The Debates that Defined America

Actually, I'd like to see a real debate not a conversation trigered by softball questions mostly spoken by questioners with their own agendas.

How about questions not about "change" but about whether there's a difference between free enterprise and cartel-style capitalism?  Free trade or fair trade? Is their a limit on the pursuit of happiness in a free society that believes in individualism? the difference between a "right" and an "entitlement" in a representative democracy? Is the Constitution a "living" document or "dead', sealed in stone?  is it "Main Street's" values or "Wall Street's" values that drive the economy?  Do we want socialism or free enterprise?  Can we have both? Is religion a private affair or a public issue?

Is the present two party political party system "Tweedle Dum" and "Tweedle Dee"?  Or "Tweedle Dum" and "Tweedle Dummer"? 

Instead, I fear more of the same...........bumper sticker slogans, sound bites, dirty tricks, opinion poll driven issues and plain old fashioned nonsense with a little bit (or a lot) of new fashioned nonsense thrown in.  I wanted to use the word "bullshit' but "nonsense" seemed more polite. 

Sorry for any "typos" and syntax issues in the above.  At this late hour I must ask my self a more significant debate question:  "To Be or Not to Be...asleep?"

I fear that this election year leaves us choosing Scylla versus Kharybdis. I have scrupulously avoided attention to any of the so-called debates in this election cycle because they weren't debates at all in the Lincoln-Douglas style. They were grandiose Q&A sessions.

How about 3 single-topic debates: (1) US relationship with ROW (quite parlous now); (2) the US healthcare system (the tornado has already hit the sheepdip); and (3) the economy. Single-topic debates would do much at divulging unrecognized threadbare areas in a candidate's polities, as they would require candidates to expostulate thoroughly and dynamically.

I am going to sleep giddy, as Obama's running mate announcement probably will be made tomorrow. It could be epochal, it could be shocking, it could be underwhelming, or it could be very disappointing. 

Today, there are very few people who tune into presidential debates as a means of deciding whom they will support.  Rather, they watch the debates to see how the candidate they already support fares.  They usually base their support on whether the TV screen displays a little (R) or a little (D) after the candidates name, regardless of what he/she actually says in the debate.

In today's poll, I noticed that all of the debates mentioned are held in races for political office.  I find that the most defining debates in our nation's history have taken place in a far more useful location, the courtroom.  I submit that one of the greatest debates of the last century was held between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow to decide the question of whether John Scopes should be legally permitted to discuss Darwin's theory of evolution in his classroom.

If political (rather than legal) debate is the only category permitted, I would say that the most defining debate in our country's history must be one of the very first.  Many people were involved on both sides but the most vocal debaters were John Dickinson of Pennsylvania and John Adams of Massechussetts.  The question being argued was whether the people of this land should remain a British colony or form a new nation.  Adams won that one.

I mentioned the Kennedy-Nixon debate as the "best" not because it was "the best" but because it showed how television could impact an election.  Turn off the picture on those debates and listen to the words and Nixon comes across as the better of the two.  Why Kennedy?  He had a better lighting and make-up artist.  He looked younger than Nixon, healthier than Nixon.  People saw the image not the substance and were persuaded. Kennedy walking on the beach in his shirt sleeves was a master stroke of marketing.

Now before anyone starts on me, I am a great admirer of Kennedy.  If you read his first, and, unfortunately, only innaugral address you could speak the same words today and they would be relevant. It should be required reading in school....it's not.

I merely point out that substance and image are not the same thing.  Marshall McCluhan had it right: the medium is the message.

Perhaps with Kennedy we got the President we needed, today I'm afraid, we'll get the President we deserve. 

Pause with me, if you will, and endeavor to imagine the spectacle of one of our current crop of political office seekers intelligently holding forth for an hour. Complete sentences, please. Some narrative structure would be nice. No tele-prompters. And furthermore, an audience that could track the arc of the moment from beginning to end without displaying boredom or inattention. Truly, there are times when my ability to suspend disbelief is overwhelmed by naked reality, irrespective of my willingness - even my craving eagerness - to believe.

P.S. At least so far, the 'Great Debate' is not between candidates, but taking place on the internet: the REAL 'Battleground State'.  My comments about 'rewriting the past' and subsituting words for actions hold true, however, even in internet discussions.  Our online memories are no less malleable than our televised 'moments'.  Incidentally, John Stewart is making a reputation for himself on 'The Daily Show' but having candidates 'debate with themselves': juxtaposing clips in which the same individual comes down firmly and convincingly on both sides of the same issue.  His show is for some reason considered 'comedy', though it might better be described as 'tragedy' (or at a minimum, 'tragi-comedy') since it documents the power of the political class over the much larger (and gullible) mass known as 'the public'.  Watching the whole process of 'democracy' is a bit depressing, but the good news is that somehow the human race has survived for quite a while and there's an unknown and unknowable probability that we shall all have passed from 'this mortal coil' by the time the final curtain falls on Homo sapiens sapiens.

 A few topics it might be nice to zero in on.

Should the United States Pursue a Foreign Policy of  Isolationism or Interventionism?

What Should the Nation's Immigration Policy Be? 

To What Extent Is the Federal Government Responsible for the Welfare and Security of the Individual? 

Is Civil Disobedience ever Justified as a Method of Political Change?

Should the Federal government have anything to do with women's rights? 

What great timing your blogs seem to have Mr. Peterman ~ Just this past Saturday I took the time to see an Exhibit at a local Museum called "the Tsar & The President" http://www.oshkoshmuseum.org/exhibits/President_and_the_Tsar.htm Being a HUGE Russophile since grade school the chance to see in my own area some of the Imperial Russian Treasures was a chance I was not going to pass up.  (I may even go again) The Civil War being also one of my favorite parts of World History for me it is an exhibit made in heaven.     

It's an interesting exhibit about how these 2 men one who was born into Royalty & a Privilege status & one who was born a poor farmers son became Pen pals & Friends despite the age difference (9 years difference, Lincoln being the elder) and wanting the same ideas of liberation in their countries.  One of the most interesting parts of it was the Lincoln Douglas debate & how it affected the outcome of the American senate & in its course the United States as a whole.  I did remark to my friend that if I could go back in time I would put the Lincoln Douglas Debate on the list.  She asked why & said it would be a pure political debate that type of speaking never happens today.

TV as a medium is great advantage & disadvantage I LOVE the idea of single topic debates, I WELCOME it all with open arms, no teleprompters no "managers" talking into the candidates earpieces telling them how to answer the question, Just straight answers about 1 single topic for about 2 hours. No little R or D after the names just a straight conversation that is very much based on how well do the candidates know the subject & if they can actually think for themselves.  

ALAS it will NEVER happen they try to make these "Town Hall Meetings" to be an actual debate & substance as to what they as a candidate stand for but for me it's still a scripted stump speech that gives me no answers & a lot more questions about the person who is trying to talk to me.   

As the good Doc Nolan has stated, when it comes to the holders of and candidates for elected office, their actions are the only semi-reliable barometer of their true selves, which unfortunately has probably been compromised and abandoned a long-time ago.

Political debates seem only to be a pulpit from which candidates' exaggerate their accomplishments, rationalize their failures, and promise a future they are incapable of delivering even if they really believe they could.

I'm feeling a tad cynical today. I've got to do Thursdays a bit better.

The question I'd ask McCain is why, in your commercials, are you distancing yourself from the last 8 years at about 1000 miles per hour...calling it, in so many words, a failed administration---please tell us again why you're running on the same ticket.

Why old companies are rolling in profits and CEO's are awarding themselves King's ransoms, would be a good focus for one debate. With that kind of concentration, it would be hard to double talk your way out of it. To Ex-Pat, one should never be defensive about admiring Jack Kennedy. It was, perhaps, the last time you had a president you could feel some degree of pride in.

Personally ~ I have no idea what Change actually means or what kind of Changes Obama means to make if elected, I have no idea what McCain is going to do to help decrease inflation & to help keep businesses in the United states, or on the illegal Immigration ~  THESE really are the ?'S I want answered and after countless town hall meetings, & debates they still have not been addresses by anyone. Also for the record I am not one of those people who deal well with Change so just for that reason Obama scares me.  

Besides the word "CHANGE" what really is this guy standing for? What is the 70yr old really standing for? I'm totally at a lost when it comes to both of them and Ron Paul really isn't any clearer than the 2 front runners.....   

Who cares that you were a POW, who cares that your father was from Africa, That's all historical foot noting for me ~ I WANT to know YOUR solutions to the real world people's issues  Sorry guys but the word Change, or the idea of another rebate check are not the answers I personally am looking for......   

"Change" is the easiest thing to talk about, it's not that difficult to articulate a high-level plan to enact it, but when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road, quite frankly I don't believe either candidate has the stones to do it.

To the candidates:

 Show me your overall objective with a side-by-side list of pros and cons, state your measurable goals, give me your "how I am going to achieve these goal" action plan,  tell me why you believe your plan will work and what obstacles must be overcome for it to succeed and then give me specific examples of how your ideas have been successfully implemented in the past.  

I don't want to hear "I wanted to do this and I proposed that, . . . . . but".  Tell me what actions/compromises/negotiationsyou initiated to overcome that "but".

Maybe then I might be willing to take a leap of faith.  But then again, with the way the electoral college works, it probably just doesn't matter.

I feel like I just kicked a small dog that doesn't bite back.

Oh, and another thing good candidates, please don't tell me you are going to restore the dignity of the office of president unless you preface it by saying that's the least you are going to accomplish.

I'm done now, have a great life.

Ladies and gentlemen, I commend your perspicacity and curtsy to left and right in recognition of your erudite and penetrating intellects. Today is a whirlwind, perhaps I can collect my thoughts by day's end and make a useful contribution, although it would appear that you all have said so much so well!

Are there ANY statesmen/women today who can measure near the colossi who husbanded our nation through foundation, and strove to reconcile our horrendous divisions before and during the Civil War? I confess to pessimism...

I would just like to see a debate that actually has something to do with issues like the economy, the war, housing, poverty, health care, education, international relations . . .

 If the debates grind down to non-issues that appeal to the lowest common intellectual denominator, then we might as well give the whole debate format as a lost cause.

I'm so thankful there are activists out there fighting for all kinds of rights- civil, women's, children's, minorities', veterans', animals', the environment's...  Because man I sure am lazy about it. 

It's not that I'm totally ignorant- I read the papers and stay informed.  And I vote, of course.  (Anyone who doesn't vote, and takes democracy for granted by discarding their coveted opportunity to be heard, has no right to b*tch about anything.)  But I do feel guilty about my low level of political involvement.  Politics just isn't my bag - I guess I'm too flighty, too caught up in living my luxurious American life and pondering much higher powers...  I also highly value truth, and it's pretty rare in the political world.  

It seems I'm not the only one here who thinks so...

Many of us are sick of all the vague, non-committal, condescending doublespeak that so many politicos constantly spew.  ExPat's tired of all the "nonsense."  Jonathan Eells can't even imagine "one of our current crop of political office seekers intelligently holding forth for an hour."  Doc Nolan is fed up with "the disconnect between words and subsequent actions," and PeterLake agrees.

Like, rings90, I too want to know the candidates' "solutions to the real world people's issues."  But unlike rings90, I don't fear change.  Not in this sense.  Not after the past 8 years, not in light of our country's many varied current woes. 

I also wouldn't be opposed to another one of those rebate check$...  :)

"Anyone who doesn't vote, and takes democracy for granted by discarding their coveted opportunity to be heard, has no right to b*tch about anything."

That was the basic philosphy of my H.S. Civics Teacher. IF you don't vote you loseyour right to complain.  I have certainly adopted it mostly becuase I LOVE to complain. One of my co-workers has nickname dme the young Andy Rooney... If that's an indication of the level of complaining I can do in a day.... I see it as a compliment though if not I who else would bring up the important issues like when you go to the grocery store & the checker asks if you prefer paper or plastic & you say all of it in paper, they STILL throw your meat & cleaning products into the PLASTIC BAGS...... After the REAL important issues that's fast becoming my #1 real world gripe... BTW I tend to take the products out & rebag them into a paper bag & so they actually get that I mean NO PLASTIC BAGS .....

rings I did that paper thing too, I never fussed, I just rebagged because they recycled paper bags at Whole Foods. Now I bring my own canvas totes and just hand them to the bagger without a word, or bag my groceries myself. Most of the time I use them instead of the cart of plastic basket to bring stuff to the register, too.

That reminds me of the time that Bush Senior tried to behave like a regular person and failed miserably in the grocery store, not understanding the concept of shopping and paying for things for oneself...

Have come to the site often today and left, convinced not to post. I am a speech writer. That's one reason. The other is that I keep a copy of Frederick Douglass's Selected Speeches in my satchel always, and so this 'great debate' is too close to home, as he was so invested in it.

The other day a Ford speech was given nationally. It was improvised, which I wish more were. He opted to 'give leave' of our services and shoot from the hip. He said, "Sometimes, I think I've worked so much for Ford that if I slit my wrists, I would bleed blue."

My knees buckled. "Did he just say 'slit my wrists' in the same sentence with 'I've worked with Ford so long?' And that's why they hire us. . . People, please.

But don't you love the idea of words from the horses mouth? Wouldn't that be great? We hear about Lincoln and a paper bag on a train with a pencil. . .

I'm here to say this. I have no opinion about this. . . I have no opinion about that (Paul Simon). Frederick Douglass, around the time of the above described 'great debate,' was in bed with Garrison—a passionate white man who touted the constitution as 'pro-slavery.' He would not engage with politics because of it.

And then Douglass changed his mind. Listen to those words. He changed his mind. He 'threw his cause to the wind' and said that words were his tools, not his prison. He went to Lincoln and said, 'let's make it (the constitution) anti-slavery, just because we can. Because words are hollow and for our taking.

And when I learned that, my life changed. Words, behind a podium, mean nothing. Really. I love words. But I love to set them free of meaning. If you love words, go down to your kitchen right now. Take your sharpest knife and your most brutal language, and carry both to your dining room table. And, now, with great precision, cut away the 'meaning' behind every word. It is man-made; harmless.

Debate is wonderful. It should be what PeterLake described—functional, full circle, pragmatic. But, words, in and of themselves mean 'nothing.' They are articles, letters, syllables. . . man made. . . strung together like atoms for a cause.

String them together. Bridge a tunnel from "my window to yours" (Arcade Fire )

and incite meaning with them. But free yourself from them 'meaning' anything.

Debate could be great again if people wielded language freely, and with great weight.

To put it more simply, I will follow someone who can 'handle' language, not someone who is bound up in its prisons of paradigms. It's stifling. R or D is not that significant.

This election is not : "The lesser of two evils" but instead, .."The evil of two lessers...."

Miss Ive, I will refer you to an objective consultant, who intuits the penetralia of public speech most wondrously. In his own words, with a well-known interlocutor:

`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs: they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'

`Would you tell me please,' said Alice, `what that means?'

`Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. `I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'

`That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.'

`Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.