If. You, Barack Obama, Were to Really, Really “Turn the Page”—

—as I think you can, and will, you will show us a model of communication that has seldom been seen since the lesser rhetorical lights (actually, dim bulbs), the Nixons, Roves, Bushes, Cheneys and their ilk, have taken over after the Kennedy style! In the first part of the letter to the Democrat Nominee Barack Obama, a “turn-the-page”, “evolved” presidential form of address was proposed. However, the change would be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary because of the sudden, dramatic contrast with the mundane, uninformed, ego-centric manner of speaking in those men.

The question is begged: what would be the specific elements of an innovative, “turn-the-page” rhetoric of presidential speaking? I acknowledge, Barack Obama already has achieved a remarkable speech-making record, no doubt about that, as contrasted with McCain, and especially George Bush. Obama’s presentations are not, as the lady said, “just a speech”. She might have made “the” speech on gender and sexism, just as Obama did for “race”, but she did not. Turning the page from his demonstrated luminosity involves consideration of some added points.

The whole of presidential communication constitutes a system, a collection of functions that can be installed in the press conference, the cabinet meetings, the diplomatic presentations, reports to Congress, mass communications.

CAMPAIGN SPEAKING: Start with the campaign speeches coming up in the general election after the party conventions. Trivia is allowed when the candidate does not take charge in a manner of speaking above the trivia of lapel pins and “elitism’. We need first and foremost to hear Sen. Obama speak for a minimum of fifteen minutes on each of the chief issues, for examples, Iraq, health care, environmental crises, economy, Social Security, energy, immigration. Each speech should be followed by a speech by his opponent on each issue. That would emulate somewhat the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. One topic for each separate meeting. That is not a “town hall” meeting.

Citing the significant shortcomings in the abilities of the people to attend, concentrate and make sense of what they have heard is selling the citizenry short, a shameful view of the people. ANY COMMENTATOR WHO SAYS THAT THE PEOPLE WOULD NOT TUNE-IN, LISTEN PATIENTLY, UNDERSTAND, AND RETAIN A CLEAR PARAPHRASE OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CANDIDATES ON THE ISSUE—that commentator should be cast out as a pariah in our society. It has been said by one commentator that the present types of debate formats and content “are generally received as very stodgy” (heavy, indigestible). Hmpf! Typical journalistic comment! Sound bit-byte-bite is what they want. Wait until he has to listen to the President speak for 10-15 minutes!

CITIZENS’ PAGE-TURNING DUTIES, OBLIGATIONS: Auditors of presidential and all governmental communications, and that is just about every mature citizen of the United States, as serious citizen audiences, should be given (by the President) what citizens should be expected to handle. The President will not be dispensing pabulum. Therefore, any page-turning by the President has a counterpart page-turning among U.S. Citizens.

Beyond the campaign speaking, we should be told how a President Obama would inform himself on the issues.

THE CABINET: For increasing “transparency, how would the President’s cabinet be selected and by what criteria?

OUTSIDE EXPERTISE: How would the President involve the world scholars who have book-length opinions on the crucial issues, tap that valuable resource, juxtaposing contrasting views?

DISPENSING POLICY DECISIONS: How would the President introduce to the people his formulations of the issues, reviewing the lead-up debate by providing the arguments on all sides, and how he evaluated and chose what he deemed the best solutions?

NATIONAL PLATFORMS: He should take his reporting to different parts of the nation, finding the region that relates most directly to the issue to be reported.

PRESS CONFERENCES: How might the President change the press conference? Could he select different small groups of three reporters for a chat about the issues, a la Meet the Press, eventually giving the whole press corp the opportunity to speak up close and personal with the President? Then confronting the whole White House press, at other meetings, would it be a good change if he came to it with his anticipation of the questions he might be asked, answering each and then taking additional questions he did not anticipate?

CHATS WITH THE PEOPLE: He should arrange to speak more informally to the nation, like the Roosevelt Fireside Chats, on problems in governing that are not critical issues. I merely suggest.

That’s what I would be pleased to see happen. What would you be pleased to see happen in any makeover of the President’s style in this  major responsibility of our national CEO?

A Letter to the Democrat Nominee-Elect, Sen. Obama

DO NOT GET TAKEN INTO THE TOWN-HALL PROPOSAL, please!! In the campaign speaking coming up, you WILL NOT (FACT #1) be speaking to a “town”. You WILL (FACT #2) be speaking to the people of the world, with some significance for every person near and remote. You WILL NOT (FACT #3) be speaking in a “hall”. You WILL (FACT #4) be speaking through the global conduits of many types, your words being picked up in every medium of communication everywhere.

Herewith, I am asking you to do something that will “evolve” political speech. It’s not an easy point to make. Bear with me.

Do not fall for the “folksy” trick of Sen. John McCain. That’s what he knows works best for him. You, Sir, will know better because you have a different intelligence, more youth, more in touch with world tendencies, more capable of learning, study, inquiry, and having a propensity for giving and taking instruction. I conclude that on the strength of your education and experience, you must stand against your opponent in a public communication and formal framework.

“TURN THE PAGE!” You said that and, I am sure, comprehended the full significance of that catchphrase.

Our ancestors have “turned the page” many times over the past four millions of years. The machinery of evolution is inexorably still in effect, a law that will never be repealed. (Check that: except perhaps through human blundering. H-m-m-m.) I wish to invoke the operation of that theory for this campaign and your presidency to follow. I mean, REALLY, REALLY turn that page. You must be up to it.

In these present times, there are more and more pressures to act under threats sensed as global, and immediate, like climate change and fossil fuels, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, the sinister changes in the nature of terroristic underground warfare. The list is very long.

People of the world will not be reached through a “town hall” of folksy “conversation”, a few sentences followed by a few sentences, skimming over the great number of issues. Presidential messages must be directed at the thousands of cultures and billions of people to be affected by the advocacy. Our president is a world leader. Messages must have a diplomatic style and a technically correct content. The special nomenclature for Presidential speaking dictates, mandates, requires an important distinction of forms and styles, requiring leaders who are carriers of the “social mutation” in the “genes” for public speaking at a higher level of consciousness. I am just saying that the next President should show qualifications to speak at a higher level of awareness, which should be apparent to us all. That carrier of the duties and skills that match the global job will be favored in this changing global environment, a change in political speech leaving behind the old model of politician in George Bush and John McCain. I sense that you, Sen. Obama, have the right stuff which will be revealed in your judgments and decisions about these campaign meetings.

Citizens must also turn the page in their attentiveness, lengthening their attention to a level of concentration that their experiences in this current society do not encourage. The citizen in any world democracy must have the opportunity and ability to receive longer, more technical speaking presentations. I am not talking about a magazine article standing on two legs. I am talking about a “communicator” with style, a higher level of diction. (Diction is a large trunk of mental and physical abilities.) The listeners’ attention must be controlled and pressed beyond a few sentences of “conversational” talk to a higher level of ability to concentrate on policies for future action in the world society.

For that reason, on those bases, we must have the presidential campaign “debates” at a higher level of structure and performance, involving a higher level of presentation and reception. “My friends” audiences are a thing of the past. “My friends” speakers are outmoded. The intent to speak down through that mode of address is not of a higher order of diction. The volume and reach is not there. The speaking amateurism of Bush and McCain can no longer be the model, can no longer be tolerated..

Audiences should be given what they should be expected to handle.

I would ask Barack Obama to lead the world with that new intellectual approach that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it’s the formal principles of “discussion” and “debate” and “deliberation”. Your political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

I believe that there was some body wisdom operating in the body politic that nominated you, Barack Obama.

Here is the evolutionary context for my turning-the-page point. The global society gives the competitive advantage to that person with the ability to string together lengthy and complex explications of national and international policy in such a manner of speaking that nearly everyone gets to message clearly and enjoyably. That audience which survives will have had the advantage of articulate leaders who have risen to a higher concept of their communicative role. And citizen-audiences will complement their president with their abilities to concentrate being challenged and found capable. Chattting with an audience as you wander around a stage is a lower order of confrontation with the listeners and topic. The urgency of the problems demands more.

I see the wretched model of leadership we have had the past eight years. Unfortunately, a society that may be amusing itself to death and that has a poor record of electing sub-standard leaders has a long way to go to accept, understand and operate in a new communicative context that is equal to the challenges in the global context of threats to our survival. Amusement is fine, but it is the tail, not the dog.

The context for ideas for “turning pages”, to take you seriously, follows. It is certainly considerably more complex than John McCain’s understanding of “change”.

Turning pages goes back to the evolution of consciousness in human history on Earth. Certain variabilities in human development over millennia were selected by environmental pressures and proved to be advantageous for survival. Isn’t that true in our present global environment? If nature changes, human nature must change. Evolution is the mechanism. Those (people, nations) adapted to the old nature will probably not survive. Those (people, nations) adaptable by their nature will find the new environment no threat.

The hunter-gatherers developed a simple instrumental communication serving their tribal affairs, with no need of consciousness (as defined below).

In an advance toward, but falling short of consciousness, language and speech was necessary to cope with the increasing population and the complexity of larger societies wherein the voice of a leading spirit gave the rules and laws to a people in an extended social unit no longer tribal. Everything was done without consciousness, for after the chief’s death, his voice authorizing behavior would still bind together the population-at-large under stress to determine some course of action. The hallucinated voices of dead kings became gods maintaining that higher-power to authorize behavior. Even in early Greek times, the heroes were still closely tied to the commandments of the gods.

At the next turn of a page, there followed a higher-order ability of human beings to be self-directed by their own inner narratives of self-authorization. Consciousness was thus obtained. There was, of course, an overlap of those people proceeding with consciousness and those maintaining the mentality of god-speak. (The theory rests on the differential functioning of the two hemispheres of the brain.)

Presently, the number of worldwide threats to human survival creates more and more pressures to behave differently, to grow a new mentality to cope globally involving a world consciousness that surpasses the egoistic narrative. We are at a place where the self recedes into the background as global threats must be met, climate change, hunger, poverty, overpopulation, terrorism, and so on.

President-nominee Obama has to lead the world with a new intellectual focus that can make some turn-the-page distinctions: it is now “discussion” and “negotiation” and “debate” and “deliberation” and “argumentation” and “rhetoric” (finding the possible means of persuasion in any given case—a definition not commonly understood: “Oh, that’s just rhetoric!”).

Your presidential political communication is now PUBLIC and GLOBAL, DIPLOMATIC and TECHNICAL, STYLISH and FORCEFUL, HISTORICAL and FUTURISTIC. Conversation is not suitable! The TOWN HALL FORUM is not suitable. What should the new communication become? “One-across-cultures-to-many”. Not “one-on-one”.

You, Sen. Obama, as President, will stand on the threshold of a new regime to teach a new way of proceeding to a new set of policies. Start now by avoiding the traps set by the old fashion of communicating.

TURN THE PAGE!

McCain Tests Obama’s Perspicacity: 10 Townhall Meetings?

McCain is attempting to entice Barack Obama into a format of confrontations that is McCain’s home field. McCain wants, as he said, “a higher level of discourse”. NO! NOT SO! He is the spider set to catch the fly. A Town Hall meeting is not a context for a higher level of discourse. “DISCOURSE”! Look up that word. It is not “my friendsy” conversation. I am sure McCain is trying to set up his agenda for what passes for political “debate” in a format that he favors and that favors him and his folksy approach, wherein he may have a chance of showing up Obama in a dialogue of conversation. McCain should definitely fear Obama’s speaking abilities and seriously attempt to bring him down to his level in order to bring him down! His style does not rise to the higher level of discourse McCain professes to desire. It is a stinky subterfuge. He is being so sly.

This issue will test Obama’s astuteness! Big time. Few people will see this desperate move of McCain’s. Few will care about the format as I do. I have written previously on the topic of debate and debate formats for the presidential debates to come. McCain siezed the initiative out of fear to meet Obama on Obama’s terms. Pres-to-be Obama: ignore my point at your peril!

A higher level of discourse means a higher level of structure, the debating in the Lincoln-Douglas style of an extended period of speaking opposed by the other candidate’s period of extended speaking. An issue is fully laid out. The opponent lays out fully the opposing view of the issue. That cannot be done by a few sentences for and a few sentences against.

The Nominees Debate, Propositions and Framework

For the nominee debates, the two parties must collaborate to frame the propositions.

(Please add some well phrased propositions for the debates between the nominees.)

Why am I doing this? Simple: I, and I am sure millions more, DEMAND that this procedure be used in this manner NOT to waste our time with what has passed for debate in the primary season. I (WE?) WANT QUALITY DIRECT CLASH ON THE ISSUES!!!

POLICY DEBATES

These debates will be limited to issues in public policy, health care, preservation or development of wilderness areas and other public lands, economy, Iraq War, global warming, energy, education, immigration, infrastructure, judicial appointments, NAFTA, United Nations issues, etc.

EXAMPLES

#1 - RESOLVED, that the U.S. Congressional health-care system (or, alternatively, the Medicare health-care program for the elderly) be extended to everyone living in the U.S who has paid a portion of their income into Social Security.

#2 - RESOLVED, that the 80% of U. S. military forces in Iraq be withdrawn from Iraq within six months after January 20th, 2009.

CONSTRUCTIVE ROUND OF ARGUMENTS

FOR: The constructive arguments of the first nominee must define the terms of the proposition, show the problems with the status quo and set up a case with the advantages and evidence in favor of the new plan stated in the proposition:

1. the health-care system of Congress
2. extended
3. everyone living in the U.S.
4. who has paid into the Social Security system

AGAINST: The constructive arguments by the second nominee must define the terms of the proposition and set up a case of disadvantages and evidence against the plan proposed and offer an alternative plan or support the status quo with some minor changes.

REBUTTAL ROUND OF ARGUMENTS

The nominees must clash directly on the points made in the constructive round. New arguments are generally not permitted in this phase of the debate. The debaters must stick to the arguments already on the table.

The first nominee rebuts the second.
The second nominee rebuts the first.

ADDITIONAL PROPOSITIONS (Your submissions?)

VALUES DEBATES

Resolved, that diplomatic talks with the “enemy” (state or beings) is better than not having discussions with such antagonists.

Resolved, that marriage between two gay people is a human right.

Resolved, that human rights begins at birth.

Besides public policy issues, there might be some programs debating value issues, gay marriage, the beginning of human life and the choice of abortion, separation of church and state, gun control, faith-based initiatives, religious displays on public lands, death penalty, and others. Values issues must be kept separate from public policy problems because the intermixing of the value and policy issues causes the strong, more personal involvement and emotional content of values argumentation to carry over into discussions of the more technical and intellectual content of problems of policy. The solution of health-care problems affects nearly everyone. The problems of gay marriage do not have that general consequence of health care.

It is very important to have a debate, which is a series of speeches. It is extremely important to have speeches of a certain length IN ORDER TO AVOID RUDE INTERRUPTIONS BY FAST-TALKING OBFUSCATORS OF THE ISSUE. ALL TALK SHOWS THRIVE ON THE LATTER CONFUSORS, BECLOUDORS WHOSE SOUND-BYTE TALK GOES FAST INTO BICKER-BICKER. Those who “moderate” such gibble-gabble must somehow think that that mess of talk without respectful listening is drama demanded by the medium of TV. Case in point: The Mclaughlin Group, worst offenders. They allow a reporter to string together only two or three sentences before the over-talking begins. The deliberative mind does not benefit. We are given “conversation”, which goes a very short while before the subject changes.

Clinton, Obama: Please! No picky-picky, bicker-bicker, unless—

 —unless it’s on he fine points of differences and

priorities on establishing a national health care,
the education of children, alternative energy systems,
mobilizing against global warming, repairing and
maintaining infrastructure while providing full
employment, stabalizing the economy, ending
the Iraq war, promoting free trade, balancing
the national budget and resolving the trade
deficit, social security solvency, ringing peace
in the Middle East, enforcing regulation of
business and industry to provide consumer
protection, building back military preparedness
for a new style of warfare in fighting
terrorism at home and abroad, installing
transparency and accountability in government,
controlling over-population of the globe
with ZPG and then NPG, forming policies for
the preservation of public lands and the
conservation of water—it's a long list. 

There is a very large class of people
who must lean on government to provide
a safe and prosperous environment. Is
this a time for picky-picky? I don’t think so.

It’s a time for important questions: what is
the difference between a political solution
for the raq war and a diplomatic solution?

I am waiting to hear the language of diplomacy.
One of them did when he gave his disquisition
on race. Now I might expect the other candidate
to hold forth on gender, since that is the
revolution in politics she represents.

Remember the Bickersons? The comedy routine
pitted Alice Faye against Don Ameche
(real-life husband and wife) in hilarious
verbal battles between their characters,
the Bickersons.
I am reminded of that by the non-fictional
situation in which Obama and Clinton find
themselves, a situation that borders on
comedy if it were not so shattering
for the Democrats.

Charles Lamb wrote an essay, called
“A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG”, giving an account
of how the art of roasting a pig was discovered
in a Chinese village that did not cook its food.
A child accidentally set fire to a house in which
there was a pig. Poking through the ruins. the
people discovered the roasted pig and found it
to be delicious. There was then a rash of houses
burning down.

The moral of the story is appropriate to the
Democrat Party’s search for a nominee:
Do you have to burn down a house
to roast a pig?

Comments on “Buying the War”, Bill Moyers Journal (3-7-2008)

“The story was there, but the vast majority ignored it.” We had all of the run up to this war on faith alone, faith in the administration’s willingness and competence in telling the truth and having motives of the highest order of responsibility for the best interests of the people. But the journalists just passed on and recycled the administration’s line, in the most prominent and respected journals.

After viewing the proigram, I am startled at the number of great news men and women in print and the broadcast and cable media who have, in my estimation, tarnished their credibility for their role in “buying the war”. Knight-Ridder newspeople and the organization come out as the rare heroes of a special, professional, healthy skepticism that dug deep and found the story and the truth, the Emperor had no clothes on, “bar nekked”. Now there will be lots of waffling among those who suffer from a disease of skepticism. They could not say, “Show me the evidence! The basis of your contention! Who are those who said so? We do not want your shills (Colin Powell, Condi Rice) to give it to us second-hand.”

To see those of my favorites under obvious stress as Moyers questioned them! A spectacle I was disappointed to see. They were all complicit in “truth-squadding” the President’s news conference at that time. Why did the press buy it? How were they flummoxed in a group-think approach to their professional duty? The answer: “Dissent is not only unpatriotic, it’s bad for business”, as Phil Donohue said in the program. They might have been ordered by their “owners” to squelch their better instincts.

Are these klieg-lights of journalistic organizations and expertise now feeling chastened and regenerated by their rough outing in this program? I might ask of the President and his minions, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, Powell and all the rest, along with the journalists, don’t you feel the enormous weight of the deaths of our youth and the squandering of vast sums of our treasure in Iraq should rest on your consciences the rest of your lives for having sent them into a war for no reason except your own insane (and under-the-table) motives? You should never again have the ability to smile.

I will watch to see how they confront the candidates (nominees) for President. I will look for questioning abilities that probe for the important underlying issues at stake. On that basis so far, I must conclude that the focus of their questions has generally missed the core of all issues: how will you operate our government and formulate the policies you will submit to the people’s representatives, the policies and program of legislation? How will you present the face of the United States to the world? How? We must watch for the probity of our press corps carefully.

Republican-Democrat Nominees Debate- The Framework

Forget the journalists as moderators! Let them remain the copper wire, not the electricity! Let’s have real debates between the two nominees for President and the two Vice-President running mates!

There are professional, academic debate specialists in the universities and secondary schools who will not interpose their own roles between the candidates and the issues. They know debate. They know what argumentation is. It is NOT what we have seen when managed by the TV and newspaper newsgatherers who are wannbe stars of their own shows. The questions they present to the candidates are ripped from the latest headline-news and regard the candidates personalities too much. The reporters do not know how to frame propositions that make good debates sharpen the issues that are most important to the debaters and the people.

It is very important to have a debate, which is a series of speeches. It is extremely important to have speeches of a certain length IN ORDER TO AVOID RUDE INTERRUPTIONS BY FAST-TALKING OBFUSCATORS OF THE ISSUE. ALL TALK SHOWS THRIVE ON THE LATTER CONFUSORS, BECLOUDORS WHOSE SOUND-BYTE TALK GOES FAST INTO BICKER-BICKER. Those who “moderate” such gibble-gabble must somehow think that that mess of talk without respectful listening is drama demanded by the medium of TV. Case in point: The Mclaughlin Group, worst offenders. They allow a reporter to string together only two or three sentences before the over-talking begins. The deliberative mind does not benefit. We are given “conversation”, which goes a very short while before the subject changes.

I propose this framework:

1. A moderator who is a professor in argumentation and a “successful” coach of a university debate team in national, regional and local, interscholastic events. The National Communication Association will provide the roster of potential moderators who work within the special entity of university debate programs. It would be an honor conferred on those academics.

2. Each party, Democrat and Republican, will work with the chosen debate moderator to frame propositions for each of the issues to be debated, health care, economy, Iraq War, global warming, energy, education, immigration, infrastructure, judicial appointments, social values such as abortion and gay marriage, separation of church and state, NAFTA, United Nations issues, and so on. Such an intense, directed focus on our national problems is required to solve them with the Presidential powers to propose legislation and to eliminate irrelevant and frivolous matters.

3. The issues for each debate will be limited, and the propositions will be announced in advance.

4. The nominees’ arguments for or against each proposition will be given within a time limit to be predetermined. Perhaps four or five minutes for each speech.

5. The nominees will declare their stance, for or against, the proposition. It may happen that both will speak for, or both against the stated proposition where the proposition is supported or not supported, but the differences will be in the details of analysis, evidence, reasoning, history, plan of attack.

6. Each nominee will give three speeches on one issue, a constructive, a rebuttal, and a reconstructive. If one nominee declares support for the proposition and the other declares against it, then the debate proceeds thus:

I.

a. Constructive: for. Five minutes.

b. Constructive: alternative constructive. Five minutes.

(One minute break. Or commercial break.)

II.

a. Rebuttal.Three minutes.

b. Rebuttal. Three minutes.

(One minute break. Or commercial break.)

III.

a. Reconstructive. Three or four minutes.

b. Reconstructive. Three or four minutes

END OF DEBATE

(24 -26 minutes per proposition)

7. Moderator has the gavel to rap at the end of the alotted time. He or she presents the nominees, explains the process, states the proposition, clarifies terms, and generally oversees the debate.

8. All audience reactions should be prohibited.

9. Nominees should stand for all presentations.

That is a rigorous course for the nominees to run. Shouldn’t they have the stamina? Good ptreparation for their press conferences in their incumbency. We should be able to determine some of their style of leadership.

____________________________
Ron Lubensky wrote this comment. I am putting it here in case you may have missed it.

I agree with your starting point. Having the media run the actual debate benefits the media more than the public. Professional moderation would provide rigour.

However, the debate protocol defends a binary proposition: defend option A or B, true or false, yes or no. Of course, we need to be able to distinguish between the candidates and their positions. Rather than push each towards extreme positions, I’d prefer a format that permits the expression of broader, more centrist, overlapping positions, but where the detail and subtleties of implementation for example may differentiate them. I’m less interested in rebuttal, as it is too often scripted and done poorly with misinformation and distortion. I’d rather see clear expressions of commitments and understanding of the policy landscape by the candidates. Leave it to the viewers to judge the merits of the proposals and the competence of the candidates. Finally, and most importantly, the debate format you promote still doesn’t bring people into the process, which I think is what is really required. The questions addressed by candidates should be the result of a deliberative process that harvests them from a microcosm of the population. And the process needs to be able to surprise the candidates–after all, we are looking to see how they react unscripted on their feet under the glare of the camera.

My response:

Let me clarify. When I say “a”, I meant to indicate that is one of the nominees and “b” is the other nominee, not a proposition.

In the short time between the constructive round and the rebuttal round–yes, “rebuttal” as a hard job of any respectable debater– , nothing can be “scripted” except in the sense that the speaker-nominee “a” has generally practiced his or her stump speech so much that you might say, in a way it is “scripted”; it is extemporized from a long campaign of practice. Same for the speaker-nominee “b”. We have just had the exhibition season.Now it’s on to the finals.
What will be good for us is that we will have a direct clash between opposing parties for the first time, focusing on a subject matter restricted to just a few crucial issues in each debate.

No more “my friends” conversation. This is high level discussion and debate at the highest level, two specialized terms in the nomenclature of the debate specialists. Not for amateurs or the “minor” league.

The audience participation you desire should be done with demographically selected, as pollsters do the job, focus-groups after the debates at a remove from the debate hall, same building or across the continent in the regions blue or red. These debates should be a media event, primarily. Actually it should be the people who bring themselves into the process in discussion groups in libraries or some such meeting hall throughout the nation. Or, what’s better, livingrooms filled with neighbors or friends or relatives gathered to watch and discuss each event. What a “hotbed” of democracy that would be!

 

Ralph Nader’s declaration to run for President

I arose before a very large audience in a very large auditorium on the campus at Indiana University in 1950 (or thereabouts) where Ralph Nader gave a speech. I asked him if he would consider running for president of the U.S. He dismissed the idea because of his “Nader’s-raiders” type of work, which was driving big business and industry nuts. He was a muckraker in the vein of a Michael Moore, and still may be.

On “Meet the Press” (2-24-200 today he announced his candidacy again, for the second time in recent years. Tim Russert asked him if he would be a spoiler and wreck the Democrat party’s chances as he did in the last election which made Bush the president instead of Al Gore. Nader cited a bunch of culprits who bore the only responsibility for that debacle. Not he! It was believeable, convincing.

He presented in a nut-shell statement his agenda, and it was all encompassing in the failures of both the Democtrat and Republican parties.

Why now, I would ask. That was not discussed. But I believe that he has waited so long because he may have wanted to hear the candidates out before deciding that they now can be judged to have revealed their shortcomings.

Just as  in his speech at IU so long ago, he was speaking the views that I and all true progressives would support. I believe that he should be included in a three-way debate with Clinton and Obama. I WANT TO HEAR THAT DEBATE! It would be a good test of the two main candidates and have a sharpening effect on the cutting blade of the Democrat platform or agenda that will dispose of the corrupt and incompetent undergrowth of the Bush administration. Let them deal with the heretofore under-discussed issues spanning all the problems we will confront.

It’s not for him; it’s for us! For our own good! PICK HIS BRAINS in a crucial meeting of minds!

BUT…! People in politics are not that creative, courageous, curious—liberal, progressive, free. Perhaps he would be too tough to handle for ultra-sensitive candidates who have too much at stake. But they have not gone far enough to live up to their oft declared first interest in us, “we the people”.

Nader does not favor the two-party system and its philosophy of producing a majority winner—that’s clear. A philosophy I believe in if I can conclude that all the issues were adequately discussed and debated. Most now will call for an end to the debates. I believe, after hearing the views of Nader this morning, that calling an end to debate now will be prematutre, against our own best interests.

Hillary Clinton and Misogyny

I was listening to a progressive, radio talk show. A lady was allowed to speak by the imperious host who plays off the calls of phone-ins, using them like the bird in badminton. At least he (selectively) asked the most important, five-word question any reporter should be a master of, and so very rarely heard. (Most ask half-assked questions.)

The caller said she hears much misogynistic treatment of Hillary Clinton.

“How do you know that?” (Five words few reporters use.) “Give me an example!” The imperative mood. Commanding.

“I can’t put my finger on it. But I hear it and my husband hears it, too.”

I knew immediately what the two of them on the radio did not. Most people fail at understanding the elements of verbal and nonverbal behavior. That’s where the answer lay. Tone of voice. Facial expressions. Body orientation. In language, signal words. What do you hear people say? Hillary is an unlikeable person,

“Why do you think people say they do not like you, Sen. Clinton?”

What we have here is Elizabethan Theatre. Boys took the roles of the girl, or woman. Some of the best Brit comedy comes from males dressing as women and putting out the falsetto voice. (See “Monty Python”.) Outrageous! Not “Shakespeare in Love” where the girl imitates a boy imitating a girl. A woman for the first time in American political history is playing the role of President in a campaign, Commander-in-Chief. The male sounds and language coming out of her mouth is strange to many, tough, hard edged, commandeering, domineering, emphatic. It tells me that most people do not accept the accustomed presidentail language and posture coming from a woman, and they also did not know until now how the male presidents made their noises sound  male. By contrast do we learn. Obama’s voice has a pleasant baritone that goes a long way to persuade.

There are many more dimensions of presentation that lead to misogyny. How much and how long have North American women been kept out of political discussion as a “family value”? The “Suffragettes” made bold sounds and demands not too long ago. Men made the same slights then that we hear now, not always verbally. Mostly by the snorts of paralanguage and a wave of the hand.

I believe that the atmosphere most putting Hillary’s bid in peril is the over-arching sounds and smells of misogyny, and the signal word is, “Unlikeable”.

Clinton-Obama Debates

Hillary Clinton wants more debates. Barack Obama has demurred. If Obama is having growing success and starts now to duck for cover—to no longer rock the boat—then that may indicate something about his character. If he stays away from debating, playing it safe, what does that tell you? Some would say, playing it smart. I would say that, taking away the opportunity for both to enlarge and widen their views and socialize their visions, and cheating the voters of refining their understanding of the world through the eyes of their future leader, that would be a great loss in a critical and unprecedented election year.

Candidates for President: Democrats’ “Debate (?)” (1-15-08)

Journalists, reporters, are not trained in oral communication events, as judged by the overriding influence of their journaistic habits evidenced in this “debate” event. The process suffered by that fact. It is a “fact” to those who are knowledgeable in the special nature of debate. Reporters are questioners, and they should have had the understanding of debateable resolutions and direct clash on the issues inherent in the statement of the resolution. Journalistic questions are not policy debate propositions. Journalistic (gotcha) questions derive from muddled news reports and are not germane to the central questions of the campaign. Tim Russert, for whom I have the greatest respect as a digging, probing questioner and journalist, was not right for the “debate” among the three democrats.

Being constructive, I forsee an improved and matured future for this kind of campaign event. The candidates themselves will be asked in advance to prepare the resolutions for the event (“Be it resolved that…….”), adhering to what is generally recognized as the main issues in the campaign. A chairman-moderator will read the resolution and keep the responses to a timed limit. The advocate will speak, followed by the negative sides taken by the opponent candidates. Judges, qualified in the skills of argumentation and debate, will deliver a critique and a rebuttal round will ensue.

Then another proposition will be taken up.

Such a direct clash on the issues will accomplish a more clear-cut understanding of the following aspects of a candidate’s qualifications.

Does the candidate have a vision of the future that can be summarized in a “preamble” type of statement?

How well has the candidate analyzed the problem to be solved in comparison to the other candidates?

How well will the candidate act as a change agent, implementing the changes dictated by the propositions?

Another tack on the debates might be this: Micheal Moore has produced a documentary of the health care issue, “Sicko”. Summarize the main points of the documentary and state how you would resolve the problems. The same could be done with Al Gore’s prize winning documentary on global warming. Other well known treatments of the issues might also be used to stop the tattered and unraveled approach currently taken by “journalists”.

Candidates for President: LISTEN UP!

All of you:

GIVE US THIS: An operational definition of “change”,  “experience”, “democracy”, “conversation”, “the office of president”. You may need to refresh your understanding about “operational definitions”.  Such a definition describes all the actions you take, the behaviors that go into the word you are trying to define.

In the first order of business is the question, how will you behave as president, specifically? Pack those actions into an itemized statement of aims, goals and objectives (in order of increasing specificity).

I recomend this: FACE THE SCHOLARS!

The “conversation people”, the journalists, do not have the seminnal questions to ask. They are interested in the horse race of campaigning. They give us the conversational base. By their actions in moderation of the many forums, they do not know what “debate” is. They are focused on what is happening, what has happened, but ignore what will happen. Think of the word “politics”. The stem of that word is policy, policy setting, guides for future action. What will happen rests on a deeper understanding of history and human behavior.

The talk of “change” has been superfluous. The biggest change is the advent of candidates of race and gender, different from the past. What can a woman bring to the office that no man has ever brought? What can a black man bring to the office that white men have never brought? Must a woman be judged like a man would be? Must a black man be judged like a white man would be? Separate out those contributions that come in addition to the basic human qualities of intelligence and personality. Has our female candidate separated herself from male expectancies? And the same for our black candidate. What makes them, their perspectives, unique? Then add that uniqueness to their human qualities and we, as a nation, have a chance to break the ice for future people who may continue the shut-out.

We also need to change the forum as presently defined. We need to open the door for those among us who have book-length “opinions”, which are something greater than opinions, that is, reliable knowledge, not anecdotal.  We need our candidates to stop reading the tea-leaves of public opinion and answer the probes of questions on a higher plane, those posed by the scholars and scientists who are telling us what our solar system is really like now, how it was, and how it will come to be. We need our leaders to perform on a grander stage than that of journalistic, pulse-feeling, public opinion. Not just “who-what-when-where” but more on the “why and how”.  That higher plane is that of “discussion”, not “conversation”. In addition to the  scholars, we should ask the candidates to be tested in interaction with a circle of  foreign diplomats, for that is an important arena of presidential action.  How would they behave in a discussion of issues pertinent with scientists? CEOs? Union leaders? Financial experts? We were disappointed to hear that the incumbent does not ask questions when he is engaged with specialists, showing an absence  curiosity about problems.

Must we always have the journalists on stage!?

Is the gender disadvantage greater than the race disadvantage? I have seen the shameless and obvious ganging up of the male candidates on the female candidate, Hillary Clinton. I have seen her express sincere emotions with watery eyes. They have made her dress a topic. Need she play the men’s needling game? It does not bode well for her. That’s what happens when the issues for debate descend to irrelevancies, BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT A DISCUSSION OR DEBATE IS, especially the journalists and columnists who play a major role in this campaign season.

We are not well served.

Face the scholars. Programs like Jim Lehrer’s, George Stephanopolous’s, Chris Matthews’s, Charlie Rose’s, Tim Russert’s, etc., need to impanel more scholars, and others,  for the stacks of history and scientific books they have written on the issues that most concern us. (Bill Moyers has done that.) Scholars and scientists have strong tendencies to proceed with tested and substantiated and qualified conclusions (reliable knowledge), compared to newspaper columnists’ anecdotal historical allusions and opinions, which may be selectively chosen or tinged with the medium owner’s bias; they may have read history or science but never conducted historical investigations or scientific studies. Perhaps an analogy comparing a butcher shop and to brain surgery is not a good idea here, but it is tempting. (Wouldn’t be prudent.)

Moderators should have credentials for moderating from, for example, the National Communication Association. Argumentation and debate is superior to “conversation” and different contexts for discussion would really test of a leader’s mettle.  After all, this is for the presidency of a world power. Our highest ranked leader should never shame the people she or he represents in all the contexts of this globe.

When the human race makes an advance, this is one area to watch in order to gauge the advance.

The Ideology Disease

I told a friend that I had a sore throat. My friend said, “You know you have an over-active imagination. You just think you have a sore throat.” Case in point.

Speaking, speech, verbal communication, is a symbolic act, a balancing act using symbols, phonemes and words made of 26 letters. Symbols that “stand for” something real but are not in themselves “real”. Words and sounds represent something tangible “out there”. So it is possible to have a verbally ordered world outside the “real” world ordered by some other rules and laws outside the verbally ordered world, an intangible, insubstantial, elusive world that rests on a belief of the speaker/writer. And the speaker/writer can spread that belief to millions of others like a plague, a pandemic of belief that others try to make real. If that belief is that a certain people are inferior and the speaker’s people are super-human then we can have a holocaust. If we have a leader who says that another national leader has the weapons to start a “nucular” war, and that we should start a preemptive war to nip the other leader in the bud, then that would be worth all the blood and treasure it costs us because we surely do not want a “nuculer” war. That describes an ideology where saying something makes it so. That describes a disease of communication and a diseased speaker who has infected a whole society.

So we need a doctor specializing in the disease of ideology , the ideology doctor. If you suspect you have a run-of-the-mill disease, you go to a doctor. What does a doctor do? Questions all the symptoms and runs tests before prescribing any remedy. What if the diseased person prescribes the remedy? Then that person has an eight cylinder fooooooool for a doctor. Does the ideology doctor use the analogy of the medical doctor? Oh, yeah. Question for symptoms and run tests that will ascertain the “facts” before moving on. Question authority. Discuss and debate the choices for policy (prescription).

Where were the reporters, the fourth estate? Where was the Supreme Court? Where were the legislators? Where were they all when this diseased, self-styled “decider-in-chief” (dictator-wannabe) was running rampant like “Chicken Little” with his (as it turned out, after the fact) diseased message? Which segment of our society was so easily misled to fall in, big time, with the ideology-infected chief-decider? What gave him his charismatic effect on that sad segment?

Every citizen of a democratic society has the obligation to become an ideology doctor, to test the symptoms of leadership, diagnose claims of leadership, and prescribe the person who best represents the cure for the issues of policy needed by the body politic.

Please, nation, don’t ever get this disease of ideology again. We should be immune for a little while, especially in the next election cycle, but when the disease-induced immunity wears off, please become able to effect the cure as a preventative medicine in future. And will all those who were AWOL (absent without leave) and complicit in this sad epidemic, stand by at your prescribed duty post and avoid being suspect of dereliction of duty.

Democrat Candidates Debate 11-16-07

WHAT A SORRY MESS!

Whoever organized the Democrat Party candidates’ debates knows absolutely nothing about debate. And “organized” is not the operative word. From the start, the “journalist” had a tiger by the tail and failed miserably ever after to achieve organization and fair and direct clashes on the issues. WHO ANOINTED THE JOURNALISTS AS THE BEST PEOPLE TO MODERATE A DEBATE???!!!  A systematic rotation for fair and balanced participation was totally missing. Time control was absolutely missing. Questioning is a journalist’s device and even that was not well done. That’s all journalists know. Debate goes beyond questions to the proper statement of resolutions. RESOLUTIONS are debated! Resolved, that global warming is man-made. Resolved, that global warming can be alleviated by government policy. There are debate experts who could and should be called upon to ORGANIZE proper debates that provide direct clashes on the most important propositions that we face. It would have been better to have the candidates proceed the way a pick-up game of basketball proceeds, where the players referee themselves according to the rules of the game everyone knows. Then we would have seen the true character of the candidates emerge in discussion behavior, which requires respect for fellow participants, their rightful time and position. Only once did I hear a candidate take exception to the journalist’s rule; they should have protested that there are no “yes” or “no” answers to difficult questions, and insisting on such simple answers educates no one. Foolish journalistic tactics! The participants should have dominated the “journalist”, whose voice gave an interstellar static as he sputtered in the background to control the time. The candidates should have stepped up to their responsibility for the process. The next president of the United States may have been standing on that stage and should have been more presidential, the chief presiding officer of our government. What do journalists know about presiding? As moderators they are not very good at all.