Debate Coaches Reflect on Last Night's Debate

We - myself and Jane Munksgaard - are debaters by trade, not reporters. We attended yesterday's debate in Iowa as OffTheBus citizen reporters. Our political debate expertise has been forged by a collective twenty years of competition and participation in policy debate at both the high school and collegiate level. Policy debate is one of the most academically rigorous competitive activities that is available in our American polity, and has helped to train an untold number of successful politicians, lawyers, and professors, to name just a few of the more prominent occupations that feature former debaters at their highest levels.

Our debate upbringing sensitizes us to several salient issues that stuck out in this debate. This piece will analyze the debate from a perspective informed by our experience as collegiate debaters and coaches, including an analysis of how debate techniques and concepts played in the debate.

Overview:

Overall, we found that a host of missed opportunities on all sides characterized the exchange that occurred early this morning at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The sloppy coverage today should leave viewing audiences appalled and us certainly wanting more. While there were some high points found in a rather sophisticated series of exchanges about Iraq strategies, by and large the candidates missed opportunities to land haymakers and score points. But the real losers in this debate were probably George Stephanopoulos and ABC. The questions selected for coverage were suspect in their relevance and utility to an audience who theoretically is attempting to learn more about candidate's policy positions. As candidates dodged questions, they were not consistently forced to actually answer the question being asked.

As current judges of intercollegiate debates, we can also say that one of the most frustrating things we experience is when we watch a debate and do not understand a team's positions. We would welcome the opportunity to step in and intervene, asking a particular team what some of their arguments meant, or what the contours of their political proposal actually are. George Stephanopoulos actually had this opportunity in the debate today, to press candidates on issues and force their responses to actually answer the questions. His continued refusal to press candidates to answer the damn question was a source of frustration. Judges dream about being able to question debaters.

Another highly important aspect of competitive policy debate is the art of cross-examination. In every debate a few minutes are taken for the competitors to directly interact and learn more about their opponents' positions, perhaps pressing them on the weakest points. Current debates amongst the candidates, particularly because they contain everyone participating in the primary, do not lend themselves to demonstrating just how powerful the art of cross-examination can be.

In-depth

A phenomenon observed during the course of this debate that correlates with cross-examination was the absolutely woeful quality of some of the questions chosen by Stephanopoulos and ABC. Several questions were essentially wasted time that did nothing to advance the debate.

Perhaps the two biggest offenders were a question from South Dakota about prayer, along with a question raised about whether candidates had ever told a lie, and which lie they regretted. Both lines of questioning represented potentially rich topic areas where answers to well constructed questions could have done a service to the electorate by further educating us about candidates' positions and beliefs. But the way these questions were constructed provided little space for the candidates to give responses that would help the voters make their decision.

Seth Ford's question read: "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened" No candidate responded with a simple yet elegant statement like "I pray for peace and the well being of humans every day, and I also vigilantly fight to enact policies which may prevent unnecessary suffering and violence". Some of this is a sure sign of pre-debate coaching. Democrats have acquired a reputation as irreligious, and so are often instructed by their advisers to clearly demonstrate that they are people of faith because being religious is still considered integral to obtaining political success in America. But the fear of appearing agnostic, or atheistic compels responses like that of Chris Dodd who says "the power of prayer I think is important to all of us." Non-controversial statements like "Hooray Prayer" (in the tone of those Red Stripe ads) are the absolute death of debate as a site where we can create an educated citizenry that is involved in politics.

This is not to say that both religion and a politician's own personal beliefs cannot figure into a debate in a way that causes voters to receive useful insight about the candidates. Perhaps challenging the stereotype of the "Godless Democrat" would go much further to create an interesting political discussion at these debates. For example, if Stephanopoulos asked a question like "Why is the Democratic Party perceived to have a religion deficit, and how would you remedy this perception?" the candidates would be given a platform on which to add nuance to their positions and to inform those voters for whom faith is a big factor about how religion really matters to these politicians.

The other most problematic question was "Can you name a major issue where you didn't tell the whole truth and describe what you left out?" The question then asked each politician what they most regretted about this lie. This question represents a necessary and good instinct on the part of the questioner because politicians, like any human, are fallible creatures. They have bad days and lapses in judgment. However the framing of the ultimate question as a "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" issue has the effect of twisting and mangling the question into a landmine that candidates will dodge. As John Kerry's experience taught us (and perhaps as Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani will) one does not want to be for something before they were against it. In the age of Rovian attack dog politics, any sign of weakness is like blood in the water to circling media sharks. In policy debate there is a parallel; often a team will recognize that their opponent has woefully misunderstood an argument. The savvy debater will "slow play" this mistake, bringing it out during their own speech to deride their opponent. The young and insouciant debater, smelling blood, will often immediately start cross-examination with an excited question about "How the other team totally screwed up X or Y issue." The former strategy ensures no immediate rebuttal from the offending team, while the latter gives an opening for a clarification by the team that has erred. A series of smart questions slowly trapping the candidate is a more veteran play than the ham-fisted "So, when did you lie?" trick.

John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Chris Dodd were the only three candidates to actually answer the question. Their responses showed perspective, grace, and humanity. But had any of them refused to engage its content, as Obama, Kucinich and others did, few would have found fault with it. The obvious "Liar, Liar" language that prefaces the question screams out to the candidates to beware of another campaign trail, "Gotcha!" As long as framing techniques are used from questions that sensitize the candidates to the way that arguments will be perceived in the media, we are less likely to get honest answers from politicians on tough questions. Debates do not exist to create news stories; they exist so that the citizenry can become more educated about their political options. While this is an ideal, it is probably one for which it is worth fighting.

The notion that debates do not exist to create news stories is one that should be underscored, especially given the way that ABC and George Stephanopoulos opened this debate. He opens with "Senator Biden, you stepped into this last week. You told Newsweek magazine that Senator Obama is "not yet ready" to be President. Senator Clinton, is he right?" This entire exchange and the discussion that resulted felt very much like a confrontation amongst a group of eleven year olds after a vicious rumor have circulated. Stephanopoulos fancied himself a political Mean Girl, attempting to provoke political snipes with a he said/she said game. Mercifully, we already had prom dates and could stand well out of the way of the exchange.

Some could say that Stephanopoulos opened with this point in order to simply immediately clear the air of an issue which had been simmering for a few weeks. We have two responses. The first is that the entire run up to the actual debate was framed and constructed in order to create a battle royale between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. ABC showed the polling numbers immediately prior to the debate, and even downplayed John Edwards' lower but still strong polling numbers. When the absolute first question being asked is about a difference between two candidates in a field of nearly ten, it focuses the debate on those two people. Edwards is polling almost as well as both Clinton and Obama in Iowa, yet his first appearance in the debate occurred much later. Surely some of this is because the opening question was centered around the viability of a single candidate, and not an issue question. Stephanopoulos admitted that they had received more questions about Iraq than any other issue -- why not start with Iraq then?

Once the debate finally did get to Iraq we got what the Iowa questioners, and most of the country, wanted. Surprisingly the Democrats finally differentiated themselves and their strategies, engaging pertinent questions with in depth answers. Richardson showed dramatic differences from the others when it came to the issue of pulling out all of the troops. Clinton informed us how she would get the Iraqi Government back on track by threatening to withhold all aid if significant progress wasn't made. Edwards rejected the idea of a December timeline for pulling out troops. Biden's plan for partitioning the country invoked a spirited exchange where Obama acknowledged Biden's idea, "might be the right one" (although this stopped short of the total support implied in a press release from Biden's camp that came during the debate). It was clearly the most educational, engaged, and entertaining part of the debate.

Despite our enthusiasm for the spirited exchange about Iraq, Stephanopoulos put himself even further in a hole when moderating the discussion about education in America. He was clearly unaware that Barack Obama was on the record as supporting merit based pay for teachers (and had said so to the NEA).

Yet another Stephanopoulos blunder was his inability to "spread the love". While it was slightly refreshing that Hillary didn't answer every other question this time around, Representative Dennis Kucinich probably received less camera time than his wife. We must admit, she certainly received just as much attention from gawking reporters after the debate in the 'Spin Room'. Kucinich aptly pointed out Stephanopoulos' deficiency when answering the ridiculous prayer question by saying. "George I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me". On the flip side of the coin, he really should have stepped in to silent the rambling and slightly senile Mike Gravel, who reminds us a bit of Grandpa Simpson.

The verdict

As former debaters, we also paid close attention to the three classic elements of rhetoric: ethos, pathos and logos. These Aristotelian concepts have a prominent role to play in contemporary policy debates. In the collegiate and high school debate communities there is a very vigorous discussion over to what extent each of these factors plays in the success of a debate team. Ethos is the term for a speaker's credibility. Pathos denotes the emotional response evoked by a speaker. And logos is the term for the logic and intellectual rigor of the arguments themselves.

The clear winner in the ethos battle in most of these debates is Hillary Clinton. She generally portrays herself as ahead, and is short but sensible with her opponents. Her no-nonsense tough style has the effect of making the audience know that she understands what she is talking about. In this debate Dennis Kucinich also did a good job of establishing his credibility as a speaker; on the few times he was allowed to speak, he immediately cracked jokes to applause and laughter. The points Barack Obama scored in the debate with his bumper cars joke and comments about experience also helped to build his ethos, because ethos is an overall air of credibility conferred from being impressive in many different ways in a debate. Mike Gravel had perhaps the worst credibility of any candidate; he rambled to and from, making little sense, slipping at one point from a discussion about education to a discussion about "who we'll nuke".

Pathos is a category consistently dominated by John Edward's combination of a gifted Southern tongue and a tragic personal life. This debate was no exception, as his closing remarks hit home, and his near tearful recollection of his son's death and his wife's current cancer aroused sympathy in the audience. The candidate who used pathos the least effectively in this debate was probably Joe Biden; while he usually has a stirring story of Darfur, he avoided any references to the human horror that has become Iraq, when summoning the specter of suffering abroad could really cause people to elevate Iraq's issue importance in their own personal issue hierarchy.

Logos was a category dominated by Bill Richardson and Barack Obama on this morning. Richardson was sound on all policy issues (with the exception of agriculture), and was especially persuasive when it came to laying out policy support for his policy of Iraq withdrawal. (There are gaps in this reasoning, but in the debate this logic was backed by experts and held up). Obama scored a huge hit with his reversal on the experience question; challenged to prove why he could overcome a lack of experience, he pointed out that Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld had spent a lot of time in government and foreign policy before the Bush administration came to power. Logic was almost entirely absent from some of Gravel's rants (it was something of an upset that he did not blame any major earthquakes on the Vatican).