The media likely won't admit it, but McCain is dominating the debate tonight. He has been aggressive -- but has managed to do so without looking overly angry, or doing so in a way that can reasonably have him labeled "desperate". Obama knows it too, and clearly seems rattled.
It remains to be seen if this will make a difference in what remains Obama's election to lose, but as of this minute, McCain has done about as well as he is capable of doing.
I’m often bemused by bald declarations of one candidate having won a particular debate, such as the claim you seem to be making in this post. (You don’t actually say that McCain ‘won’ or ‘was winning’ – just that he was ‘dominating’. If this difference in phrasing is more than semantic, I’d be curiously to learn what it is.) A poll taken after the first debate (I don’t remember which) indicated that 97% of Democrats thought Obama had won, whereas 90% of Republicans thought the same of McCain. How are we to explain this? Clearly, partisans have a tendency to view these things through quite different lenses, and moderates and independents ought to be extremely skeptical – and perhaps even dismissive – of their claims.
ReplyDeleteWinning a debate presupposes that there is some goal or objective to which a candidate aims; to win is simply to achieve that goal. On the assumption that only one candidate can be the winner, the objective must be such that it is (at most) achievable by only one candidate in a given debate, though of course candidates can do better or worse in various respects. One way of explaining the statistics noted above is to say that partisans tend to have quite different objectives in mind when evaluating a debate – or, in what I think amounts to the same thing, that they use quite different criteria for judging whether a single, agreed-upon goal has been met. I’d like to survey what a few of these potential objectives might be. On none of them do I think it’s fair to say that McCain, in any objective sense, won last night’s debate.
The most obvious goal of a debate is that of persuading (independent) voters. A candidate wins the debate if he succeeds in shifting more voters towards his camp than are shifted towards his opponent’s. This objective has nothing to do with actual arguments except insofar as they are a means toward persuading voters, and there are obviously other means to this same end. Although there are various permutations of this idea – perhaps a candidate simply aims to prevent a shift towards his opponent rather than to encourage a shift towards him – I think it’s fair to say that McCain did not ‘win’ the debate in this sense. Initial reaction polls suggest the opposite, and in any case it’s a question that will take at least a few days to sort out. Since your blog post was made during the debate, I assume this is not the sense in which you think (or at least thought) that McCain won the debate. The goal must not have been, by hook or by crook, to persuade voters. (I should add that I think this is a bad standard by which to judge debates, although it’s one that’s implicit in much of the media’s commentary.)
Another objective might be for a candidate to present more convincing arguments to the effect that his policies are better than his opponents. A candidate wins if he successfully balances the task of promoting and defending his own policies with that of effectively criticizing his opponent’s. An important part of achieving this goal is that a candidate actually offer *arguments*, as opposed to bald assertions intended to function as arguments. This distinction holds even if one agrees with the assertions themselves. For example, suppose candidate A criticizes candidate B’s economic plan by saying that it will cause taxes to go up, and B’s predictable parry is that it will not. In this case neither candidate has actually made a good argument, because neither has actually explained *why* his preferred conclusion follows from B’s economic plan. In contrast, if candidate A makes two different claims and candidate B tries to show that they are contradictory – e.g., if B claims that a short-term spending freeze is incompatible with increasing various sorts of funding in the short-term – then B has made an actual argument (whatever the truth of B’s conclusion). The relevant difference here is that an argument takes as its premises claims on which both candidates would agree, though clearly they won’t generally agree on what conclusion to draw from those premises. To argue against a candidate’s policy using a premise that is itself the subject of dispute often amounts to begging the question, and is at best only effective as a rhetorical device. (And if that is one’s standard, then why not just use the first debate objective outlined above?)
Typical debate formats do not lend themselves well to the presentation of genuine arguments. The arguments are almost invariably in the details of things like economic and health care analyses, since there is presumably widespread (though maybe not universal) agreement on the underlying data. But these sorts of topics are simply too abstruse for a televised debate. On the whole, then, I think neither candidate made many convincing arguments. I would have to review the tape to give an exact tally, but ask yourself: how many times did a candidate criticize his opponent using premises to which both candidates would agree? Very few, I would say. So by this standard, too, I think it’s incorrect to say that McCain won last night’s debate – or at least it’s incorrect to say that he clearly won.
There’s another method that we are often tempted to use in evaluating a candidate’s debate performance. Consider again the scenario in which A criticizes B’s economic policy by saying that it will raise taxes. You might say to yourself, ‘I agree that B’s policy will have the catastrophic effect of raising taxes, and so A has made a good argument [sic] against B by effectively pointing out this drawback’. This is, I think, how most people judge whether a candidate is debating well. The thing to see, however, is that this judgment depends entirely on an *antecedent* belief that B’s policy will raise taxes (and that that’s a bad thing). If you weren’t sure beforehand whether B’s policy would do this A certainly hasn’t said anything to convince you otherwise, since A hasn’t provided any non-question-begging reasons for this conclusion. However, this way of evaluating the candidates’ statements does suggest a third goal that might be employed to judge the debates: namely, that of saying the most forceful true claims about oneself and against one’s opponent. A candidate wins by this standard if he best balances the joint tasks of saying the most true (and relevant) things against his opponent and the most true (and relevant) things in defense of himself.
This way of gauging the debate is ripe for abuse, though. If you already agree with a candidate’s policies and his criticisms of his opponent, then of course you’re going to think his claims were more accurate – and hence you’ll think he won the debate. It’s this third objective that I think best explains the 97%/90% statistic noted above, but it’s also that method for evaluating the debate that makes partisan pronouncements the least meaningful. Partisans think their candidate won precisely because they’re partisan, so it would seem that no one else really has a reason to take those claims seriously. By this third standard you may be right that McCain won last night’s debate, but that now seems to say more about who you support and less about any objective features of the actual debate. A moderate or independent would have no reason to take it seriously (and I mean that not in the sense that one shouldn’t take your opinion seriously -- *as an opinion* -- but that one shouldn’t take it as a serious gauge of how the debate actually went).
So what I’ve tried to do here is lay out three different standards that might be used for evaluating a debate. Either of the first two standards seem to challenge your claim that McCain won last night’s debate. Your claim is more plausible using the third standard, but less meaningful as an objective diagnostic of the debate itself. I’m curious to find out whether you agree with this assessment, and if so, whether there’s some other standard you’re using to judge the debate.
anonymous: thanks for an absolutely terrific comment. it was extremely well-written, well-reasoned, and you made a number of interesting and thought-provoking points. (it seems perhaps you should be writing a blog rather than i, actually)! while i don't have the time at the moment to respond to your post in the detailed way i'd prefer, i did want to at least reply briefly. so in short, i think you're right. without question, my own views and preferences influenced my judgment on the "winner" of the third debate. by your logic then, my claim is plausible but less objective (and therefore less meaningful). i do, however, feel that there is some objective basis on which i can make the claim that mccain won the debate, but to make that argument properly will take more time than i have at the moment. so i'll try to come back to you at a later time with more in response. in the meantime, i just want to thank you again for such an intelligent and thoughtful response. best regards, -bragg
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