Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the best person

Question

Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the best person to lead this nation. For one thing, Thompson opposes higher taxes whereas the other candidates support them. Many would agree that anyone who opposes higher taxes will make a better leader than someone who supports them.

Which one of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the politician's argument?

(A) Opposing higher taxes is not a factor contributing to good leadership.

(B) Being opposed to higher taxes is not a sufficient condition for good leadership.

(C) Thompson has questionable opinions concerning important issues other than taxes.

(D) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes performed their jobs adequately.

(E) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes were hardworking.

Source: LSAT

KarishmaB · Accepted Answer

Many would agree that anyone who opposes higher taxes will make a better leader than someone who supports them.
Thompson opposes higher taxes whereas the other candidates support them.

Conclusion: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the best person to lead this nation.

Note that the premise says many people would agree that anyone who opposes higher taxes makes a better leader than someone who supports them. The premise does not say that anyone who opposes higher taxes is a better leader. It just says that many people believe so. 
All we know is that Thompson opposes higher taxes while others support it.

We need to weaken the conclusion.

(A) Opposing higher taxes is not a factor contributing to good leadership.

This tells us that opposing higher taxes does not contribute to being a good leader. If this is true, then we cannot say that Thompson is the best of the lot. The only thing we know about Thompson that is different from others is that he opposes higher taxes. If that does not make him a good leader, we cannot say he is better than all others.
The argument gives us only 1 character of Thompson and this tells us that that character has nothing to do with good leadership. This weakens our conclusion.

(B) Being opposed to higher taxes is not a sufficient condition for good leadership.

It is ok if it is not sufficient. It may be necessary which means our conclusion can be derived. Perhaps other characteristics are also required to be a good leader and this doesn't say that Thompson doesn't have those characteristics. It doesn't have any impact on our conclusion. We need to be able to weaken that Thompson is the best person to lead.

Answer (A)

Chets25 · Answer

Why A and not B

Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the best person to lead this nation. For one thing, Thompson opposes higher taxes whereas the other candidates support them. Many would agree that anyone who opposes higher taxes will make a better leader than someone who supports them.

Which one of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the politician's argument?

(A) Opposing higher taxes is not a factor contributing to good leadership.

(B) Being opposed to higher taxes is not a sufficient condition for good leadership.

(C) Thompson has questionable opinions concerning important issues other than taxes.

(D) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes performed their jobs adequately.

(E) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes were hardworking.

haardiksharma · Answer

Chets25 
Because A talks about factor which involves good leadership 
and B has no mention about condiation in argument so this dont make sense

Nightmare007 · Answer

A is right answer in my opinion.
If you chose B>
 I would like you to read conditional statements and know what is sufficient condition and what is necessary condition. If in B instead of sufficient it were Necessary. then it would have been correct. 
Hence, 
Option A is Completely overrides option B.

abhimahna · Answer

The argument is saying anyone who opposes higher taxes will make a better leader. We need to weaken this. If we say, Thompson was a better leader because of some other reason and taxes was not the reason, we can weaken it.

(A) Opposing higher taxes is not a factor contributing to good leadership.  --> Okay, it is saying Opposing higher taxes has no contribution to become a good leader. This i s directly attacking the conclusion.

(B) Being opposed to higher taxes is not a sufficient condition for good leadership.  --> TRAP. Not a sufficient condition, but could be one of the conditions. Hence, not a weakener.

(C) Thompson has questionable opinions concerning important issues other than taxes.  --> Other issues are OFS.

(D) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes performed their jobs adequately.  --> Adequately?? Do we have any link between good leader and working adequately? No.

(E) All of the past leaders who supported higher taxes were hardworking. --> Same as D

AbhishekDhanraJ72 · Answer

why not c ? what if taxes are not as important as politician believe so it attacks direct on argument. someone please explain?

Aviral1995 · Answer

Issues other than taxes are out of scope of our argument, so we can eliminate C
Let me know if it helps!

Aviral1995 · Answer

VeritasKarishma  i would like to understand the meaning of option B. Does sufficient condition makes it wrong? what if if it was necessary condition instead of sufficient condition.

B- Being opposed to higher taxes is not a sufficient condition for good leadership
Sufficient condition makes the meaning OPPOSING HIGHER TAXES DOES NOT GUARANTEE A GOOD LEADERSHIP

IT MEANS THERE ARE CHANCES THAT OT MIGHT BE A GOOD LEADERSHIP BUT NOT 100% SURE, WHICH MAKES NOT A GOOD WEAKENER

Instead if B were Being opposed to higher taxes is not a necessary condition for good leadership
It means opposing higher taxes is not a pre-requisite for good leadership.- this directly makes it weaken

Please let me know if my reasoning is correct??

GMATNinja · Answer

The politician's argument is that  Thompson is the best person to lead this nation . He says many people have the opinion that  anyone who opposes higher taxes will make a better leader than someone who supports them . In his view, Thompson is the only candidate that opposes them.

To weaken the argument, we need to cast doubt on the link between opposing higher taxes and being a good leader.

(C) suggests Thompson has questionable opinions about issues other than taxes which might make him a poor leader in real life. However, this does not affect the argument that opposing higher taxes makes someone a better leader than someone who supports them. So (C) can't be the correct answer to this question.

Let's take a look at (A):
 
This tells us that the "many" people in the passage that think opposing higher taxes will make someone a better leader are wrong. This removes the support for the claim that Thompson will be the best leader and significantly weakens the argument.

This makes (A) the answer to this question.

I hope that helps!

hadimadi · Answer

Hi GMATNinja shouldn't the part in red be: being a better leader? The question stem nowhere talks about being good. You can be better than someone without being good. Even if you are bad, the other person might be worse, making you a better leader. Also, I don't understand how we can infer from (A) the highlighted in blue: (A) -> People opposing higher taxes are better leaders than people who support HT is no true . Negating the RHS statement I get in total (A) -> There exist people who oppose higher taxes but are worse leaders than people who support higher taxes. Writing (A) out I get: Opposing higher taxes is not a factor contributing to good leadership -> There exist people who oppose higher taxes but are worse leaders than people who support higher taxes I can't see how the above inference logically is correct, because we can show that the negation of the above, which would be A and not B, can be true: Even if opposing high taxes is not a factor of good leadership, it could still be that all people opposing higher taxes are better leaders than people supporting higher taxes

GMATNinja · Answer

The politician is arguing that "Thompson is the best person to lead this nation." Why? Because "Thompson opposes higher taxes, whereas other candidates support them."

Let's examine (A):
 
How does this impact the argument? Well, the politician thinks that Thompson is the best person to lead the nation BECAUSE he's the only one who opposes higher taxes. But (A) tells us that opposing higher taxes isn't even a factor "contributing to good leadership." So the fact that Thompson opposes higher taxes does NOT support the idea that Thompson will provide "good leadership." And if opposing higher taxes doesn't contribute to "good leadership," it's a not a good reason to prefer Thompson to other leaders.

It's true that Thompson doesn't  need  to be a "good leader" to be "the best person" to lead the nation. As you say, sometimes a "bad leader" is still the best choice. Even so, the politician's argument relies on the idea that opposing taxes contributes to "good leadership." Because even if Thompson isn't a "good leader," we still need a reason to think he's  better  than other leaders. And if opposing taxes doesn't contribute to "good leadership," we no longer have a reason to believe that Thompson would be better than the other leaders.

And if there's no reason to think Thompson is better, the argument falls apart.

I hope that helps!

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Politician: Of the candidates running, Thompson is the best person

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