The economy is in the shitter and my opponent is a poopy-head; therefore, I will be a good president. (And other fallacies).

I said my next blog would be about logic fallacies in politics. And it will. But I have to talk, first, about McCain's VP pick.

It's at once dangerous and brilliant. Mostly, it's brilliant in theory and dangerous in practice. Not dangerous in the sense that she is somehow a dangerous person to have in power, but dangerous in the sense that I'm not sure how well the theory will translate when it comes to the average voter.

Historically speaking, a candidate's VP choice doesn't make much difference in their poll standing. VP choices are generally hedges against a presidential candidate's perceived weaknesses and seem to be picked more for their ability to consternate detractors than for their ability to win supporters.

Obama's weakness is experience, he got a guy drenched in foreign policy credentials. McCain's weakness is his age and rich white guy status, so he gets a young, somewhat unconventional woman with a Native American husband who has lived, essentially, a blue-collar life.

There's really very little debate to be had about why each candidate picked the running mate they did.

What starts to get interesting is the way parties react to the opposition's choice.

Of course, the DFL's reaction (which I presume the GOP knew and hoped would be their reaction) has been, "She has no experience!"

The clouds begin to mass, and suddenly, from the GOP, comes a shit storm of the DFL's own arguments...utterly backfiring on them.

The only potential for the GOP's arguments against Obama to backfire is sort of shot down; if the DFL wants to say, "Oh! I thought you couldn't put an inexperienced person in the White House, you hypocrites!" the McCain campaign only has to say, "We're not trying to make HER the president."

The only place left for the DFL to go is McCain's age. As if it's some foregone conclusion that he will die the minute he is inaugurated, and this woman, with not a minute of experience, will suddenly be thrust into the presidency.

This is the beginning of what is referred to, in logic, as a slippery slope. In a slippery slope, a series of unlikely or reaching consequences are alleged without proof that they will happen, in order to make a flawed argument or conclusion seem plausible.

Although it's not impossible that McCain might not make it too far into his presidency, it is highly unlikely. It is most likely that McCain will live for at least four years, even more likely he will live for three, and so on. At that point, Palin will have all kinds of experience--in the very White House itself--should something happen to McCain. So the GOP should have no trouble rebutting this criticism. Unless McCain's health begins to fail in some major way, lending credence, beyond his age, to the argument that he is not be long for this world, the argument is basically defunct. At least the way the DFL is presenting it now.

This is what makes the choice brilliant. Strategically, she's virtually bulletproof; it is easy for the DFL to criticize her inexperience, but it will be difficult for them to avoid sounding foolish or hypocritical when they do.

So--the slippery slope. One logical fallacy that crops up in political debates.

Two fallacies that get thrown around a lot are the Red Herring and the Straw Man.

The two names are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.

In a Straw Man fallacy, an opponent counters an argument by proving some conclusion that, as valid or correct as it may be, is inconsequential or unrelated to the actual argument at hand. He has knocked down a doppelganger--a"straw man"--rather than his actual opponent.

If a person were to look at this blog so far and say, "Well, Palin wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade, and if she succeeds, it will crush civil liberties, increase poverty, and increase crime," they will have slain a straw man.

The assertions made about her abortion stance may be true, or they may not be true, but it doesn't really matter. The rebuttal is based on a misunderstanding of my argument. It has no bearing on the argument I was making, which was that Palin was a savvy choice from a strategic standpoint.

Straw Men are usually unintentional. An opponent misunderstands or reads too far into an argument (in this case, a person may have viewed my argument as an endorsement of Palin's social policies) and responds to (maybe even wins) an argument that, for all practical purposes, exists only in his/her head.

The Red Herring can be characterized as the intentional version of the Straw Man, and the line between the two isn't always clear. In simplest terms, however, a Red Herring argument is simply the act of utterly changing the subject. It is used to divert attention away from an argument that a person is unprepared for, not knowledgeable about, or simply finds inconvenient or disadvantageous to his/her cause.

Both the Straw Man and the Red Herring could be characterized as the beefy, sophisticated cousins of the non-sequitur (literally, "It does not follow"). Non-sequitur refers to an argument in which the claims do not lead to the conclusion.

A very simple example:

Apples are a kind of fruit.
Apples grow on trees.

Therefore, logging is bad.

The first two claims are true, and the conclusion may even be true, but nothing is proven and we have no reason to be persuaded because the claims and the conclusions are unrelated. The argument, regardless of the conclusion's truth value, is worthless.

Post-Hoc fallacies are arguments that confuse chronology with cause-and-effect.

It's beyond rampant in politics. It may even be the trademark fallacy of politics. If it doesn't win the "favorite fallacy of politicians" award, then it comes in second only to the false dichotomy.

Post Hoc arguments assert that just because one event preceded another, the first event caused the second event.

An over-the-top example: After I was born, the Cold War came to an end; therefore, my birth put an end to the Cold War.

In politics, Post Hoc arguments tend to hand credit or blame to politicians for anything and everything that happens after she/he takes office, whether or not she/he was actually responsible for it. In some cases, these arguments prove out. In the many cases, the reality is much more complicated than anyone wants to admit.

Another fallacy of oversimplification (my category...utterly unofficial) is the false dichotomy.

In logic, "dichotomy" refers to an either/or statement. By their very nature, either/or statements require that if one element is false, the other must be true. A false dichotomy is an argument that offers only two outcomes, choices, or solutions where there are actually three or more.

A simple example might be: "He's late. He is either dead or he is cheating on me."

Of course, there are a million other reasons why he might be late.

In politics, the false dichotomy usually pits a deeply unsavory option against one that is less offensive--making the choice seem obvious, but ignoring all other possible scenarios.

An example: "You either oppose abortion or you have no respect for life."

Obviously, there is a whole vast sea of grey area that is not being acknowledged in this bifurcation (bifurcate means to split in two and is just another word for "dichotomy").

Another example of false dichotomy is the rarely admitted, though widely held belief that anyone who is not a Democrat is a Republican and vice versa. Aside from the most militant of line-toeing party loyalists, few people will admit that they are guilty of this assumption, but a good 90% of people in this country operate under it every single day, despite themselves.

Last, but certainly not least, are the appeals.

Appeals to convention/tradition, appeals to emotion, appeals to authority, appeals to consensus...the list goes on.

They are called appeals rather than arguments, because they really aren't arguments. They are mostly one-liners. They are intended to win you over without debate--they are pleas, essentially, to simply accept the veracity of something. An appeal to authority might look like this:

Appeal to anonymous authority:
"They say (or "scientists say" or "experts say")that a penny dropped from 15 stories up will kill the person it hits."

Appeal to known authority:

"Prof. Schmoe said that we are living in a new Reich."

If either of these are meant to inspire credulity in the listener, then they are appeals to authority. "So-and-so (who is in a position of authority or respect) has said it, so it must be true."

A statement like, "Most scientists agree" is at once an appeal to authority and consensus. It asks you believe something simply because a bunch of people agree that it is true.

Of course, scientists can be wrong, and the fact that more than one person agrees on a statement does not change or prove the truth value of the statement. In short, a thing is just as true (or just as false) whether 1 person or 5,000 people say it.

Statements like, "Nobody believes that anymore," are simply the negative image of an appeal to consensus. It is the same thing.

A subset of appeals to consensus are appeals to common practice. A child who is caught shoplifting --Jimmy, let's say--would be using this kind of appeal if he said, "But Bobby and Susie did it, too!" Of course, it doesn't matter who else did it. It is still wrong, and all this means is that Bobby and Susie are just as wrong as Jimmy.

Appeals to emotions speak for themselves. Appeals to fear, appeals to loyalty, appeals to guilt...I shouldn't have to explain the prominent role of these things in politics.

Last but not least, there are the non-arguments.

Any sentence that begins with "I think" or "I believe" is not an argument and cannot be treated as an argument (at least not to any productive end). The reason is this: When a sentence begins this way, the statement made is that a person believes or thinks something...NOT that whatever they think is correct.

If someone says to me, "I believe that God exists," there is nothing I can really say. Any argument that would logically follow from this statement would have to be about whether or not they believe as they say they do. If someone says they believe or think something, you just have to take their word for it--unless you are a mind reader.

If a person says, "I believe that God exists," what I can do is ask them why they believe what they do in the hopes that they will offer up an objective assertion at some point, but other than that...if logic is to be maintained, all that can be said is, "Okay."

This is far from a complete list of all the logical fallacies. But being aware of them will help you, hopefully, sort the wheat from the chaffe in all these long-winded political speeches. In fact, speech writers and advisers often have training in the strategic use of fallacy as a rhetorical tool by which a politician can convince you to vote for them without actually telling you what they will do with your vote.

You may find, as I have, that whole speeches, and actually most of the volleys between politicians, are made up of nothing but loose stringings-together of fallacies and appeals that have nothing in common but their abiding contempt for their opponent.

So.

It's your vote. They know about fallacies and how to use them. Now you know, too. Good luck.