Friday, October 3, 2008

"Winning" A Debate

So what does it mean to really "win" a pre-election debate. I do not believe that it means who makes the best arguments or counter-arguments, but rather who achieves their goal. I know that I have a personal bias and would say Sen. Biden won the debate, but that would be intellectually dishonest. In terms of achievement of their goal, Gov. Palin succeeded in showing that she wasn't a complete fool. I think a proof of this, is that in a recent ad released the Obama Campaign isn't attack her lack of knowledge, but rather attack the Mccain health care plan.

While I must say that it bothered me that she only had answers for questions that she was prepared to answer, nothing bothered me more than her obnoxious little quips. (see :52 in the next video)


But in Sen. Biden's fear of coming across as rude, he just laughs it off. I think that was his failure in the debate. If, and I believe there is a way, he could have responded to her quips politely it would have made her look like a fool, but no matter what, she could always save herself with this: 

I don't think that in the long run this will effect the polling for the general election but we will have to wait a few days to see the full effects of this debate, when we can really analyze who is the real "winner" of the debate. 

3 comments:

Daniel said...

I agree with your last statement that this may not (in fact probably won't) have a huge effect on the election, and for that we will have to wait and see.
But why does it bother you so much that Ms. Palin used "obnoxious little quips?" Don't you think she was told to do this in her preparation?
I think she used the opportunities presented to her by Mr. Biden to reiterate to the American public that she is not a weak woman who will just lay down in front of the more experienced members in Washington and do what they want, but that she will respond to them directly and take them on when she sees it as necessary.
This was very important for her to do in the debate, and if there is anything she really succeeded in doing last night it was this.

Cranky Doc said...

"In terms of achievement of their goal, Gov. Palin succeeded in showing that she wasn't a complete fool." Steven's hardly the only one to make such a statement. Is this the standard? Is this where we've come to? (And I'm setting aside claims made by some that she didn't actually succeed even in this. . . .) That can't bode well for the republic, can it??

Cranky Doc said...

Better: here's how the Manitoba Speech and Debate Association recommends its judges score debates: http://www.sjr.mb.ca/Debate/judgegd.htm. Scroll down to Scoresheets and Categories. At least now we could have some criteria to ask "who won."