Second Presidential Debate: Fallacies Of Reasoning

Another four years another presidential debate. Before I go on to the current debates let me state a few facts about past ones. The Lincoln and Douglas debate was in important because it started Lincoln presidential career. The Debates lasted from August 21 -- October 15. There where seven of them, with two days to two weeks in between. Each debate lasted three hours; first candidate spoke for one hour; the second for one and a half hours; the first replying for a half hour. Candidates alternated going first. The topics involved where primarily slavery and the Union. Other important debates were the '48 and '57. They were the only debates before 1960; there were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976. In

Even though President Obama’s speech was effective in how it was given to the public and convincing on getting the American people to join his side of the argument, his speech did contain logical fallacies that would do the opposite for the well-educated and skeptical audience members. Logical fallacies are flaws in the reasonings given by the president. While some of his audience may not have caught them, others would have. The fallacies dampened his ethos, or credibility, and made his speech less effective than planned. In the first few sentences, Obama tells the nation, “So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas...But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization,

The movie, The Great Debaters, takes place in the 1930s and explores the struggles of three students from Wiley College’s debate team. The first character introduced is the youngest student from the team, 14 year old, James Farmer Jr. He is an ambitious young man who strives to live up to his father’s expectations. James struggles with fear throughout the movie. He is sheltered and does not understand the severity of the racial conflict of the time. This trait is evident in the film in two key scenes. The first is when his family is out for a drive and his father accidently hits a white man’s pig. James’s father is very cautious during this interaction and James witnesses the incident from the car. This interaction has a major impact on James and gives him a greater understanding of the racial conflict. The second incident occurs when James is unsuccessful in his first debate. When given other opportunities to debate, he questions himself and fears failure. This fear plays a role in the debate team’s future competitions.

The first logical fallacy listed, ad hominem, which in Latin means, to a man, is something that our current President has been noted as doing a lot of during his campaign for election. Whether the argument against him was logical or not he has been labeled as an aggressive counter puncher with his use of this logical fallacy. An example of this would be when he posted on Twitter “And this is the bimbo that’s asking presidential questions?” referring to then Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly. Along with the statement was a meme with photos of her where she had posed for GQ Magazine in 2010. His reason for doing this was fueled from a

In the wake of the death of Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court Justice , Republican candidates had a debate and met in South Carolina for the 9th GOP debate.This debate mainly discussed what each candidate would do if they were to become president. During these debates, the candidates are given a chance to deliver their messages , and to help voters determine which candidate will be best as president. In the republican debate, each candidate was asked a question which they was expected to answer but somehow didn't appear to do so. While watching, I came to conclusion that some of the arguments were successful and others unsuccessful. In the first section of the debate when candidates Ben Carson, Donald

The title is At Republican Debate, Candidates Are Likely to Set Sights on Ted Cruz, written by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman issued on December 14, 2015. Many controversial topics have defined the previous Republican debates with Donald Trump currently leading in the polls. This article characterizes possible tactics for the final Republican debate. The subject matter of this article deals with potential Republican presidential candidates. Candidates must attack Donald Trump if they want a chance of taking him over in the polls. Some facts are based on state reporting and opinions on debate tactics. The editor does attempt to appeal to his readers' emotions by highlighting voter's concerns and issues including terrorism,

The 1992 and 2012 U.S. Presidential Elections were two of the most famously negative campaigns in history and share multiple similarities despite being separated by twenty years. In 1992, incumbent President George H.W. Bush was seeking reelection against Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, while the 2012 general election saw incumbent President Barack Obama seeking reelection against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. The campaigns of both incumbent presidents incorporated heavy use of television attack advertisements in the attempt to improve their political image, discredit their opponent, and win reelection.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump, has used rhetorical fallacious tactics, to persuade his audience into voting for him. Fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener, or take advantage of social relationships between people.

The presidential election in the year 2000 was full of controversy. The election was incredibly close. There were accusations of “hanging chads”, faulty voting equipment and an election that was too close to call. Normally in an election when it appears as though one person is clearly in the lead the tradition is that the person who is losing “concedes” the election. This is an important part of the election process in the United States. In the election of 2000 the vote was so incredibly close that he retracted his concession. This threw the whole system into chaos.

The presidential election of 2000 rose great suspicion due to its call for a ballot re-count in the state of Florida. The legitimacy of this election is considerably debatable in terms who truly won between Republican George W. Bush, and Democrat Al Gore. This correlates to the fact that 175,000 of Al Gore’s votes were deemed as “uncounted” raising suspicion among the Democratic party. Coincidentally, citizens of Palm Beach Florida became outraged as they became suspicious that their votes were counted incorrectly. As many of these citizens claimed they had voted for Gore, the ballots show they voted for Republican, Pat Buchanan. Due to this, a re-count of all ballots took place, thus leading to nationwide confusion as to who truly won.

The attacks that occurred in this nation on September 11, 2001 will always be remembered throughout time. Congress has voted to override Obama’s veto on a 9/11 bill by a vast majority, specifically 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of Representatives. This bill allows for American families who were victims in the September 11 attacks to create or alter any lawsuits against Saudi Arabia. Some lawsuits against Saudi Arabia will demand tem to give forth documents and other pieces of evidence based on these attacks. This article also addresses Obama’s point on this issue. He decided to veto this bill because it would set a “dangerous precedent.” More specifically, the Saudi government has stated multiple times that their nation had no par in the September 11 attacks. Obama decided to override this bill to keep America’s relations with this nation on a good note. The C.I.A direction also put his opinion on Congress overriding the veto, saying, “Any legislation that affects sovereign immunity should take into account the associated risks

Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush are running for the Presidency. The two candidates are in Presidential Debate to allow the voters to get an understanding of where they each stand on certain positions and policies. Bush and Gore have some similarities and differences on certain positions and policies discussed in the Presidential Debates.

The republican nominee and his staff did not withhold from exploiting informal fallacies in their broadcastings either. A great example comes from John McCain’s commercial titled “Compare”. In this commercial, McCain tries to appeal to the value of economic security by commenting on the economic policies of Barack Obama; the republican manipulates this information with different fallacies: False dilemma which is a fallacy of logos that “oversimplifies a complex issue so that only two choices appear possible” (Ramage et Al. 2012), for example, he implies that if you vote for the Democratic candidate you would get higher taxes, your income would be spread, the nation would experience new spending and small businesses would suffer while voting for John McCain would ensure your job, your income, he would freeze the nation’s

Currently, the Presidency of the United States is coming close to the final and whoever gets elected president is an accomplished liar. Both of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are using the political skills to argue because their major party candidates for president have to appear to be fully qualified to occupy the Oval Office. After watching of these videos of both Hillary and Trump’s speech, in my opinion, I analyze three types of informal fallacies from their speeches such as argument against the person, hasty generalization, and appeal to people; especially, appeal to vanity.

Logical fallacies are common in the political races in the United States, whether they’re in advertisements or in a speech given by a candidate. During the presidential election of 2012, logical fallacies seemed to be more