Being a moderately successful debater at both the high school and college level, makes presidential debates an ambivalent experience for me. On one hand, the competitive juices are aroused vicariously. How should arguments be marshaled? What constitutes persuasive evidence? How can the weakness in our own arguments be explained or at least hidden? How should time for various arguments be apportioned for effective presentation? On the other hand, we must recognize that presidential debates are not debates in the classic sense. The debating propositions are usually ambiguous and ill-defined. There is little chance for rebuttal and no opportunity for cross examination.
It is, therefore, difficult for me to arrive at a dispassionate assessment of presidential debates. The nature and technical flow of the arguments are confused with the simple ethos and likeability of the candidates. Candidates are not only selling their arguments, but themselves. Voters often make an assessment as to the glibness, passion, and affability of the candidates. It is this mix of selling of the argument and marketing of the candidate, I find difficult to separate. Frankly few would want most technically excellent debaters to be president.
By nearly all accounts, Democratic candidate John Kerry bested George Bush in the recent debate. Not only was Kerry smoother, Bush frowned in such a way as to reduce his likeability. In all likelihood, the polls should show slippage for Bush. Since, people have seen Bush for four years they have a fairly fixed opinion of him so the consequences for him are smaller. A similar performance by Kerry would have been more devastating.
However, the victory may yet prove Pyrrhic for Kerry. Kerry was an academic debater and suffers from an affliction common to ex-debaters: the excessive concern for winning the present argument and the arrogance to believe that they can, if necessary, talk in enough circles around others to obfuscate their positions.
Winning an argument is the essence of academic debate. The truth or falsity of the debate proposition is irrelevant. Indeed, the best debaters typically win regardless of which side of a proposition they are asked to argue on. Everything is contained within the content of a debate. No one is expected or wants to make consistent arguments over the long term. What a debater says in the morning is irrelevant to the argument he makes in the afternoon. Debate is about developing rhetorical skill. Rhetorical skill is uncorrelated to the ability to correctly choose those themes and goals for which those rhetorical skills are deployed.
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