to the point of using them without even knowing they represent named devices (much like my frequent use of this parentheses device became second nature before I even realized it had a name).

Elsewhere in the speech, President Obama’s points become more sophisticated and nuanced, allowing him to avoid one of the biggest problems in a stump speech: how to attack one’s political enemies without sounding shrill or small-minded (a particularly problem for an incumbent President who must not be seen as damaging the dignity of his office).

Which is why he spends half a paragraph heaping praise on his likely adversary as a “patriotic American who has raised a wonderful family…” who has a lot to be proud of, including having “run a large financial firm” as well as a state (my own state of Massachusetts, as it happens).  But (the President asserts), Governor Romney has learned the wrong lessons from these experiences (assigning to him the belief that wealth flows from the top down).

Now, one can argue that he misrepresents his opponent’s actual positions, but as a rhetorical structure, Obama’s praise for his opponent followed by harsh criticism presented more in sorrow than anger is an masterful way of condemning his opponent’s beliefs (while also defining those beliefs in a way that fits the President’s own campaign themes) without coming off as insincere or sarcastic (as in “my opponent deserves the billions he earned by ripping off the public for years”).

The speech actually climaxes eight paragraphs from the end with a series of rhetorical questions: "Will we [be] better off if more Americans get a better education?”, “Will we better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity?”, etc. (each of which is punctuated by the repeated phrase: “That is the question.” – an unnecessary add-on in an otherwise economical speech).  Given that he is likely to be speaking to a friendly audience, the anticipated answer to each question is likely a resounding “Yes” shouted from the crowed, creating a dramatic bonding moment between speaker and audience, leaving the remainder of the speech as a relaxing cigarette and promises of more to follow.

Regardless of your political persuasion, watching an artist perform his or her craft well is something we should all be ready to appreciate.  Especially since mastery of these devices can help us learn to effectively persuade others to do what we know is best for them (or at least help us identify when someone is trying to persuade us to do what they feel is best for us).