The Thing About Debates

 I sat and pondered over this story in the afternoon.

I was pretty lucky in high school....there were zero debates.  Going through college?  There were no debate classes offered.  

I had a professor who brought up...with his college in the early 1960s....you had to complete one course in debate (didn't matter if you won or loss).  His suggestion was that people needed some form of debate training to at least sit through a debate and 'grade' the discussion.

Are townhalls debates?  No.  CNN and WaPo may argue on this point, but townhalls are supposed to be regular people asking a 20-to-30 word question, and some guy/gal claiming knowledge...giving his/her feelings and knowledge.

In this case with the national tournament of debates....isn't it a problem if you lay out topics, but then say you can't argue x-point?  Well....yeah, and it'd bother some folks by mandating you can argue things but only so far.

It'd be like you arguing over the Bible but being told that the Old Testament is off-limits.  Or, like a debate where you need to discuss trampy-women but you can't utter whore.  Or, like a debate on the fine aspects of alcohol, but you can't say any brand-names.

My general problem these days?  You have a lot of people who have a 8-minute attention span (even President Biden has shown that tendency).  So if you tried to explain something in detail, and needed 12 minutes....well....good luck with that.  The point will never get across.

The days where Lincoln and Douglas could debate for three hours?  My God.....no one existing in DC has the ability to deliver a one-hour competent piece, or give the 90-minute reaction on the return.