Abstract

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY 27 (Winter 1991): 97-99 RGUMENTATION ND DVOCACY The Journal of the American Forensic Association SPECIAL ISSUE: PRESIDENTIAL DEBATING BEYOND THE DEBATE ANALOGY David S. Birdsell, Guest Editor Students of argumentation fret-with those who would see presidential debates good reason--aver the state of presiden­ become more like academic, legal, or tial campaign debates. Scholarship on legislative debates. They recommend in­ presidential debates ranges widely over stead that scholars devise more effective themes of discourse, influence, and govern­ means of dealing with debates as they are, ance (Blankenship), but the complaints rather than debates as they might someday about debates have remained remarkably be. Arnie Madsen examines partisan com­ consistent since ]. Jeffrey Auer first la­ mentary as an element of debate inextrica­ belled the Kennedy-Nixon debates ble from the formal presentations of the "counterfeit" versions of real debating. candidates. In positioning the pre-and Auer insisted that debates must involve: post-debate partisan "spin" as part of a "(1) a confrontation, (2) in equal and more broadly conceived debate "text," he adequate time, (3) of matched contestants, justifies an expanded treatment of argu­ (4) on a stated proposition, (5) in order to mentation in the context of the political