LR Question 19 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: Thompson is the best person to lead the nation, of all the candidates running.
REASONING: Thompson is against higher taxes. All the other candidates are for taxes. Many people will agree that opposing higher taxes makes you a better leader than someone who supports them.
ANALYSIS: This argument mistakes belief for fact. The fact that people believe opposing higher taxes makes you a good leader doesn't make those people right. We need to know the facts about leadership and taxes. The LSAT makes a strict separation between belief and fact.
Also, consider that the belief stated in the argument is incredibly extreme. It says that those people will believe the tax opposing candidate is better no matter what else they do.
So, the people who hold the anti-tax belief are committed to supporting someone who opposes taxes and is also a cannibal who proposes to personally eat the first born children of his supporters. Obviously, no one would actually believe that – but that's what the belief in the argument means, literally. And you have to take LSAT statements literally. So the fact that many people might believe this is very weak support for the conclusion.
___________
- CORRECT. If this is true, then there's no evidence in favor of Thompson. “Opposes taxes” was the only evidence we had.
- This is a trap. Not being a sufficient condition isn't significant. For example, having a 180 on the LSAT is not a sufficient condition for admission to law school. But, you'd give yourself good odds if you had one, right?
Something can be “not sufficient” and yet still extremely important. - This sounds like it weakens the argument, but it doesn't really. Who doesn't have some sort of questionable opinion? No one can be right about absolutely everything. So, this statement could apply to every candidate.
- So? These leaders might have been even more than adequate had they opposed high taxes!
- Hardworking. What a joke. Every serious political candidate is hardworking. The campaign trail is brutal. This is a non-statement because it likely applies to everybody.
Recap: The question begins with “Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is”. It is a Weaken question. To practice more Weaken questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
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Very nice explanation (it took me a while to spot out the term “many would agree” as problematic, which led me to treat the first two choices as a premise attack)!
Just a small additional reason on why AC B is wrong: “good” leadership is an absolute term, but in the argument a comparison is made (“better”). Therefore:
– even if it is not a sufficient condition, it might be a necessary one, and if Thompson has it and the others not, he still would have higher odds of being a good leader than the others (and therefore being better than them)
– if we put the quality of leadership on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being “good”, even if it is not a sufficient condition for 5, it might be one for another threshold (let’s say 3 out of 5). If Thompson meets that threshold and the others do not, he would still be a better leader than them
Great point! Missed this at the time, appreciate you pointing it out, it’s definitely an added reason. For anyone reading who hadn’t heard of absolute and relative, you can check out this article: https://lsathacks.com/absolute-relative/