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Debating the issue of the debate

Dan Janison | dan.janison@newsday.com

October 15, 2008

The first question tonight might be whether we should even call this a debate.

Anyone who caught the last two McCain-Obama showdowns might term the finale at Hofstra University more of a pair of dueling news conferences.

Or an airing of rival commercials.

Or a verbal shootout, where they attack first and ask factual questions later.

Or performance art.

But there are people who study and teach these things at Hofstra even when the presidential circus is not in town. And they assure us there is a place for this event within the definition of debate.

"Part of the problem with the question is, there are various kinds of real debates," says Matthew Sobnosky, graduate director at the school of communication. "It depends what it is you are watching for, whether you find it a debate or not."

Leave it to a debate expert to do to my premise what the biology department does to frogs.

Dr. Sobnosky is persuasive, though. There are legislative debates, after all, with different rules, procedures and ends than candidate debates. And court trials as debates have roots in ancient Greece, including specific rules of evidence, he notes. Political debate "is one of the least restrictive forms," he says.

His Hofstra colleague, Mary Anne Trasciatti, who is chairwoman of Speech, Communication, Rhetoric and Performance Studies, allows that presidential debates can become "campaign slogans bandied back and forth."

In an academic debate, jurors determine the winner based on who marshaled evidence more effectively, who made stronger arguments and who best addressed rebuttals, she notes. Tonight, the question of who won and who lost will turn on who did more for his campaign.

But when students and community members are assembled to watch the debate and offer their impressions, the TV is turned off so that "no media spin is heard" from post-debate commentary, Dr. Trasciatti says.

Instead, the audience is asked "what they heard about issues of importance to them," she says. "We do not ask who won, because that's not really a useful question."

Same goes, in her book, for "knockout blows." During the televised debate between the vice-presidential candidates Oct. 3, a knockout blow by Joe Biden would have made him "metaphorically guilty of violence against a woman," while a knockout by Sarah Palin would have meant that Biden was "beaten by a girl in a fight."

"It's not a fruitful metaphor," she says.

Of course, you can try telling big-time strategists - such as Karl Rove and David Axelrod and Mark Penn - that rather than wins, losses and knockout blows, presidential debates ought to be about cogent arguments and clear explanations.

But the spinmeisters might be better suited for evaluation by the university's Department of Drama and Dance.

The issues so far

FIRST DEBATE

SEPT. 26 - OXFORD, MISS.