Embrace debate as a critical component of democracy

RSS Author RSS     Views:N/A
Bookmark and Share          Republish
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the two remaining candidates for nomination by the Democratic Party for the US Presidency.

If finally elected to the White House in November, Clinton would be the first woman President of the US. If it were Obama, who enters the White House in January next year, he would be the first black President of the US.

In these campaigns the two candidates have so far participated in 20 primary presidential debates. As orators, Obama is, by far, more eloquent than Hillary. As debaters, the two candidates are about even. Their face-to-face debate confrontations on television were probably the highlights of this entire season of primary elections.

!B>However, this article is not about Obama and Hillary. Rather, it examines the role of debate as a crucial component of the democratic process.

In 1960 John F Kennedy confronted Richard Nixon in a face-to-face debate on American television. They were both candidates for the most powerful office in the world: The presidency of the US. I was a graduate student at Columbia University in New York at the time and watched the debate live on TV.


Since then all US candidates for the presidency every four years have debated each other on television.

Without debate there can be no democracy. After all, debate at its best is the clash of opposing interpretations of reality. Debate is the exploration of conflicting visions of the truth as part of civilised discourse.

We encourage our secondary school students to debate and read as preparation for their adulthood. Debating is not supposed to end in secondary school, any more than reading is.

I was a student at Oxford University nearly 50 years ago. The Oxford Union was widely regarded as ‘the mother of parliaments'. Some of the students who debated in the Union later became leading orators of Britain and the Commonwealth. Oxford has produced a disproportionate number of the Prime Ministers of Great Britain, including Harold Macmillan, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher.

The entire parliamentary system in the British paradigm of governance is based on the principle of debate. On one side in the House of Commons is the government and its front bench; and on the opposite side is Her Majesty's opposition. Much of the business of the House of Commons is conducted in the adversarial relationship between Government and Opposition, in form of open debate.


In legal training in the US the Socratic method is often used in the best law schools. This method, derived from the ancient Greek philosopher, Socrates, attempts to arrive at the truth by a series of propositions and rebuttals. The teacher engages the students in the dialectical method of debate, partly in preparation for the adversarial style of argumentation in a courtroom.

The entire legal process in the courtroom is often based on the principle of debate. Far from being intellectual exercises between school children, courtroom confrontations between the prosecution and the defence can sometimes be a matter of life and death. Where the death penalty is concerned, the relationship between the prosecution and the defence can be truly ‘deadly'.

The history of debate goes back a long time. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, traced it to the original confrontation between Lucifer and God Almighty. Lucifer became Satan and proclaimed ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'. Satan was rebelling against a vainglorious God, excessively preoccupied with being worshipped and being praised. The first debate was between the fallen angel and his Creator, between satanic vanity and divine pride.

In 1960, I witnessed in the US a resurrection of a debating tradition when Kennedy clashed with Nixon on television. This actual American legacy itself went back to the debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in 1858. They were not competing for the presidency but for a seat in the US Senate.

Lincoln lost the Senate race, but the debate propelled him to national prominence. It was partly the debates with Douglas that helped to make Lincoln eligible for the 1860 candidacy for the presidency, Lincoln's real destiny with history. It was indeed a case of debate spelling out destiny.

As Israel was moving towards its first directly elected Prime Minister in 1996, it felt it necessary to arrange for a face-to-face televised debate confrontation between Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres. Neither of these leaders were schoolboys; there were high stakes in this debating confrontation.

In Kenya's post-colonial history, Tom Mboya was probably the most gifted debater. He seemed capable of accepting a challenge at relatively short notice and doing justice to it.

In the 1950s and 1960s I saw Mboya perform as an orator in three different countries: Kenya, Uganda and the UK. With him, I knew I was in the presence of a truly natural debater.

Although Mboya had the presidential qualifications, his life was cut short by an assassin's bullet. Kenya was denied the services of a brilliant statesman. Compared with Obama, the memory of Mboya is competitive in both oratory and debating skills.

Will Obama become the first black President of the US? His chariot to the Presidency would include the wheels of brilliant oratory
Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips and hints, points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques, and insights pertaining to credit card, do please browse for more information at our websites.
">http://www.yoursgoogleincome.com

">http://www.freeearningtip.com


Report this article

Bookmark and Share
Republish



Ask a Question about this Article