Self-study
Pundit: Support People complain about how ineffectual their legislative representatives are, Support but this apparent ineffectuality is simply the manifestation of compromises these representatives must make when they do what they were elected to do: compete for the government's scarce funds. ███ ████ ██████ ███████ ███████████████ ████ █████ ███████████ ████████████████ ██ ███ ██ ███████ ████ █████ ███████████████ ███ ██████ █████ ████ ████ ████ ███████ ██ ███
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that an electorate’s dissatisfaction with their elected officials proves that the elected officials are doing their job, which is to make compromises in pursuit of government funds. The author supports this conclusion by saying that when people are frustrated with an elected official’s ineffectuality, the official is making compromises and trying to obtain funding, as the ineffectuality is a result of those compromises.
Identify and Describe Flaw
The author’s premises concern the electorate’s dissatisfaction with elected officials regarding apparent ineffectiveness. However, the conclusion concerns all dissatisfaction with an elected official. Since the premises only explain one type of dissatisfaction and its link to whether the official is doing their job, they do not support the broader conclusion about all types of dissatisfaction.
12.
The pundit's argument is flawed ███████ ██ █████ ███ ███████ ████
a
the apparent ineffectuality ██ ███████████ ███████████████ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ███████████████ ████ █████ ███████████████
This attacks the gap between the specific premises and broader conclusion. If there are more ways to dissatisfy voters than just appearing ineffectual, then the conclusion wouldn’t be supported. The author never proved that other types of dissatisfaction also show the official is doing their job.
b
governmental resources that ███ █████████ ██████ ██████ ██████ ████ ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███████████
This question doesn’t deal with making resources less scarce. All we know is that one governmental resource, funding, is scarce. Because there is no question in the argument of how we increase access to this resource, this cannot be our flaw.
c
constituents would continue ██ ██ ████████████ ████ ███ ████████████ ██ █████ ███████████ ███████████████ ██ ████████████ ████ █████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ████ ████████ ██████████████
This answer choice doesn’t address the gap between the premises and conclusion. Even if constituents understood the cause of this apparent ineffectiveness, it would not change the fact that the conclusion is not fully supported by the premises.
d
legislative compromise inevitably ███████ ██ ███████ ███████████████ ████ ███████████
This argument says that constituents’ frustration with officials over ineffectiveness is often the result of compromise; however, the pundit never says that this compromise always results in dissatisfaction.
e
only elected public ████████ ████ ██ ██████ ███████████████ █████ ███ ██████
Our argument never assumes this — it centers on elected representatives, but never limits this phenomenon to just elected representatives. People could also be dissatisfied with appointed representatives, but our author never tells us.