Dr. Red Eye

After the third Obama-McCain debate, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos declared on Nightline that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the debate. In particular, Stephanopoulos graded on three equally-weighted categories: strategy, style and accuracy.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune asked the coaches of two local championship high school debate teams to pick a winner. Eventually calling Obama the consensus winner, these coaches graded on five equally-weighted categories: analysis, use of evidence, on point, delivery and likability.

Look up various polls on the internet and you’ll see similar stuff. CNN even had a poll where winners were picked by who did the most attacking and who seemed more like a typical politician..

All of which made me realize something: the way Americans determine a winner in a debate is highly flawed. Essentially, debates have been reduced to popularity contests. Someone could make perfectly cogent, airtight arguments but be deemed by the masses as the loser for any number of trivial reasons.

Recall what the purpose of a debate is: to allow people to compare the debaters’ ideas and arguments on topical issues in order to uncover truth.

Take, for example, the topic of ACORN during the third presidential debate. The goal is to uncover truth about what is Obama’s association with that organization in order to, as Obama himself surmised, determine whether his associations are troubling. Thus, Obama said:

The only involvement I’ve had with ACORN was I represented them alongside the U.S. Justice Department in making Illinois implement a motor voter law that helped people get registered at DMVs.

Based on recent revelations, that is certainly not true. This is what a debate should be used for: uncovering truth. So, McCain could ask Obama to explain his pro-bono training sessions for ACORN, etc.

In this example, the issue is whether Obama had a relationship with ACORN, and if McCain can make the case that Obama did, then McCain wins on this particular issue and Obama loses.

During a debate, we should judge the arguments, not the debaters themselves. At debate’s end, the winner is the one whose arguments are most valid. Unfortunately, most people have lost sight of that. Over and over, I heard media analysts (both before and after the debate) insist that McCain needed a “game-changer” (whatever that means) in the debate, but that is an inherently flawed statement. The two presidential candidates offer quite a contrast in both ideology and background. Therefore, a debate is useful to find out which candidate offers the most valid arguments. So if McCain is able to demonstrate that his arguments are more valid than Obama’s, it renders the need for a “game-changer” unnecessary since people will see the logical fallacies in Obama’s positions and decide not to vote for the candidate with the most flawed stances.

In my pre-third debate post “How McCain can still win this election“, I stated that McCain needed a campaign strategy overhaul and listed the key arguments McCain needed to address. Notice that my list contained no “game-changers.” Instead, I mentioned how McCain had several weak arguments against Obama in prior debates and how McCain could improve them in this third debate. That’s because debates should be judged on the merits of the debaters’ positions: no more, no less.

It is astounding that most people viewed Obama as the winner of the first presidential debate despite the fact that he reiterated his intent to meet with leaders of rogue nations without preconditions, a completely erroneous argument with major implications. Instead, I heard media analysts being impressed with Obama’s cool composure during the debate and that he “looked presidential”, even though that is irrelevant in debate. If the debater is calm and looks good but his arguments are flawed and have logical holes big enough to drive a herd of elephants through, then the debater has lost. Staying cool and looking good is useful in a beauty contest, not a debate. Furthermore, judging on qualities like the debaters’ style and delivery is not only irrelevant but also superficial and subjective.

Debate is used to validate or expose the weaknesses in a belief or a set of beliefs. The debaters state their positions and then try to find error in each other’s ideas. Debate was meant to be an idea competition, not a person competition. Even in the most basic form of debate, a husband-wife argument, what matters is who is most correct on the issues, not who is the best speaker or who had the best strategy.

Unfortunately, most of American society has unknowingly regressed in the way they judge a debate, arguably influenced by how the media judges a debate: a battery of assorted, equally-weighted and often irrelevant categories. Let’s return to the ideal way of judging a debate: the person whose arguments are left standing when the bell rings.