There are books and even college courses in logic, argumentation, and
the art of debate. But there are some techniques you probably won’t find in the
schoolbooks, and this being a political year, we can look forward to seeing
them. We certainly have in the past.
Some candidates will quote an opponent’s words or voting record
selectively, or hint obliquely at scandals not proven, or use vocabulary with
connotations known to the speaker’s followers.
But those are the sophisticated models. There are two that dispense
with that kind of finesse and allow a debater to make his point without having
to tap dance around the truth, because truth doesn’t enter into it. They’re pretty
simple when you break them down, but it takes a practiced liar, a politician,
or a corporate CEO to make them work.
One does depend on close timing, so it’s not always practicable, but
it’s effective when you can manage it. Just as the debate closes, especially a
time-limited one on television, you tell a whopper. The screen fades, the
credits roll, the commercial starts, and your opponent is left with his mouth
open but no way to refute the lie.
The other one, you tell the lie in the first sentence, and then keep
talking fast, loud, and long. You brush aside any attempt at question or correction,
even if there’s a moderator ostensibly guiding the discussion. By the time your
opponent gets a chance to answer, the original lie is buried under so much conversation it’s hard to get it
back into focus to address it.
Against a persistent questioner it might not work well, but against
someone inclined toward civility, for whom interrupting would be rude, it’s no
contest. Your opponent writes notes to himself, rehearsing the stinging rejoinder he'll give when it's his turn to speak. But when he finally gets that chance, even though he knows there was a pony back there at the beginning, he won’t be able to move enough verbal manure to uncover it for the
audience in the time left.
Are there recognized gambits in debate, as in chess? I
haven’t heard of any, but these deserve some recognition. Prevaricator’s
Checkmate. Lie to Square One.