It is sort of like the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona – our debates.  They did it differently in the old days.  There was not this mass of candidates, some of them really worthy, who gather to speak serially and not address each other but to try to get to look, hear and perhaps smell like a party’s nominee.  All of the activity today, a year in advance of the actual time needed to select the best out of the herd, is waste time when politicians or the ‘dimple hats’ in Washington should be making the laws the candidates are speaking about.  They speak about these needed laws, reforms or new directions but do not debate them.

I cannot say that I actually was on my high school debating team.  I debated for South Side High School but do not remember any meetings of the team or instruction from the teacher who was the debating coach.  I do remember the time I was up on the stage with my notes on many sheets of unnumbered pages with genuine false bravado to speak my piece.  I dropped my pages and spent the next few embarrassing minutes explaining why I was not better prepared and excuse me but I have to get off the stage before I REALLY embarrass myself.

For a time I owned “Great Speeches” which were a couple of yearly volumes about the speeches of consequence made by our political leaders on the important issues and topics of the day – way back in the beginning of the twentieth Century. I owned the books discarded from the school library but did not study them.  I also knew the topics of the debates in which I was scheduled to participate but did not research or prepare adequately.  In fact, I was a terrible debater.

There are no debates today in the old sense of a champion from one side getting up to lay out his case and the champion of the other side doing the same from his perspective.  This is in the mould of the medieval jouster who created “right” from knocking down the opposite knight with his lance off his horse.  Those were not debates with words but champions like Goliath and David who faced off each other to see who was the stronger and therefore who had God (s) on his side.

I think, if you were witness to them, you would agree that Al Gore lost the debate with George W. Bush because he did not tear him apart with words much less knock him off his horse. John Kerry saluted and smiled a lot but did not tear G.W. Bush apart with words.  The “uniter” not a “divider” had audiences packed with his supporters. These were NOT debates and one would wish for the old fashioned kind where we could have speakers get up so we could compare their words.  What we do today is compare their looks and styles ($400 haircuts) rather than dissect their opinions and promises about the issues.  Disgusting! Intelligent, hard-hitting ideas battling other arguments are missing.  I miss them.