When politicians describe their opponents' positions, they typically make those positions seem implausible and unattractive. In contrast, scholars try to make opposing positions seem as plausible and attractive as possible. Doing so makes their arguments against those positions more persuasive to their professional colleagues. Politicians should take note: they could persuade more voters with their arguments if they simply followed the scholars in charitably formulating their opponents' positions. The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it ['fails to address the possibility that an approach that works with one kind of audience will not work with another', 'takes for granted that both scholars and politicians have persuasion as their aim', 'fails to account for the difficulty of coming up with charitable formulations of positions to which one is opposed', 'focuses on the differences between two styles of argumentation even though those styles might be suited to similar audiences']