Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

red concave bar 1

When Spellbinders Had Sway

peitho

Was I mistaken to believe that even amidst the maelstrom that is adolescence, another person could still be mesmerizing?

A few years ago I asked my students in a persuasion course to describe some people in their lives beyond family who were spellbinders: perhaps teachers, priests or others who were incredibly interesting and transforming. Since I am a rhetorician, my bias led me to believe  that these college students could rhapsodize about some outsized influencers in their own lives. But the room was silent. I tried again, being more specific. Describe a teacher or mentor who could really hold a group in their thrall: probably someone who was a good storyteller. Silence again from a class that was usually forthcoming.

I must have been mistaken to believe that, even in the maelstrom of adolescence, another person could be mesmerizing. Perhaps the question required a response that was too personal. Then, too, after the early grades, it is apparently not so cool to see a teacher or leader as transformational.

Active Listening in the Classroom Heather Syrett.

Perhap because I am older–OK, a lot older– I have a settled list of mentors who shaped my attitudes and partly influenced what I would do for the rest of my life. These folks include a Methodist minister who reigned over a large Denver church with a thundering rhetoric of religious certainty; a devoted speech and drama teacher at Evergreen High School in Colorado who mercifully supressed her judgment that I was no actor; a youth group leader who was full of ideas for living that scared our parents; and a professor who turned me on to studying political rhetoric when there was still some dignity left in national politics.

I was a sponge for their forms of dynamic mentoring. In the years that came after I wanted my teaching to be the embodiment of the same intense engagement. In every case this meant that I would need to rise to the level of trying to perform my enthusiasm for whatever I was offering to others. This means using an emphatic style in presentation that models the enthusiasm you want from your audience. Ideally, this kind of in-the-room discourse with a group might unfold like a three-act play. Or, more accurately, a given session would develop as a set of engaging variations on a set theme. (A good presentation often unfolds in a way that Bach might have recognized.)

I saw fluent and forceful rhetoric as an energized engine for self-knowledge, as well at the tool for creating social change. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the sources of that kind of change now lie in digital realm and less in the performative mastery of one person. Just by virtue of their age, students are more predisposed to models of discourse that are a long way from older hortatory styles Martin Luther King, John Kennedy or even Professor Harold Hill. Think of this kind of presentation as a form of heightened conversation: less like Bill Maher and more like Bernie Sanders or perhaps Ken Robertson, sampled below.

The grand rhetorical gesture is in decline, or at least reduced to the 18 minutes of a TED talk or a speech as a rally. Everyday communication elements like texting are more private and ad hoc: fast whispers, but little more.

In my last years before retiring my colleagues would sometimes give me a puzzled look if I said I liked lecturing, by which I meant a session driven by the energy of rapsodizing about new ideas. But the preferred mode of teaching is now more interactive and experiential, and necessarily less directed. Professors now understand that they have less time to profess. Even so, when not driven by an effective mentor, any single session can easily dissipate the energy intensity that seeds learning.

I worry that too many students have filled their lives with inconsequential messages that has shrunken what should be time for a rapidly expanding consciousness. The heightened drama of a rhetorical challenge from an outsider is now often relegated to events like sports or concerts. Few of us are saving space in our lives for the equivelants of the old Chautauquas our forbearers knew, when spending time in the presence of a literary or academic giant had so much appeal.

red white blue bar

So Called “Debates”

In true debates, the press simply listens like the rest of us. In an authentic debate there may be moderators, but not questioners.

The political season always brings out a cycle of “debates” finally agreed to by cautious candidates and news organizations. Though everyone involved has different motives, the one most commonly expressed is that these events 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 or maybe even unify those running for the same office.

Even so, most of these joint appearances fall short in testing persons and ideas. As usually formatted, they can’t achieve these lofty goals, for two reasons.  First, the response times for individuals are always too short, often a minute or less. Bernie Sanders is right to call them “demeaning.” And second, for no valid reason the press wants in on the action as well.  The quid pro quo is free airtime, if they can be part of the show.

Ideally, debates should deliver what philosophers call “dialectic:” 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 a pending and important decision. We often want friends to help us see potential problems in a planned course of action.

In open societies such as ours we expect to hear contrasting opinions. It’s a wonderful process when it’ well-formatted. Otherwise—and as devised by most political operatives—a political debate is usually is little more than a joint press conference.

The candidates share part of the blame. They usually fear these 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. The logic of journalism is to ask new questions at frequent intervals. This is when the process begins to go south. It’s further doomed when each side is given only a minute or so to respond. These errors are then compounded with a final counter-response that is barely the length of a sneeze. As it now exists, it’s little more than a lukewarm form of political theater.

A good debate will have no more than a moderator or time-keeper to equalize participation and keep things civil. The advocates directly address the claims and arguments of their opposites on what is usually a single broad but important subject area. Their opening remarks must be permitted to be longer than a television commercial. They then listen, refute, question, and challenge each other. When one issue seems to have been exhausted, the moderator may steer the pair to a related issue and then get out of the way.

Lincoln and Douglas debated for hours by themselves without the assistance of others. Indeed, a prime form of Saturday night entertainment in the nineteenth 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 truly knows, beyond the memorized sound bites that they repeat at every stop. Just when follow-up rebuttals might begin to test a candidate’s knowledge of an issue, the questioners usually interrupt and move on to a new topic.

Several years ago Americans could catch a series of debates in the United Kingdom between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond on Scotland’s referendum to go it alone as an independent nation.  Scotland ultimately voted to stay: an outcome that might not hold these days, given their current displeasure with London’s intention to leave the E.U.

The original debates weren’t perfect by any means. But these televised clashes had the advantage of allowing both sides sufficient time to make essential arguments and extended refutations. As can be seen with the never-ending Brexit debate, the British expect that members of the government and individual M.P.s will be able to stand up under sometimes challenging counter-arguments from their ideological opponents.

Debates should extend beyond glib assertions of support or opposition.  In the United States we rarely let candidates go on long enough to discover if they have confronted the full consequences of their positions.