We’ve Forgotten the Art of the Case

Leland Vittert of NewsNation has been making the point for weeks, but when he said it on a radio program Sunday night, a lightbulb came on for me. He was talking about the Iran war, but it might as well have been about our society generally, a society that has forgotten the necessary task of persuasion on matters that matter.

With regard to Iran, Vittert has taken up a position in the tiny camp of those who believe the war is justifiable against Iran’s genuine threat but also believe President Trump is doing a horrible job of making that case. I happen to agree on both points.

My point is not to bludgeon the president’s case making abilities. Instead, as with so much in the Trump administration, I’d argue that his issues are symptoms of the broader society’s weakness. The critique of him simply serves as a very vivid example.

It is bad to have an unhinged group — that regularly indicates its desire to kill us, no less — join the nuclear club. While the precise timing of Iran’s nuclear plans may be disputed, their intractable insistence of continuing work on nuclear technology that is of no use outside of a bomb leaves their intent unmistakable.

But, even without ample polling to demonstrate the point, the meandering commentary from the president and his administration about the mission is as unclear as the threat is clear. As Vittert noted, while the administration has jumped to and fro between insisting the nuclear program was already “obliterated,” the “war is won” and the need to keep going, a far less confusing signal pulls the American public against the war: their suffering pocketbooks as gas prices skyrocket.

Last week, the George W. Bush Presidential Center released outtakes of President Bush’s video message to the nation when we were about to go into Afghanistan after 9/11. Just weeks after the nation was shaken by that unimaginable terrorist attack, they show the work that went into a single video address so that it clearly and urgently communicated why the country was going to go to war against the Taliban.

That is messaging discipline and, as Vittert summarized the other night, Trump lacks discipline. To the point, the president has plenty of popular positions — they got him elected twice — and even some wise ones, but he regularly fritters his goodwill away. Just when he gets on message, he goes back off with windmill chases against Canada, Greenland, Taylor Swift and whatever else happens to hit his fancy on a given evening.

The result is that while the nuclear threat from Iran is real, the President’s comments jump around like a squirrel confused at which of my tomatoes to bite into. The valuable parts are drowned out by extreme comments threatening destroying a civilization or seemingly detached-from-reality claims of deals made when little is materializing.

There is more than “Trump Derangement Syndrome” involved when everyone can remember Bush’s role as the “comforter in chief” after 9/11, but even those reasonably supportive of President Trump often forget the best parts of how he handled the COVID crisis. Project Warp Speed has much to commend it, but we don’t remember it so much as Trump’s musings on injecting bleach as a treatment. Yes, the president’s defenders will say he was joking; regardless: the president’s own mouth is regularly his own worst enemy.

There are plenty of people who hate President Trump, but plenty hated Bush too. The difference is Dubya took the time to try to bring those who disagreed with him along for the ride when it really mattered. Trump does not — or buries the few times he tries with everything else he does — and then just shouts louder when people disagree with him. He forgets it isn’t other people’s job to figure out when he happens to be right in spite of his best efforts to make the task difficult.

But, as I said, my point isn’t to spend this column just slamming the president. This is a culture-wide issue.

I saw a pastor last night post on X that “Christians shouldn’t use AI.” That’s not my position at all, but I can understand how one could try to make the case. This pastor, however, seemed incapable of making the case even though it was his position. Whenever someone questioned him, instead of citing an actual reason, he simply said, “Well experts are warning us” and other similar deflections.

Some expert, somewhere will warn us about anything at any time in any way. “Experts say” is the way we hide our lack of effort in building a case. Using information from those in the know to provide evidence for your case is indeed part of making a case, simply claiming “experts” have an opinion is mere logical fallacy.

Appeal to authority has long been rightly rejected as a useless arms race over who can pull out the most “important” expert to contradict their opponent’s expert. The man bewailing Christian use of AI found anti-AI “experts” waxing hysterically on the coming doomsday, but with a notable lack of any evidence. Nor did any of them deal with the counterpoint that if “the good guys” get scared of AI, it won’t go away, it just cedes the technology to the bad guys who definitely exploit it for the very doomsday scenarios they allegedly want to prevent.

In other words, they didn’t make the case, they just emitted a variety of histrionics at louder and louder volumes that we should allegedly listen to since they are “experts.” My guess from the gentleman’s X profile would be that he is the polar opposite of President Trump on many issues, but in terms of making a case, little distinguishes them.

If you want to make the case for something big or small, you actually need to make the case. The Art of the Case, if you will. But we seem to instead reach our own position and simply expect those around us to fill in the logical blanks in the same way we do. When they don’t, we don’t question our own logic or try to better explain it, we typically insult those who haven’t already arrived where we have.

In other words, we don’t make a case, we drop an opinion and expect everyone else to either take it at face value or do the work of proving our opinion themselves. If they don’t, what do we do? We yell it. It’s the opinion equivalent of speaking to someone who doesn’t know your language and then simply repeating it more slowly and loudly as if that would help.

And in the end, it doesn’t matter if you’re an average joe like me or the president, we all have insights and opinions worth making the case for. Sometimes it is just to convince people to buy the widget in my store that actually will make their lives better, sometimes it is to get needed backing for a war with generational consequences.

But we’re all poorer when we fail to not just take a worthwhile stand, but help people understand why it is worthwhile. It’s time to Make Case Making Great Again — on cases big and small, we’ll benefit when those who know and care take the time to help us join them in that.