During the high political season it’s more important than ever not only to point out the truth from the lies, but also the various logically flawed arguments that are used to defend, obfuscate and justify the lies. A very common tactic I call the Tu quoque two-step.
Tu quoque is Latin meaning “you, also,” and anyone with a bother or sister knows how it works. If someone accuses you of something you throw it right back at them, accusing them of doing the same type of thing or worse. This is a fallacy because one person’s bad actions do not excuse another’s.
The two-step is a political version that works like a kind of dance. The first step is to make the assertion which forms the essence of all campaigns:
1) I am a good candidate with respect to X
Ideally these should be issues that cannot be directly refuted with evidence, like “character,” or “judgment.” Sometimes, however, there are factual matters that refute your assertion and you will be questioned about them. In that case you fall back to the second step:
2) My opponent is just as bad as me with respect to X
The threat thus neutralized, you can safely return to step 1 with the same or many different “X’s”.
What’s funny about this is that not only is the second assertion a logical fallacy, but the two statements taken together are contradictory. If you were a good candidate on that issue then your opponent would be worse, not “just as bad.” Oddly many Republicans seem to suffer from a kind of endemic double-think that prevents them synthesizing their many and various statements into a cohesive logical framework. They feel that they can retreat to the safety of tu quoque when attacked and yet remain insulated from the consequences of what amounts to agreeing with the premise of the attack.
There are many examples of this, but the issue of Sarah Palin’s experience is nearly canonical. As many pundits immediately realized, selecting Palin as a running mate meant that McCain had ceded the “experience” argument. He cannot argue that Obama is dangerously inexperienced to lead because his own running mate, and potential president, is also inexperienced. But they didn’t count on the two-step. Republicans all over their convention were touting her experience – her executive experience as mayor and governor, her experience living near Russia, her experience, um, Alaska National Guard, and, uh, the things she did. All that stuff. Experience!
Of course her actual governing experience is laughable (and indeed her actions in office are highly questionable), but when pinned on the specifics the Republicans uniformly and nearly in sync stepped back into the defensive “you-too” response. Obama has no more experience than Palin; it’s up to Obama to show that he has more experience; both of them have the same time in politics; community organizer, ha!
Next time a Republican politician or talking head is pushed by a journalist and falls back on tu quoque, I’d like to see the follow up question: “So you agree that your party is actually bad on issue X? If not, why did you try to argue that the Democrats are also bad?”
But then, I’m kind of a dreamer that way.
- jack*
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