President Gerald Ford speaks as Jimmy Carter listens during the first of three debates in 1976
In this election cycle there is a common misperception that it is the moderator’s job to comment on a debater’s lies or false claims. But that’s the job of the other debater. In a true debate the participants aren’t responding to reporters, but fact-checking each other.
The political season always brings out a cycle of “debates” finally agreed to by cautious candidates, news organizations, and the Commission on Presidential Debates. Though everyone involved has different motives, the one most commonly expressed is that debates offer the public the chance to compare candidates side by side. In the unfettered give-and-take of a debate we are supposed to learn about issues that divide and sometimes unify those running for the same office.
In their current form, however, debates are fettered; they can’t achieve the lofty goals we have for the form. The usual “debate” format devised by campaigns and participating media amounts to little more than a joint press conference.
A debate done correctly should deliver a purposeful clash of views, where claims and evidence are tested against a series of counter-arguments. Among others, Aristotle was certain that acts of public advocacy had a cleansing effect on the body politic. He believed we are wiser for subjecting our ideas to the scrutiny of others. This may sound lofty and abstract, but most of us do a form of this when we talk through an important decision. We often want friends to help us see potential problems to our proposed course of action.
The problem is that candidates usually fear unmediated and extended exchanges. They and their staffs believe that a serious gaff can sink an entire campaign. So they hedge their bets. They agree to “debates” if they are moderated by a panel, or at least a single journalist. This is when the process begins to go south. It’s further doomed when each side is given only a minute or two to respond to statements from the other side.
There is also a widespread perception that it is the moderator’s job to comment on lies, half truths or false claims. But that’s the job of the other debater. In a good debate the participants aren’t answering reporter’s questions, but fact-checking each other. The advocates directly address the claims and arguments of their opposites on what are usually several broad but important subject areas. When one issue seems to have been exhausted, a moderator may steer the pair to a related issue, and then get out of the way.
Perhaps one the purest political debate available on video dates back to 1992. Talk show host Phil Donahue invited Democratic Party primary contenders Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown to debate on his show. After a brief introduction and commercial Donahue simply introduced the two men and moved out of the way. The debate at a single round table was direct and mostly uninterrupted.
Lincoln and Douglas debated for hours by themselves without the assistance of others. Indeed, a prime form of Saturday night entertainment in the 19th Century was a formal debate in a town’s biggest venue. The whole process of seeing two leaders explain their ideas under the scrutiny of an interested audience could be invigorating. By contrast, the short question-based formats commonly in American political debates generally ruin the chance to see how much a candidate actually knows beyond their memorized campaign sound bites.
Our system conspires to protect candidates and allowing them to stay in a comfort zone of clichés and bumper sticker retorts. Debates should expose relevant facts and hard truths that are initially hidden by glib statements of resolve. We rarely let the candidates follow a single thread long enough to see if they really understand those truths.
A better reading of the world as it is usually means that we can’t scale up the idea of intention to large and diverse groups. The culprit is the pronoun “they,” which over-simplifies our world and catches us in traps of our own making.
We are usually right to assign responsibility for an action to a fully functioning adult. We assume that individuals can make decisions from an array of available choices. We see individuals as willful. Notwithstanding some neuroscientists who want to deny free will by reducing all human conduct to chemistry, most of us make the reasonable assumption that people really do have intentions. They act on their beliefs, habits and preferences. Notwithstanding important influences, they are still capable of weighing and acting on potential choices.
As ordinary as this pattern of thinking is, it can easily be overextended. Its actually common to see news reporters and many of the rest of us assigning intentionality to individuals or groups for whom the term is, at best, a stretch.
A simple example: a friend who is a geriatric psychotherapist frequently complains that staffs in nursing facilities usually assume that a patient is “acting out” if they are unkind or manipulative. In our language these kinds of descriptions usually imply volition: the patient intended to behave in a certain way. The problem, of course, is that most of these folks have dementia, which robs them of the essential gift of agency. Their behavior is not necessarily what they would have done if the neural pathways once available to them were still intact. The end result is sometimes to punish the patient rather than acknowledge that their behavior has causes not easily overridden.
A guest column in the New York Times by think-tank conservative Max Boot also caught my eye because of this problem. He criticized the Republican Party for carefully nurturing negative attitudes about scientific research and serious intellectual inquiry. In effect, he made the Party an agent engaged in a concerted effort to dumb-down complex problems such as climate change, immigration reform and a sometimes sluggish American economy.
The military or a tightly run corporation may be said to have “intentions” or “missions.” Parties: not so much.
Boot is right that many in the GOP are suspicious of reasoned arguments based on solid science. My doubts extend only to attributing a clear purpose to the party itself. The problem with his assertion is that political parties in the United States are never well organized, barely coordinated on anything, and have “members” with only paper-thin levels of loyalty. The military or a tightly run corporation may be said to have “intentions” or “missions.” Parties: not so much.
The same mistake is often made with regard to the President, who is supposedly able to control of a dizzying array of national challenges. But the real story is that we also assign too much agency to the Presidency. For example, most economists believe the chief executive cannot significantly change the course of the economy. We may want to think of the American business cycle as under the thumb of the White House. A more accurate view is that it’s an engine without a single engineer. Indeed, most presidents would welcome the chance to be as powerful as is widely believed. The norm for these leaders is to leave office frustrated at how little influence they were able to exert over the many far-flung agencies of the federal bureaucracy. F.D.R., for example, complained that he couldn’t get fundamental changes in the Navy, even though he was Commander in Chief of the armed forces and his political career included a stint as the Navy’s Assistant Secretary.
The prime rhetorical culprit here is the pronoun “they.” The English language invites us to singularize responsibility under the umbrella of this term. But a better reading of the world as it is usually means that we can’t scale up the ideas of purpose and intention to large and diverse groups. The pronoun over-simplifies our world, catching us in traps of our own making.
