Politics is War


One of the most effective weapons in the arsenal of the politician is also one of the great logical fallacies in debate. U. S. politicians of both political parties use it with reckless abandon and do so with such frequency that they’ve coined a phrase for it—“the politics of personal destruction.” When in the midst of an actual political race, the approach is taken to such an extreme that the weapon transforms into “attack ads.”

Of course, I’m referring to the ad hominem—the art of avoiding the issue altogether by focusing, instead, on the person doing the speaking. It’s become so prevalent that we often don’t even realize when it’s being done. There was a time when you didn’t have to quote the string of letters and abbreviations after your name to have credibility on a topic. You simply spoke your mind and people would evaluate the strength of your arguments at face value. Now, if a scientist stands up and says that she doesn’t accept the findings on global warming and presents arguments to support her position, the immediate reaction is to question her motives and/or her education, rather than address the ideas she presents.

It’s so commonplace now that when we see a political candidate that we find attractive, we all hold our collective breaths while the Ad hominem Attack Squad (AAS) begins its research. We know it’s only a matter of time (would public relations representatives even have a job were in not for the AAS?). One way or another, the first salvo will be fired and the test of our favorite political candidate is how much he can take and remain standing.

Every election cycle is filled with stories about attack ads and how “the American People” (I suppose that’s you and me, but rarely do these pundits seem to have any idea about what I'm thinking) are “outraged” by the “worst attack ads we’ve seen yet.” Apparently the AAS is getting better (or worse, depending on your point of view) at their jobs every year. But if we are so outraged by them, why do they continue?

Simple. They work.

Ad hominem attacks work. They are, in fact, a double-whammy of an attack. First, you manage to take the focus away from the arguments that the person is making, which is the important part. When you throw an ad hominem grenade at an issue, everyone scatters and the issue blows up. By the time everyone brushes themselves off, hopefully free of any shrapnel, they’re so busy thanking whatever deities they worship for having escaped relatively unscathed that the reason the AAS was sent after them in the first place is long forgotten. That’s the other benefit of the ad hominem. You don’t even have to make a counterargument. Simply by having that grenade thrown, your credibility goes through the roof. If the opposition thinks that gay marriage is wrong, but he had sex with a man, then clearly gay marriage is right. You might think it's silly, but just watch those poll numbers.

Notice that I said “having the grenade thrown”? That’s the slight of hand part. The key to any good AAS is that it leaves the attacking politician out of it—you have plausible deniability. No one wants to be known as someone who engages in the politics of personal destruction, after all.

That’s not to say you can’t use the ad hominem six-shooter. Every good politician carries one around on his holster and uses it to lay down a little cover fire while the AAS moves in for the kill. You’ve heard the shots—“the President is a liar [or evil]”; “the Democrats are invested in defeat”. Those shots are just enough to be annoying and normally don’t result in an all-out scatter from the issue, but if you get enough of your fellow politicians to start firing with you, you might not need the AAS at all.

So here’s your challenge for the day. Watch a news report or read a news article that includes comments by politicians on a major issue (the House Democrats’ plan to have troops out of Iraq by Fall ’08 is a good one). See if you can spot the six-shooters going. You won’t see the AAS, so don’t look for them. These are but skirmishes anyway, so the AAS won’t be needed until sometime around January ’08 when the Democrats declare war on each other.