Why are some politicians such bad debaters?
I watched a debate yesterday about the Iraqi war and the danish involvement - and it left me actually feeling sorry for one of the debaters even if I would never agree with him. I feel sorry, because he fended extremely poorly for his views and he ended up getting a verbal beating by all present. Even the other debater on ‘his’ side of the debate managed to end up somewhere in the middle with arguments like: “Well, I have to look at this isolated - it’s my role as an expert - but I tend to agree with some of your points…”
There were four debaters - two for each ’side’ of the debate. One is a former chairman of the Socialdemokratiet, Mogens Lykketoft - the Social Democrats. One is a runner-up for the mayor election in Copenhagen, S?ren Pind - representing the current government from the Venstre party. Third we had a journalist from Politiken and lastly we had an expert in … I forget what.
And now we get to who got pummeled - S?ren Pind. He was so busy trying to tease the others with remarks about past political failures and contradictions between their views and what their traditional political standards once were that he failed to ever get his own points across. And why? Because they did the sensible thing and ignored the ‘below-the-waist’-remarks and just concentrated on the discussion at hand. They argued with facts, expert oppinions, discussed numbers without dwelling on them - they listened to the other views, took them into account and produced reaonable answers to why they disagreed or had points to add.
My own political party wasn’t represented, but I have to say, Mogens Lykketoft did a really good job at providing a really interesting and viable view on the situation in Iraq. I tend to agree with him a lot - and it isn’t the first time, he has produced views that are in line with mine. And I know why - it’s because he avoids the low blows and sticks to arguing - even if you don’t agree with him - he comes across as well-prepared and an extremely good debater. Many think he’s dull and lacks social empathy, but I completely disagree. He is just not a comedian, an actor or a buffoon. He’s a politician - and made from the stuff all politicians should be made from.
It’s funny to watch debates - you can tell pretty easily who will walk away victorious at a glance. I enjoy watching the body language of the debaters. The good debater will listen intently trying not to miss one word waiting for his turn to answer the points - the bad one will listen to the first three words and stand there shaking his head almost blurting out retorts as soon as he gets the chance. The good one will time his arguments, letting them sink in - then produce the next. He’d rather discard an arguments than spoil one of them with poor argumentation. The bad one will produce isolated arguments in the same sentence - and try to flood his opponent with different arguments. When he gets on the defensive, he will start from the top and just take all the arguments from the top never modifying them or taking a new perspective.
All in all, a good debate … to some extent. I certainly understood the situation better after the debate. Too bad, the opposition to the arguments were so poor - there might be a lot of ground they didn’t cover, because they didn’t have qualified debaters to argue with. As you probably know, it takes at least two to argue, and as a spectator, you’ll want them to be about equal in skill.
Nan said,
October 21, 2006 at 0:37
When it comes to S?ren Pind I totally agree. I can’t stand him. I think he is funny enough on the radio during “Mads & Monopolet” but funny is so not the same as being constructive. I am not saying he isn’t intelligent. Unfortunately he seems to be a typical example on how danish politicians are now a days - they speak as if it was election day tomorrow and not straight from the heart - and it ends up being a mudfight which - I guess - unfortunately attracts voters too these days :(