It’s not a game…
In a bone-headed maneuver when I added the update, I accidently erased what I posted last night. Here it is again as best I can recall it:
One man spoke in complete sentences and spoke as if to adults. One man spoke in fragments and spoke as if to children. I believe the transcript will show that this is a reasonable interpretation of the first presidential debate.
No candidate “won” the debate. You can’t win something that isn’t a contest, i.e. a game with a coherent set of rules and criteria to determine an outcome.
UPDATE (1 October 8:50 a.m.): In response to some of the comments on this post, I need to make this clarification:
By comparing debates to a game, I mean to challenge the notion that a winner (agreed upon by most) may be declared immediately following the event. Without rules and criteria this is plainly impossible. There is a sense in which we can talk about a “win”–a rhetorical sense. If the debate about the debate creates a consensus in the culture, and citizens act in political ways based on that consensus, then we have a winner. This is not an instant process. We have to wait for it.
My vote certainly didn’t change tonight. Then again, I’ve always had a weak spot for people who address me as if I were an adult.
The format helped Kerry talk more clearly than he normally does. He looked and sounded less pompous and shrill.
Only writers care if a candidate speaks in sentences, what most people care about is substance and style. Dick Morris says Bush won on substance and Kerry on style, the opposite of conventional wisdom expectations.
Republican commentators came away a bit disappointed and deflated, Democrats relieved and hopeful. If you read Drudgereport.com, Instapundit.com and Andrewsullivan.com, you’ll get a sense of the reactions. On my message board, the Kerry backers are thrilled; the Bush backers have nothing to say, but, then, they’re out numbered most of the time anyway.
Bush made his three or four major points time and again; Kerry tried to defend against those points and look presidential. He failed in the former and apparently succeeded in the latter.
So, while rhetoric is interesting, as Bush has proved time and again, it’s not the be all and end all.
Bloggers are calling this the best debate in memory. I’ve watched them all but the first Nixon-Kennedy debate, which I listened to, and I can’t say I remember them all that well. In one ear and out the other as life goes on. And maybe that’s why TV debates have so little impact on election outcomes: Listeners don’t retain much information from them.
I would call ‘looking presidential’ rhetoric, particularly as it didn’t particularly have to do with visuals, but with what he said and how he said it.
I agree that Bush made his three or four points over and over again, and I can’t tell if Kerry defended against them properly to someone who agrees with the points in the first place. But then such a person isn’t a potential Kerry voter anyway.
I do think that the basic frame for the debate (Iraq is/is not a disaster) was assumed rather than built by the two candidates. I would guess that the undecided voter will therefore remain undecided.
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-V.
Donald E. L. Johnson writes, “So, while rhetoric is interesting, as Bush has proved time and again, it’s not the be all and end all.”
I think you might be working with a limited definition of rhetoric, which is usually defined as both the art of persuasion, and the study of the art of persuasion. (There is another connotative meaning: “empty or insincere speech.” However, this is not the sense in which Andy Cline is using it.) The way a candidate speaks, the vocabulary a candidate uses, the tie a candidate chooses, the facial expressions, the hand gestures…these are all a part of “ethos,” the credibility of the speaker. Ethos affects the audience’s response to the speaker and their attitude towards what the speaker has to say.
Johnson also writes, “Only writers care if a candidate speaks in sentences, what most people care about is substance and style.”
How you put your thoughts into words *is* your style. And as for substance, if you are unable, or unwilling, to construct complete sentences, then there are those in your audience, not just writers, who will conclude that there is little substance to what you have to say. I think these categories are not so easily separated.
On the other hand, there are audience members who think that eloquent language is a sign of deception, which goes back to that connotative meaning of rhetoric as “empty or insincere speech.” For these people, Bush’s style of speaking is a sign of his honesty.
Andy Cline writes, “No candidate ‘won’ the debate. You can’t win something that isn’t a contest, i.e. a game with a coherent set of rules and criteria to determine an outcome.”
This strikes me as a very thoughtful comment, and something I hadn’t considered before. I am annoyed with the tendency to talk about who “wins” these debates, but I hadn’t been able to articulate why. I disagree slightly, however: Cline defines a contest as “a game with a coherent set of rules and criteria to determine an outcome,” but a debate *does* have these. The difference is that the rules and criteria are not formally and officially established.
The goal of each candidate is to leave the debate having persuaded an audience that he is more qualified to be president than is his opponent. That’s the criterion. However, there is no one audience in need of persuasion; instead there are multiple audiences with different evaluative lenses (some find a candidate’s “plainspoken” ways refreshingly honest; others conclude this style of speaking is a sign of shallow thinking). In sports, there are officials who have been granted the authority to decide contests or parts of contests. Spectators are not shy about expressing their contempt when an umpire calls a strike unjustly; however, their opinion does not matter, because they have no authority in the contest. This is not the case with presidential debates.
I don’t know how anyone can declare a winner of two parallel stump speeches. The only thing I can really say is that incumbent repeated the exact same points several times and the challenger stayed on message without being repititious.
I also note, with some chagrin, that 9/11 came up exactly two sentences into the President’s first chance to speak. So much for not politicizing the tragedy.
I can’t say that anything new was offered up by these debates that wasn’t readily available already.
Wow… you’ve all been busy this morning
There is a sense in which we can talk about a “win”–a rhetorical sense. If the debate about the debate creates a consensus in the culture, and citizens act in political ways based on that consensus, then we have a winner. This is not an instant process. We have to wait for it.
Agreed.
Why’d you remove the original post instead of just adding the “update”?
If the debate about the debate creates a consensus in the culture …
I think you can break “the culture” into segments and declare rhetorical mini-victories right away.
For example, going into the debate, there was a cultural consensus among some, and the rhetoric was clearly reflecting it, that Kerry’s campaign was struggling and Democrats were not in a happy place. I think Kerry “won” in the rhetorical sense based on the happy consensus being expressed by Democrats and the “not as happy” response by Republicans.
Kerry altered the momentum of perceptions, shifted the vector of CW, and put the inevitability question back on the table. From his point of origin going into the debate, that has got to be considered a “win”.
Oooops…I accidently erase the original post. I’m trying to reproduce it now. Stay tuned.
Bush looked intimidated while discussing security, his OWN field. Maybe you can’t call it a defeat for him, but certainly Kerry made an impression. The way how the senator countered the flip-flop charge reveals it clearly.
“But this issue of certainty. It’s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong. It’s another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right. What I worry about with the president is that he’s not acknowledging what’s on the ground, that he’s not acknowledging the realities in North Korea, he’s not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues. And certainty sometimes can get you in trouble.”
Looks enough for me.
Re: mini victories
Certainly. And from these we may get to something like a cultural consensus.
I think there is a lot of micro aggression going on in this campaign.
For example, Bush’s opponents claim he’s not seeing what’s going on on the ground in Iraq, in stem cell research, in Korea, in Iran or in global warming. Such comments are sly put downs that win nots of approval from those who agree and scorn from those who don’t.
Is this effective rhetoric? For those not paying attention and not thoughtful about the issues, probably yes. For those informed about the issues, no.
Similarly, those who say Kerry undermines the troops and allies with his attacks on our allies and the Iraqi leaders are saying he has no character, is a traitor and is putting politics ahead of national security and the wefare of the troops. They don’t have the guts to say Kerry is a traitor, or they think saying so will be perceived as going over the top as much as they think Kerry does. Bush supporters agree with such attacks, Kerry supporters don’t. Undecides may or may not be turned off or on.
You also can review the demeanors and rhetoric of the TV pundits after the debate. Republicans said no home runs were hit, especially by Bush, and that it’s still a tight race. Translation, they were disappointed. Democrats just beamed. They didn’t have to say anything more.
The real issue is who came away with new ammunition. Bush wins here with Kerry’s “global test” promise. In one sentence he appealed to the security-concious viewers with the promise to reserve the right to strike at enemies pre-emptively and to his hard left supporters with his “global test.” What is the global test, both left and right understand that to mean that Kerry won’t strike pre-emptively unless the U.N., Russia, China, France, Germany and the N.Y. Times approve and the target country says, ok, come get me.
The left sees this as a clever statement, the right as another Kerry lie or deception.
I expect Bush to exploit the “global test.”
What kind of rhetoric will he use?
Re: What kind of rhetoric will he use?
The usual: simplistic. The Republicans are VERY GOOD at this. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m being negatively critical. We live in an age in which it’s quite difficult to get elected with a sound bite such as “global test” because it boils down too much nuance into an attackable image, i.e. that rubs many Americans the wrong way despite, IMO, its good sense. The Republicans are good at boiling this stuff down to culturally-approved images.
The post-debate spin seems to be shaping up into Republicans using the “global test” and Democrats using visual rhetoric.
post-debate chatter
Just a collection of links I’ve collected for my American Dialogues course: The first round. I’m mixing commentary from bloggers with that of columnists for the “traditional media,” as well as overview news articles. More later, ac (after coffee). Mich…
Even Stanley Fish, no right-winger, says that “If you can’t explain an idea or policy plainly in one or two sentences, it’s not yours..” In view of that, why can’t Democrats do this? Is it because they don’t have an idea or policy? And BTW, not only is Stanley Fish not a Republican, he’s not “simplistic” either.
Stanley ought to stick to literary criticism and leave the rhetorical/political analysis to others. His assertion is nonsense.
I have to agree with the good Dr. Anyone who can’t explaing quantum physics in two sentences obviously doesn’t own it.
Keith…
hahahaha! Man, you just made me snort coffee all over my computer screen.
There are a whole bunch of things that can’t be explained in one or two sentences. My own discipline is one of them. On Rhetorica I cite four definitions of rhetoric; try cramming all of that into two sentences
That said, RH’s question is still a good one because the Republicans are better at boiling down their message–they’ve been perfecting this for more than a generation. I would point my readers to George Lakoff’s book “Moral Politics” for an answer. That answer can’t be stated in one or two sentences, so I leave it to you to buy the book. It’s worth your money and time.
Mmmmm, OK, except Fish didn’t say EVERYTHING could be reduced to a couple of sentences, but nevermind – you got what you wanted out of the quote.
RH– True enough. But he does say “an idea or policy.” Did he qualify this remark, i.e. did he limit io certain ideas and/or certain policies?
The Republicans are good at boiling this stuff down to culturally-approved images.
Actually, I would rewrite that to say “media-approved cultural images.”
It’s important to recognize that “simplistic” is defined today by the media’s structural bias, and ergo the Republicans media savvy success.
I would argue, from a very unscientific and biased viewpoint, that it has been honed by necessity in the face of a skeptical, if not sometimes hostile, ideological press. Where the message of the sixties had to be honed to overcome the conservative media culture from the 50s, the Goldwater Republicans learned to hone their message to overcome the generational media culture of the 60s and 70s.
Simplicity is just a nice word for Jefferson’s intent to “place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.” (OK, it’s a phrase that’s big again in the blogoshpere)
OK – here’s the original Op-Ed – I don’t know if the link is still good, or is behind the Times firewall: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/opinion/24fish.html