How to watch the June 27th CNN Presidential Debate
I study and teach argumentation and debate. Here are some tips on how to watch the upcoming CNN Presidential debate.
Let’s deal with the begged question first: Should you watch it? Many would say no, that it’s a bad debate, no debate at all, or political theater that distracts from more important sorts of activities you could be doing.
Let’s take these on one at a time: Yes, these are bad debates or no debates by any thoughtful understanding of what a debate is. This is a result of the Commission on Presidential Debates who, since 1988, have sidelined good debate in favor of bending the knee to the Republican and Democratic Parties. Their entire philosophy is: Do what the parties want to do or you risk having no debate at all.
There are no language, debate, communication, or other such experts on the board of the Commission. There never will be. They are a fundraising body that has the goal to host a spectacle 3 episode season every four years. They cannot say with any evidence or any good explanation why the debates matter. It’s up to us to make them matter.
I think that it can be a great way to think through your own positions on things and the best check against buying into some malformed or propagandistic ideas that you stumbled into yourself. Here’s how.
The ancients in Greece and Rome had a method for teaching and understanding debate that they called stasis. There are many understandings of what this consisted of from classicists, rhetoricians, and argument scholars, but the important part for us is that they provide a way to figure out the best place to argue against an opponent when you are debating and therefore a way to criticize and evaluate debates that you are observing.
The ancients had simple questions you could ask before a debate: Did something occur? If it happened, what kind of event was it? And what was it’s effect? This simple opening shows us places where we can push on any accusation we might face. This was developed over time and between cultures to include questions of definition to answer what kind of event or charge something is,
However the Presidential Debates aren’t structured like this because the two parties are cowards and the Commission allows them to be. Debates are open ended, without accusation or even agreed upon positions. The moderator(s) ask whatever question they want and a question can be responded to anyway you like without engaging your opponent. This is why scholar Sydney Kraus famously called them “joint press conferences,” instead of debates.
Watching the June 27th debate, we can use stasis to force interaction when the candidates won’t do it. I’ve developed my own stasis metric that is tailored for the Presidential debates:
Framework: How does the candidate describe the shared reality of the world we live in?
Principle: How does the candidate discuss the values and principles they hold?
Vision: What are the plans the candidate has for the country when they become President?
Action: What things have they done or are currently doing that prove the candidate can lead as President?
In watching the debate, anything either candidate says will fall into one of these four stasis positions. You can identify what they are saying and assign it a category, then you can clash with it, or you can find a statement where the opposing candidate clashes with it.
Clash is vital to making debates useful. Clash tests an arguments reasonability, validity, or soundness. We can identify clash as a direct challenge to an argument (“That’s wrong!”) or it can be pointing out lack of evidence or support (“He doesn’t tell you how we are going to pay for all this”) or it can be my favorite, dissociating the speaker from their speech (“If he really believed in the middle class, why did he vote for tax increases three times this past legislative session?”). Dissociation you’ll hear a lot of. It’s a go-to strategy for Presidential debates. When you hear it, think about the connection that is being suggested: Is someone who voted for a tax increase always going to support increased taxes? Is someone who is a convicted criminal a through-and-through terrible person? Is someone who is a millionaire untrustworthy? the connective material is up to us to provide.
What connects a dissociative argument is what Aristotle identified centuries ago as an enthymeme. This is an argument where the audience knows the connection between the claim and the reasons for it or the evidence. In dissociation, the candidate assumes you are going to connect the dots for them. They want some free labor from you. Make sure that this labor is justified. Don’t just react to the assumption, think about it. Make sure it’s worth it to make that leap.
Hopefully this helps turn the debate into something that is an exercise in thinking rather than reacting, something that helps you think about your own views and most importantly, which candidate is the better public reasoner. We must communicate with one another whether we hate one another or not. The way people make their reasons and thoughts public is a great way to test them against your own thinking and reasoning, and see what sorts of connections you are endorsing when you vote for them.