Debates...

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Do you remember the debate club/team from high school, college or university? Classically there were a number of "issues" up for debate, usually known well in advance by both teams. But it was a coin flip if you were going to argue for or against an issue. Of course this meant that one would have to be well versed on a subject. One could be forced to argue for an issue like same-sex-marriage or argue against it.

What this did was let contestants (combattants?) really examine both sides of issues and thereby better form and inform their own personal opinions. In other words it taught the debate team participants to think.

Now we can read the Presidents record and his platform just as we can for Romney. These debates only serve as a platform to see their poise, mannerisms and eloquence of phrasing in action. Perhaps it serves to clarify their positions but that's really a secondary objective as opinions evolve and even change over time.

What I'd love to see is Obama argue why Obamacare sucks. I'd love to hear Romney explain why the wealthy should pay way more in taxes. Not because they believe it, but to show they've really looked thoughtfully at both sides of issues and formed an educated conclusion.

Because as it is now, the debates offer clarification, a gaffe, perhaps even a great quote. But they don't show any real leadership skills. And by that I mean leadership that not only has vision on which direction they want the country to go, but leadership that can confront an unexpected situation and make decisions only after careful deliberation. I mean that's the kind of leadership I'd like to see.

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I like the idea. If anything, it'd provide even more fodder for media lulz/rants/head-assplosions/etc. After all, isn't this what the public craves for?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Like I said (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1568195.html), debates don't matter for anything substantial but to convince people of the choices they've already made about voting.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I don't know if that's the case. Clearly, Romney's performance in the first debate affected his numbers. Those people had to come from somewhere.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I have a theory. Those are people who weren't decided whether they'd vote for their candidate. The one whose side they already were on. Then the media started talking about the debate 24/7, and you see the result. It's a self-perpetuating process.

Or I could be totally wrong and the media has no influence on people whatsoever.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

so the debate helped to push Romney leaners into Romney supporters. Doesn't that mean the debate had an impact?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

The MEDIA did. They found the material to push them, and Romney provided it. Debates tend to provide fodder for more propaganda, yes.

You and your logic!

[dwer.livejournal.com]

I... ok. I get that the media has a vested interest in making this all seem far more fraught with tension than it really is, but the debates still did actually happen.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Polls are not the actual vote btw, I'm sure you know. I'd concede that debates do have *some* impact on the final income, particularly if/when one of the candidates implodes spectacularly (like Obama almost did on the fist one) - which doesn't happen that often. Otherwise, for their larger part their impact is minimal, if any.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Hah! Did I say final income?

FREUDIAN SLIP!

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

http://www.businessinsider.com/kimmel-debate-reactions-2012-10

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

My dad one time was forced to debate for the Vietnam War during one of these, during the Vietnam War.

It sucked.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

He totally should have pulled a Colbert!

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

That's what I was thinking too. The Colbert approach is the best way to conduct these sort of debates.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That's an easy one: "If we withdraw from Vietnam, the Commies will soon be on our doorstep in Indonesia."

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I'd love my doorstep to be in Indonesia, like, right on the beach.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I have been reading some of the literature from that time period. One guy claimed that pulling out of Vietnam would mean that the US imperial boarder would eventually be pushed back to the Pacific Coast. Given the cost of the war, that might not have been such a bad outcome.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

Seems too much like an argument that "or empire is better"

I seriously think we champion ourselves and demonize the Soviets far too much in regards to the cold war.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

That's part of the game. ;-)

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

When I read Voltaire's Candide, I was struck by the notion that "this is the best of all possible worlds." That seemed to be the cold war mentality at the time. The US was the best of all possible empires to the point of not being able to recognize itself as an empire. The mantra was "we are good, they are evil."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I agree, as up to the point where they withdrew from the Warsaw Pact they were winning it in the Third World, with the singular exception of Israel where their proxies fought ours, ours got walloped upside the head and theirs were the ones that invariably dealt ours a good thumping, and their army, to boot, was getting nuclear superiority over us in a major way in the last years of it. In the Great Game the Soviets were the professionals, we were the amateurs. >.>

And of course morally speakking dictatorships are dictatorships, backing them for free enterprise or the international triumph of the Revolutionary Working Class doesn't change the experience for the people being tortured by the local secret police agency.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I like it.

Will never happen because the party faithful won't tolerate having their faith questioned.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I would be easy for Obama to criticize Obamacare since he did not come up with it. A better issue might be the use of assassination as a method of dealing with international outlaws.

I agree that the debates are more about physical posturing than making position statements. Some people vote by how a politician appears rather than on whether or not they will do well in office.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Obama has aged so much in 4yrs. He's gone gray. But Romney has a nicer smile.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I'll bet his parents invested quite a bit of lucre in that smile.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

The idea of switching sides is great when trying to tease apart the variable of superior skill in advocacy from the variable of advantageous position, which is what debate team is all about. Like switching start positions, North for South, on the football field every quarter. In that case, we want to know which team is better at the process of playing football... not which side of the field has an inherent advantage. Switching sides allows the undesired variable to cancel itself out.

But how would that football game go of one team was more interested in which physical side of the field the winner was on, than in actually winning?

In politics we can't tease these variables apart so easily. Humans are committed to positions, and the audience is interested in BOTH the positions of the candidates, and their skill in presenting them (we expect and desire a powerful mind at work in our representatives. Adversarial discussion is a method for displaying that)

Also, If the candidate's heart wasn't in arguing the opposite position, how can we think that we have adequitly canceled out the variable of superior advocacy? It would be like the parable of the two camel drivers arguing over which is slower. They don't get anywhere until they switch sides back to the camel they think is best.

The issues of one candidate being really familiar with the other side's argument should and would be obvious in any adversarial discussion with the focused attention of an educated audience.

The thing is, Presidential debates are an anachronism... they kind of already were even in the 18th century. The idea of Debate as an exposition of civicly significant thoughts is a holdover from when a significant portion of decision makers were illiterate, or for some reason unable to access the ideas involved outside of the debate's 'showcase'. In an information society, we don't need the debates to expose us to the ideas involved or to resolve the common arguments between.

Instead, these days, we use the debates as a Turing Test. Can the candidate talk at length, when presented with variable, unexpected stimuli, such that the viewers can trust that the individual has a powerful mind at work, rather than being a puppet of handlers and managers.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Study it out, man, study it out! (http://youtu.be/2E87gciwebw)

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

As Raptor-Jesus said...

" You will always have the Stupid among you... bu you will not always have breakfast."

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

One thing that's got me confused about the debates, something that I almost made a post about, is how Romney said that under Obama oil production has increased on private land while decreasing on government land. What does that mean? How is the party that is so for private healthcare so for government oil production? There does not seem to be a consistency there.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Hey, it's the party that wants a small central government, while expecting state governments to be mandating what happens inside women's uteri and between the sheets of two consenting adults!

Obviously some things being run by government are better than others, particularly those that bring cash.

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

It'll never happen, my friend. The way politicians will run with quotes taken out of context, can you imagine the field day they'd have with quotes from this debate? :P

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

It'll never happen because politicians are too afraid to argue their opponents viewpoint. Obama may come up with far better arguments why they should scrap Obamacare then Romney has so far.

Media pounces on any opportunity to exploit. Nothing new here.