The Lincoln-Douglas Debates have captured the American imagination on what debate should look like, and I’m really at a loss as to why.
They were for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois. Most people think they were Presidential debates. Although Stephen Douglas had presidential ambitions, they were never realized.
The Senators at that time were not determined by popular vote. The State Legislature determined the Senators, as the idea at that time was that the Senate represented State interests, and the House represented the people.
Perhaps Abraham Lincoln thought a series of debates would be good self promotion, or promotion for his minority party, the Republicans. Either way Stephen Douglas’s ambitions caused him to accept the series of debates as well. Both agreed the debates would be beneficial for the people of Illinois, and for the country. They assumed they would get national attention, and they were right.
These debates, like any good debates, are a product of local circumstance, context, and controversy. It’s odd, but expected I guess that they would be transformed into a fantasy of universally good debating.
I’m against this idea that they are a universal model, but reflecting on all the discussion about them as a better alternative to the Commission on Presidential Debates got me thinking about what we can learn about good debate from the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Here are a few ideas:
Debating is a performance
Although Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had no conception of broadcast media, they were keenly aware of the role of print journalism in shaping political views. The debates they offered were not just for the audience attending that particular debate, but for the journalists who would write vivid descriptions of the speeches, gestures, and delivery for their readers miles away.
Debate is not about being right or being true. It’s not about facts. It’s about communicating the reasons why you hold the position you do for the benefit of an audience. Facts and belief can only go so far. The lesson here is that the presentation might be the only thing that will allow your audience to side with you. It provides access to your position in ways that simply reading it won’t. These debaters understood that.
Moderator? What Moderator?
The Lincoln-Douglas debate series had no moderator. The two men worked out their debate schedule in a series of letters between them, both agreeing that the debates would be in the public interest. Although the Illinois Senate race would be determined in the State Legislature, they both thought these debates would help people better understand and articulate their positions on national politics, particularly the question of slavery.
Since the debates would be about singular questions offered by whichever of the two candidates would speak first, the setup was pretty clear. If someone went off the topic, the other could point this out in their response speech. The audience could also cheer, or boo, indicating to the candidate if they had overstepped the bounds of a reasonable response.
What we can learn from this is that the function of the moderator is not to assist in creating a quality debate, but to assist in the creation of an even that looks good for television. Fast paced, moving between different topics, quickly cutting from one individual back to the other, and trying to create sound bites – the mass media’s most profitable product.
The debate moderators are not helping debate, they are helping media business. They are trying to create something exciting and newsworthy. They interrupt and enforce ludicrous time limits where candidates can barely thank the moderator for the question.
Candidates should control the floor when they speak. They all have experience in courts, in legislatures, and in boardrooms. They don’t need a journalist to tell them how to do this. And we don’t need one to help keep the debate on track. All we need is a clear topic that won’t change for 90 mintues.
We Don’t Need Boutique Topics
One of the most frustrating issues I faced when teaching competitive debate was the selection of topics. In high school competition, topics are either annual or change every three months. They are selected by a committee of educators and the staff of the national organization that oversees contest debating, the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA).
At the university and college level, topics are selected by a committee that is chosen by the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) and the National Debate Tournament (NDT). This committee solicits papers from the membership that argue for a topic area, cite research showing that it is valuable to debate, and suggest some resolution or topic framing ideas. The committee puts the best suggestions to a vote by members who then have a second vote on the wording.
This is all lovely and democratic in appearance, but the frustration here comes from the idea that people will be able to know what a good debate topic is. That it could be engineered in some way to be “good for debate.” The topics that are created are good for engineered, competitive debate. They help corral issues like fairness and bias in the topic, so that competitive winners of debates can be chosen. This preference ruins the ultimate value of debate: Giving us more to speak with one another about.
image by Steve Edwards, from the Gateway Journalism Review (gatewayjr.org)
Debate organizations and professionals craft “boutique” topics in the same way that professional sports draw very careful white lines on a field, and make sure that the ball is inflated and sized to exacting standards. They are interested in the game being fair first, and that leads to a good game. This makes sense if you are trying to determine who is the best at an activity. For debate, they are very good at determining who is best at boutique debating. Debating outside of such landscaping and manicuring, this approach does not work. To truly learn and benefit from debate, it must be a messy combination of what people find controversial and how the debaters take up that controversy for them, not for any set of rules.
Lincoln and Douglas chose topics that were on the top of everyone’s mind, and they did so by drawing directly from the national conversation. They took these issues and broadened them. A good contemporary example of the sort of thing they did would be to take the issue of the COVID pandemic, and instead of debating it directly, in terms of government response, the question could be “Is this how a democracy should handle a pandemic?” or perhaps “The States should determine their own pandemic policy based on Federal government advice.” Something like that would be more in-line with the Lincoln-Douglas debate topics, although since they were given 30 minutes to ask the question, it’s hard for our 21st century minds to understand how that would be possible.
The best topics come right out of the controversies in front of us and need no engineering. They don’t have to be made; they are all around us. They are messy, but that’s a great place to form a strong position on what we should be doing or thinking. National educational debate organizations like CEDA-NDT or the NSDA are not interested in debate, they are interested in creating contests that excite students. What debate wants and needs is secondary. Lincoln and Douglas show us that the best kinds of debate allow the audience to refine their beliefs and then select a winner, not select a winner based on how well they supported a side under a boutique topic crafted by supposed debate experts.
A Mediated Approach is Better than a Media Approach
Contemporary debates are rushed due to the costs of TV and people’s low attention spans. The Commission has fought this problem for it’s entire existence. But it begs the question: Why are these debates televised?
When we look to other organizations that craft and create professional debates, they diversify: The Munk Debates have podcast debates as well as a YouTube presence. So does the TED debates, and Doha. Intelligence Squared pioneered this multi-pronged approach years ago (I happened to appear on one of those and it was quite fun, but I think the link has been lost to time). The Commission on Presidential debates seems clueless in this regard, producing only 3 televised debates every four years.
Lincoln and Douglas can teach us an alternative, and that is to hyper-mediate one event through awareness of the different audiences out there for such an event.
First, there’s the debate audience present and attending the debate itself. Second, there are the newspaper and magazine reporters there covering it. Third, there are the reporters for the party-owned and controlled newspapers, something we don’t talk about enough in American political history.
Lincoln and Douglas were very clever, and made sure to address all three levels of audience at once. This takes a lot of talent and practice, and the two men were obviously aware that how they said particular arguments might be ignored by some journalists as hyperbole, but eaten up by the party presses. Likewise, something of local color and interest for the crowd would be reported in national papers, but maybe not of such interest to the party journalists. And angry aggressive speech would be reported on in mocking tones by the opposite party journalists.
This awareness is a keen recognition of a multilayered audience situation, and that one must mediate one’s speech in order to reach all the audiences appropriately. Today we think of this as modality, as a podcast will be cut and edited differently from a TV broadcast, as will a blog or other print medium. Lincoln and Douglas show us that you can do this by speaking in ways that accommodate a number of different media to get the perspective you want for the audience you want to reach. Instead of letting the media control what the debates look like, let candidates do it by having an engaging event with one another, and allow them to speak in the ways they wish to reach the audiences they wish to reach.
Take Your Time
There are two really excellent books on the Lincoln-Douglas Debates that stand out. One is by Allen Guelzo, the other by David Zarefsky. In the Zarefsky book, he highlights an interesting moment in the debates where Abraham Lincoln is oddly surprised by the question Senator Douglas asks him. He pauses, then informs the audience that he would like to check on a few facts in the town library before he gives an answer. Everyone agrees, and the debate disperses. A few hours later, Lincoln, Douglas, and the crowd re-assemble, and the debate continues, with Lincoln offering his answer.
Everyone is better off with the addition of reflective research and adaptive thinking. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, both candidates were kept on their toes by one another, trying to second guess what their responses might be and changing the questions to try to see if they could force an error. Likewise, each man had to read and keep up with the law, the public opinion, and the courts to keep the debates relevant through research accuracy.
Contrast this to the Commission on Presidential Debates blocking the candidate use of notes or other aids to memory. This leads to both participants practicing repeating stock phrases, campaign trail slogans, and the like. Since things cannot be looked up on a laptop computer or phone, we are just left with assertions from memory from both candidates. Journalists and publications serve as “fact-checkers,” but this doesn’t help improve the quality, or force, of the debate itself. It’s sort of like finding out an important ingredient was missing after you ate a meal – disappointing no matter what.
Instead, let the candidates follow Lincoln’s lead and look things up during the debate. The sign of intelligence is not perfect recall without consulting anything, but instead deferring to research to ensure one has a grounded thought. But the Commission wants a good TV show, and looking smug and not needing notes apparently is what they think we are excited to see. I just wish they would give us what we need instead.
Those are some of the lessons here, but now I’m sort of inspired to go back over my Lincoln-Douglas debate materials and see what else I can find. I might post more about this later, but for now, I really just would like us to reflect on why an obscure set of Senate debates from the 1850s seem so much better than our debates in 2020. What does this say about the direction our political discourse is headed?