The Rules of Debate: Why McCain Wins the Style Points

First, I'm happy to see that my first instincts were the same as the McCain campaign's first instincts about last night's debate:

When I was working in Alaska, I volunteered as a debate coach at a local high school. (And just to brag, we won the state debate championship and sent four people to the national tournament.) I taught my students that in any debate of any format, great substance always has to come before great style. Great style should never make bad substance good, but it can greatly enhance good substance.

Much of the MSM and the blogosphere, especially the fact-checkers, have saturated us with important information. Right now, though, I'll share with you some of the things I taught my students back in Alaska, and using those principles, show you why McCain wins the style competition over Obama.

RULE #1: Always be on offense; never be on defense.

I tell my students that debate is like a chess game: you can't be 1 step ahead of your opponent, you have to be 10 steps ahead of your opponent. I'm a huge basketball fan as well, and when you have two teams that play with two very different styles, it's the team that controls the tempo to their liking that wins the game. As Patrick explains in the previous blog post, McCain stayed on offense last night by controlling the agenda:

"McCain did very well in keeping the debate on his own ground. Notice how long we were discussing the surge and earmarks. This is a strategy he perfected in the primaries, and it's what enabled him to win the nomination -- because the Republican base disagreed with him on everything else. He is a very insistent debater, and controlled the flow and subject matter."

He perfected this during their discussion on Iran and "negotiating with our enemies without precondition." Obama tried to come up with a different, and thus more complicated explanation of why this principle would work. At that point, McCain's hypothetical of a President Obama-President Ahmadinejad discussion: "We go over there ... he says they want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth ... and we say 'no you won't?'"

RULE #2: Assume that your "judges" have no higher than a 5th grade education.

In a high school debate round, it's one or maybe a panel of three to five judges. In this debate, it's the undecided voter. Consider Obama's response when McCain knifed Obama for never going to Afghanistan or Iraq until this past summer, even with Obama chairing a committee that oversees NATO, which operates in Afghanistan:

"I'm very proud of my selection of Joe Biden as my running mate, who's the chair of the foreign relations committee. The issues of Iraq and Afghanistan did not go through my subcommittee; they went to the committee as a whole. But that's Senate inside baseball."

Why was Obama trying to defend himself by explaining Senate inside baseball? As Patrick explained earlier, "Obama is walking a fine line between professorial/detached and Zen-like/Presidential," what I like to call Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This breaks rule #2. Professor Obama wasted 15 seconds explaining something that 99% of Americans probably understand, and don't care about. Obama has this bad habit trying to defend himself on every single detail of every single attack against him. That breaks rule #1 above.

Notice how McCain uses a few stories to explain his thinking, like the stories he used during Rick Warren's Saddleback Forum. Voters connect most with stories and easy-to-remember principles, like the princple of "responsibility" that McCain repeated over and over again during the discussion on the bailout.

RULE #3: Write the "ballot" for your "judge" through a controlled offense.

A controlled offense is something that describes a great basketball team. For NBA fans out there that will understand me, the Phoenix Suns and Golden State Warriors like to run up and down the court a lot because it puts the opposing defense on their toes all the time, making them tired. But that can lead to an uncontrolled offense that is prone to turnovers and bad shooting streaks. On the other hand, the L.A. Lakers, with Phil Jackson running their famous Triangle Offense, use a controlled formula that wins them games consistently.

The same can be said of John McCain. In most of his answers, McCain took the time to define the differences by attacking Obama every chance he could. What did Obama say three or more times? "McCain is absolutely right that ..." Hence the ad above.

Now time for Palin-Biden next Thurdsay.