Plus, how each candidate can improve.
One of my debate mentors once told me that debaters rarely win debate rounds. There are no winners and losers — just losers. As I watched Thursday’s presidential debate, disappointed with Former President Donald Trump’s lies and frustrated by President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, I finally understood what he meant. No one won Thursday’s presidential debate; both candidates lost in different ways. While there’s plenty to complain about from a political perspective, they also broke almost every rule of debate, which led to an incredibly unsatisfying experience.
In all debates, two things determine the “winner:” rhetoric and argumentation. “Rhetoric” refers to how convincing you sound, the words you use, and how persuasive you are. “Argumentation” is the quality of your arguments. The first thing I learned in debate was that I could have the best argument in the world, but if I didn’t convey it well, no one would accept it. The main problem with President Biden’s performance was his rhetoric.
One of the most important things you can do as a debater is sound confident and enthusiastic. If you don’t sound like you support your own argument, you won’t convince anyone else to support it. During Thursday’s debate, President Biden often came across as confused. His long pauses and constant corrections made him seem like he didn’t know what he was talking about, ultimately making him far less convincing on the debate stage.
President Biden also struggled with the structure of his comments. In a debate, you should leave individuals with clear, succinct ideas that they can grasp onto and remember — something short and sweet that will resonate. Biden’s rhetoric, however, was far from succinct. He often rambled with no end in sight, which made it so that even if the start of his statement was smart, it lost its meaning by the end.
Both candidates struggled with time management. If either of them chose to be more concise and to the point, they would have had more time to unpack issues and thoroughly answer the moderators’ questions. Speaking succinctly also makes it easier to recognize how long you’ve been talking. If either candidate made quick and well-explained statements, they would more likely be able to estimate how much time they had left to speak. When you ramble about something, you can forget how long you’ve been talking.
While it may seem like President Biden was the only one with time management or rhetoric issues, Former President Trump’s rhetoric also broke many debate “rules.” Most obviously, he came off as mean. Debate is about respecting your opponent. Former President Trump, however, made fun of President Biden for slurring his words multiple times. While debates are a place for competition, there’s a way to speak somewhat negatively about your opponent and their ideas without being blatantly mean. Nonetheless, Former President Trump’s rhetoric often came off as better than President Biden’s. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not about to take the “pro” side of Trump being a stunning speaker, but in this instance, he was more consistent and confident than his opponent.
While confidence, concision, and kindness are vital to a debate, rhetoric is only one part of an argument. As I see it, even if rhetoric may be the first thing you notice during a debate, the substance is far more important.
Substance starts with the quality of the argument. A good argument should have a claim (an assertion), a warrant (an explanation for why your claim is true), and an impact (a reason why your argument matters). Thursday’s debate was full of claims and impacts but few warrants. If either candidate had spent more time explaining why or how they did something instead of what they did and why it mattered, those arguments would likely have been more believable. Simply asserting that someone is a liar or that the economy was better during your presidency will not convince anyone except those who already agreed with you.
If you’re only going to talk about claims and impacts, though, those claims and impacts must be true. Lying is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in a debate. Debate stages are places to build trust with your audience and convince them to agree with you. If you break their trust by telling just one lie, and they catch that lie (or it’s fact-checked for them), they’re not likely to believe much else of what you say. From the perspective of a debater, Former President Trump’s lies weakened the quality of his substance. And the abundance of his lies made anything that was true impossible to believe.
Another issue that both candidates struggled with was “prioritization.” In debate, you have to learn how to balance speaking about your arguments with refuting your opponent’s. It’s hard to win a debate when you spend the entire time talking about how bad your opponent is. If you only speak negatively about your opponent, sure, people might start to agree with you, but if you don’t spotlight your strengths, you give viewers no reason to choose you instead.
Both Trump and Biden spent far too much time bashing each other and left little time to strengthen their own arguments. This constant bickering left many viewers with a distaste for both candidates. If either of them had chosen to ignore the fighting and focus on their arguments, they likely would have stood out and been more persuasive to voters.
Partially because of this bickering, the candidates failed to answer some of the interviewers’ questions. Some of the dodging of questions also felt intentional, especially in the case of Former President Trump. Rather than answer hard questions, he chose to avoid them altogether. President Biden could have and should have taken advantage of Former President Trump’s avoidance. If Biden had taken the time to strengthen his points when Trump did not respond to the question or pointed out Trump’s lack of response, he would have highlighted the stark contrast between the two of them and presented as a stronger debater.
While disappointing, the results of the debate were unsurprising. Presidential debates tend to break almost every rule I’ve learned in my four years as a high school debater. This Thursday’s debate proved no different. I hope one day political debates can be more substantive and filled with genuine conversations about policy rather than personal attacks and mentions of golf handicaps.
Sophie Rukin is a rising freshman at Brown University in Providence and a recent graduate of Horace Mann School in New York City. While in high school, she participated in Parliamentary Debate, winning five national tournaments. During her junior year she was ranked as the number one debater in the country. Sophie has also worked in politics both on the campaign side and the policy side.
