This has approximately zero relationship to the way political campaigns (or anything else) happens in the real world, where campaign managers are part of an ideologically biased social network. In fact, their job is essentially to strengthen the connections between voters and a candidate, by whatever means necessary, mostly through propaganda (aka advertising) that combines emotional appeal with the occasional smidgen of rational argument.
Maybe it would be a better world if people didn't work this way, but they do, and I don't see any prospect of changing this. I'm not even sure how rationality can be applied to most electoral issues. Take the issue of abortion. Either you believe abortion is immoral, or not. You can apply rationality to figure out which candidate supports your moral point of view, but it's not much help in setting your root moral values. So how can you make an unbiased choice?
Elections are all about trying to get people who share your biases into power. I know the self-proclaimed rationalists here think the whole process is icky, but part of being rational is dealing with the real world, not the world as you would like it.
That being said, there's room in the electoral process for a bias in favor of rationality, science, humanism, and enlightenment. I think it's pretty clear which of the two major political parties in the US favor those values.
Rationality has plenty to say about whether abortion is morally permissible.
Are fetuses sentient, for example? Do they feel pain? What would happen socially, economically, if we outlawed abortion? Who would benefit? Who would be harmed? How much?
If you're a strict utilitarian, moral problems reduce to factual problems. But even if you're not, facts often have a great deal to say about morality. This is especially true in issues like economics and foreign policy, where the goals are largely undisputed and it's the facts and methods that are in question. I c...
You are, by occupation, a campaign manager, and you’ve just been hired by Mortimer Q. Snodgrass, the Green candidate for Mayor of Hadleyburg. As a campaign manager reading a book on rationality, one question lies foremost on your mind: “How can I construct an impeccable rational argument that Mortimer Q. Snodgrass is the best candidate for Mayor of Hadleyburg?”
Sorry. It can’t be done.
“What?” you cry. “But what if I use only valid support to construct my structure of reason? What if every fact I cite is true to the best of my knowledge, and relevant evidence under Bayes’s Rule?”1
Sorry. It still can’t be done. You defeated yourself the instant you specified your argument’s conclusion in advance.
This year, the Hadleyburg Trumpet sent out a 16-item questionnaire to all mayoral candidates, with questions like “Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?” and “Did you inhale?” Alas, the Trumpet’s offices are destroyed by a meteorite before publication. It’s a pity, since your own candidate, Mortimer Q. Snodgrass, compares well to his opponents on 15 out of 16 questions. The only sticking point was Question 11, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a supervillain?”
So you are tempted to publish the questionnaire as part of your own campaign literature . . . with the 11th question omitted, of course.
Which crosses the line between rationality and rationalization. It is no longer possible for the voters to condition on the facts alone; they must condition on the additional fact of their presentation, and infer the existence of hidden evidence.
Indeed, you crossed the line at the point where you considered whether the questionnaire was favorable or unfavorable to your candidate, before deciding whether to publish it. “What!” you cry. “A campaign should publish facts unfavorable to their candidate?” But put yourself in the shoes of a voter, still trying to select a candidate—why would you censor useful information? You wouldn’t, if you were genuinely curious. If you were flowing forward from the evidence to an unknown choice of candidate, rather than flowing backward from a fixed candidate to determine the arguments.
A “logical” argument is one that follows from its premises. Thus the following argument is illogical:
This syllogism is not rescued from illogic by the truth of its premises or even the truth of its conclusion. It is worth distinguishing logical deductions from illogical ones, and to refuse to excuse them even if their conclusions happen to be true. For one thing, the distinction may affect how we revise our beliefs in light of future evidence. For another, sloppiness is habit-forming.
Above all, the syllogism fails to state the real explanation. Maybe all squares are rectangles, but, if so, it’s not because they are both quadrilaterals. You might call it a hypocritical syllogism—one with a disconnect between its stated reasons and real reasons.
If you really want to present an honest, rational argument for your candidate, in a political campaign, there is only one way to do it:
Only in this way can you offer a rational chain of argument, one whose bottom line was written flowing forward from the lines above it. Whatever actually decides your bottom line is the only thing you can honestly write on the lines above.
1See “What Is Evidence?” in Map and Territory.