It gives no indication of either the basis of Mayor Smith's former opposition to nuclear power plant construction or the reasons for her support for the Littletown project. It assumes without warrant that the qualities enabling a person to be elected to public office confer on that person a grasp of the scientific principles on which technical decisions are based. It fails to establish that a consistent and outspoken opposition is necessarily an informed opposition. It overlooks the possibility that not all those who fail to speak out on issues of nuclear power are necessarily opposed to it.
Mayor Smith, one of our few government officials with a record of outspoken, informed, and consistent opposition to nuclear power plant construction projects, has now declared herself in favor of building the nuclear power plant at Littletown. If someone with her past antinuclear record now favors building this power plant, then there is good reason to believe that it will be safe and ttherefore should be built.
The argument is vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?