LSAT 74, Logical Reasoning I, Q8

QUESTION TEXT: Editorial: Our political discussions tend to focus…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: It’s useless to focus on the flaws of our leaders.

REASONING: We chose those leaders. We should focus on the flaws in our institutions that allowed us to choose such flawed leaders.

ANALYSIS: It can be hard to figure out what’s wrong with a system unless you also look at the results it produces. So it may be hard to reform the political system unless we look at the flaws of the leaders produced by that system.

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1. CORRECT. The negation of this wrecks the argument.
   Negation: Examining the flaws of an individual leader will reveal something about the flaws in the system that produced that leader.
2. Who cares? This just gets the terms under discussion backwards. We care whether discussing flaws of leaders stops us from reforming the system. This answer instead talks about whether discussion about reforming the system will affect discussion of leaders.
3. It doesn’t matter whether the system is completely terrible.
   Negation: It’s possible for the system to produce a leader who isn’t flawed.
4. Who cares if one person has examined the flaws of the system?
   Negation: One solitary individual examined the details of the nation’s institutions and procedures. But they didn’t tell anyone, and then they died.
5. Public dissatisfaction is irrelevant to this question. This answer is drawing on your outside ideas that the public is dissatisfied with its leaders.

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