2023-09-15 07:05:00
Have we ever wondered if debates between presidential candidates have any importance? In a context of uncertainty about the results of the second electoral round, these become important due to their impact on the electorate: a good or bad performance in a debate can influence citizens’ votes. This is demonstrated by the surprising results of the first electoral round.
The debates held in the country reveal that the candidates give importance to “winning” the debate by dismantling the rival’s political project, rather than highlighting their own virtues and proposals. They strive to give a negative image of the opponent with verbal aggressiveness and attack strategy that, in Montolío’s opinion, “is a fallacy to create noise with the appearance of an argument, but empty of useful content for a debate.”
Winning a debate is not the same as being right, nor is losing it synonymous with being wrong. Very often, the one who manages to prevail is the most skilled, the most experienced or the one with the most overwhelming personality, sometimes also the most daring or the least scrupulous. Hence Konrad Adenauer stated that “in politics, the important thing is not to be right, but to be right.”
Seeing things like this, nothing good or useful would be expected from the discussion and debate. It would be a confrontation in which, as so often happens, the law of the psychologically or dialectically strongest prevails. SHowever, they are the terrain on which democracy grows; They constitute the best antidote against demagoguery and populism.
Improving the quality of the next debate is an unavoidable requirement. The confrontation of ideas must be subject to a verification of the solidity of the arguments used by the candidates. Its impact on the audience will result from the persuasive force of the words and their discursive resources.
The country needs to evaluate the candidates’ proposals, their arguments and not their repetitive promises, without consistency or viability. The debate should not become a mental speed test, with complex questions and limited time. Candidates have the right to explain their proposals in a broad manner and with sufficient time, within the framework of a context that highlights priorities based on the importance and urgency they attach to the specific actions to be carried out in a short period. The absence of any topic in the proposal is the responsibility of the candidate, by conviction or omission, which the public will know how to evaluate.
If the objective is to raise the level of the debate, it is important to have a personality of prestige and unanimous respect as moderator; a rector of a university, for example, or a president of one of the country’s scientific academies.
#high #debate