Debates? I Don't Think So
A presidential election cycle -- as lengthy these days as a presidential term itself -- quickly gets around to what laughingly are called "debates" about a year out from the election itself.
Would-be nominees start circling each other like sumo wrestlers almost as soon as a president has been inaugurated. There is no respite for citizens who are attentive to the electoral process, who actually believe that in a democracy it is up to them to be involved.
The first presidential debate I saw -- and that on a grainy, black-and-white television screen -- was the Kennedy-Nixon debate that took place in Detroit in October 1960. As political civility goes, it wasn't bad. Poor Nixon was sweating under the klieg lights. Kennedy looked suave as ever. Those two conditions decided the winner of the debate. It was he who did not sweat, never mind the now long-forgotten substance of the exchange.
The thing was, though, that the debate did have substance and pretty clearly defined the two candidates so that voters had a pretty good idea of what each would do if he were to be elected. Remember Quemoy and Matsu?
However, neither that occasion 56 years ago nor any such encounter of presidential candidates since could properly have been termed a "debate." And worse, what we have now are cheap Barnum & Bailey burlesque sideshows of yapping, yowling buffoons.
I find myself only occasionally drawn to the screen to watch those spectacles in the same way I am likely to slow down to observe the wreckage of a five-car pile up along the freeway. And when I do give in to such morbid curiosity, there they are, shouting at one another, interrupting, name-calling, speaking out of turn and otherwise trumpeting something less than half-truths with a generous sprinkling of outright lies.
Audiences at these things react in much the same way as spectators at a World Wrestling Entertainment match: begging for mayhem and enjoying it when it is inflicted. Or do they call to mind the bray of bloodlust heard in the Roman Colosseum when the lions were loosed on Christians and other undesirables?
In any event, these events are not debates.
I now reach back to my early high school days during which, tragically inept at basketball, I joined the debate team. We were the first generation of nerds. Some agency of the State of Michigan sponsored a forensic organization for public schools, each year publishing the topic for school debates.
My first year on the squad featured this gripping issue: "RESOLVED that farmers be paid 90% of parity." Parity in agriculture simply means that farmers receive prices for their production that will enable them to buy the goods and services they need without being forced to mortgage their land -- or something like that. Never having spent so much as 10 minutes on a farm, I was awash for weeks in corn futures, government subsidies, the price of milk and other agricultural data.
Actual debates feature two sides (affirmative and negative) with two debaters each. Our debate coach required that we be prepared to argue both sides and did so in practice sessions.
We were not allowed to write out word for word our arguments, but to condense them on large note cards with material abbreviated to guide us in our attempt to persuade judges that we had got the best of our opponent. Facts and their coherent presentation were the coin of the exercise.
The rules were rigidly followed: the first affirmative spoke for about eight minutes maximum, the second for four. Then the first and second negative for the same amount of time and so on. One could not interrupt a given speaker or indicate displeasure with another's case and was expected to treat the opposing debaters with courtesy. However, you could attempt to destroy the other side's case in fact-supported rhetoric, which was my specialty.
Aside from establishing an environment of civility, the rules of conduct provided time for the development of broad, long thoughts. You, the first negative, could think that your counterpart on the positive side was full of wet hay, but you could not say so or behave as if you did. You just tried to outdo him when your turn came.
Debaters were judged by how clearly and convincingly a given case was made and how thorough and relevant the support for it in fact and information was.
That's what a debate is: a learning experience for the debaters and their auditors. What is called a debate, such as one can see and hear on television with some number of eager candidates for office strutting their stuff, is not a debate. It is a debasement, a low-life imitation of a debate and, as such, belongs in a carnival tent along with its tasteless displays of human and animal abnormalities.
Can you imagine, without vomiting your breakfast, Donald Trump or Ted Cruz going at either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton come autumn? Clyde Beatty would have to be exhumed along with his whip, his chair and sidearm to keep the candidates from turning on one another with claws bared and fangs at the ready.
Beatty, unfortunately being unavailable, my nominee for moderator of those inevitable encounters would be a person of such authenticity, integrity and stature that no candidate would dare mess with her or him. I'm looking for an amalgam of Oprah Winfrey, Pope Francis, the late Barbara Jordan and my 4th-grade schoolteacher, Hazel DeLosh, who could silence a room of unruly 10-year-olds with a look. Got any ideas?
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