I know a thing or two about debate. I started debating competitively when I was 15 and I was good enough at it to get into an excellent college because of it. Of course, I only debated one year of college and then I had an existential crisis about the lack of real world impacts of the work we did and spent so much time on. My last tournament I jumped out a second story window to make that point. I lost that round but got 3rd speaker at the national tournament we were attending.
So when I watch the presidential debates I notice things that other people don’t. There are lots of nostalgic former debate competitors out there that I am sure know what I am talking about. The desire to “flow” the debate is almost overwhelming. Flowing is when you follow the arguments across your notes and track the clash between competitors. If I had flowed the debates last night I am certain that I would have found that John McCain lost.
In debate there are two key strategies to winning that are legitimately deployed 1) “Spreading” your opponent, or hitting their argument with so many counter arguments that they “drop” points you make. The second strategy is my favorite and one I still use in my current line of work since I am often engaged in rhetoric with an opponent. It is called a “turn”. A turn is when you take your opponents assertion and turn it against them by proving how what they have asserted actually entrenches that which they claim to oppose. The most effective strategy is to do both things at once–spread your opponent with turns.
There are of course strategies that are not legitimate or advisable. These would be 1) A pivot–when you ignore the actual argument being made and segway to an irrelevant point. With a good judge, this would be considered dropping an argument and depending on the weight of that argument and the ability of the other competitor to highlight that weight it is a reason for a loss. John McCain’s move to energy in the debate last night from Obama’s discussion of the amount of spending on the war is a classic example of a pivot. 2) Evading an argument is another way of “dropping”. McCain would often not answer questions and “fluff” his rhetoric with compliments to his running mate or anecdotal assertions around his “maverick” character. 3) Contradicting yourself. A contradiction lays the groundwork for your opponent to turn your arguments. A good debater NEVER wants to contradict themselves and is always conscientious to make sure all the arguments are clean. McCain contradicted himself in a big way when he claimed that Obama had asserted the “surge exceeded his wildest expectations” and then maybe 20 minutes later asserted several times that Obama refused to acknowledge the success of the surge. The two assertions are mutually exclusive. There is a whole bunch I could write about this exchange in the debate and I believe Obama got very close to turning this argument but what it would have taken to do that turn may not have been available to him politically. I will talk more about this in a later post.
Obama is really a superb debater. He carefully hits all points made and is able to order them in a logical way regardless of how they are convoluted by the way McCain chaotically makes his arguments. He is also able to “spread” his opponent and had several turns. That is not to say that he couldn’t have done better–at times he went the wrong direction with his answers and set himself up for attack, but that is to be expected–the debate is extemporaneous after all. McCain is on the surface good with rhetoric, but is a terrible technical debater. You can bet I will be flowing the next debate, too bad the rest of America won’t. If they did, the winner would be clear.
