What a debate is for

Can we be convinced?

Sheila Liaugminas | Sep 27 2016 | comment

In Illinois Senate campaign of 1858 Abraham Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas

In the world of politics, perhaps more than any other world, words do not come at a premium. Words are said, and said often. Words are spoken in support of a position, or against a position. Sometimes words are used ambiguously to avoid taking a position entirely. But words are never lacking, and the better the individual is at using those words to capture the popular sentiment of the people – at least the crucial minimal number of them needed to win – the more likely the individual is to win the election. Hence, the importance of using words wisely, and well.

But there is something different about a debate. Ask anyone who has competed in debate in school or at the university. While there are many different styles of debate, each with its own methods and rules—literally everything from Lincoln-Douglas debating to the Quaestiones Disputatae of medieval universities—there is something fundamental about debates that sets them apart from all other contexts in which public figures use words to persuade people: a debate makes two people who disagree confront each other using only words, and the winner is determined by the strength of the case they make.

Debate takes the art of presenting a persuasive speech (an art in and of itself) to a whole new level when two persuasive speakers are put together in a zero-sum game. Here, the debaters must be peers—observe why Elsa of Brabant could not debate Friedrich of Telramund in Wagner’s Lohengrin—and they must share the same question and topics. Then, arguments ensue and it is up to the hearers (or some subset thereof, such as pundits and commentators…) to determine which of the two was the most convincing.

Americans will have their final say about who was the most convincing Monday night—and in the following debates—on election day, which is the only day that ultimately will determine which vision of America we heard in the debates will be not just words, but reality.

But as we process this first of the debates, and determine what it might mean for that important decision lying before every American voter, we can appreciate the fact that at this point in the campaign trail, after so many words spoken in so many contexts—words sometimes later re-framed and sometimes denied—we have a setting where the two candidates for the highest office in our land come face to face, prior to all framing and interpretation, prior to all spin and all commentary, and offer us, the People, in a way that apples-vs-apples and oranges-vs-oranges reflects their own visions for the future for our country.

Will the two candidates actually carry out the things they promised? Will they be as good (or as bad) in the Oval Office as they appear on TV? We will only know for one of them. And which one of them it is will be, for many people, determined by these debates.

In last night’s debate presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were asked only one narrow and specific question by moderator Lester Holt: “Our institutions are under cyber attack, and our secrets are being stolen. So my question is, who's behind it? And how do we fight it?”

Neither candidate was prepared for this curve ball, so it became a test of rhetorical improvisation. Clinton’s answer was relatively structured and was expressed in crisp sentences. First, she demonstrated that she did know something by listing two types of cyber-warriors, private and state. Second, of the latter, the main villain is Russia. And, third, Donald Trump is a friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and istherefore unfit to be commander-in-chief etc.

Trump’s initial response was braggadocious and irrelevant: that 200 admirals and general had just endorsed him instead of the political hacks who have led this country for ten years, etc. Then, remembering the question, he mentioned hackers from Russia and China and ISIS (Clinton missed those) and then his computer-savvy 10-year-old son and finally another suspect, “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds”. And, therefore, “Look at the mess that we're in.”

So, in a sense, the theme and style of those five short minutes exemplified the whole debate --and perhaps the whole campaign -- I’ve got a plan versus we’ve got a disaster.

All this is by way of introducing today’s lead article by Jeff Pawlick, a computer scientist at New York University. He answers Lester Holt’s question to a T. It’s a must-read.