Short and Sweet Blog

Did you watch the Vice Presidential Debate last week? I caught part of it on radio and came in about half way on the TV coverage. What immediately caught my eye, as well as every one else’s, was that the Vice President was acting like a tantrum throwing bully rather than a respectable member of our federal government. He appeared to be someone who thought the only way he could get his points in was to insert his points directly into the points being made by his adversary, Congressman Ryan. Does he really think that we’re all so stupid that we won’t remember what point he’s responding to unless he marks it by his derisive body language following it up by inserting his point into the middle of his opponent’s point?

I wonder who is really stupid though. Why is it that the Vice President couldn’t wait until Ryan was finished in order to make his points? Is he simply impatient or does he have ADHD or does he feel that he has a right to dominate the entire process without giving us a chance to fairly hear both sides of the arguments? Could it be an indication of his actual awareness of the weakness of his Progessive ideas? Is it possible that he really just worried that he will be unable to deal with a Ryan who is allowed to complete his thoughts uninterrupted? It’s either that or he has so little respect for the people he’s trying to convince to fairly judge between his arguments and those of Congressman Ryan that he decided to adapt his debate style to pre-empt Ryan’s thoughts. What other reasonable explanation is there?

As a lawyer I can tell you that such tactics are very emotionally inviting for advocates in a courtroom setting. Most judges, however, know that this really shows either the lawyer’s lack of respect for the ability of the judge to remember and discern the validity of his arguments or a fear that his own arguments are weak and he needs to interfere with the presentation of his opponent’s argument. Such conduct, because it is suspicious, usually indicates the inexperience and lack of expertise of the lawyer who does it, or if not, the uncomfortable awareness of the weakness of his or her own case. There is a well known saying about arguments and debates, ‘if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your BS.’ I think that there is a more accurate saying about Vice Presidential Debate 2012 which is that ‘if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, make sure that the other guy can’t dazzle them either.’

This entry was posted on October 16, 2012 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Media and Censorship, Politics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Body Language, Congressman Ryan, Debate Tactics, Vice President Biden, Vice Presidential Debate