Here are excerpts from a Washington Post article on the rules - in practice - of political debate in America. (Full story here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13356-2004Oct6.html?referrer=email )
It kind of made me laugh - does it remind you of A2k?
What would happen if Moderators were able to lock debates, and impose the odd time out on political debate in the world of real politik????
Debate in Parliament in Oz tends to be rougher and more vulgar than would be tolerated in our sister houses in your land - folk being called "scumbags" and other, less polite terms from time to time - occasionally accompanied by a trip into Parliamentary Time Out - and the Prime Minister enjoys none of the lofty prestige and isolation of your president, and no protection from the rough and tumble of hard and ruthless questioning in a sort of wrestling arena - but personal behaviour and peccadilloes are seldom raised - so in other ways we are more polite.
Swings and roundabouts, I guess.
Do you hanker for rougher debate in the real world, or pine for more courtesy and restraint?
"Smile When You Say That, Senator
In Savaging Opponents, Pols Are Mindful of Crossing 'The Line'
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page C01
Sen. John Edwards squinted into the camera in that earnest way of his and thanked Gwen Ifill for moderating, thanked the people at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University for their hospitality and the citizens of Ohio for hosting Tuesday night's vice presidential debate. Then in his gentle drawl, Edwards extended this pleasantry to his opponent, Vice President Cheney:
"Mr. Vice President," Edwards said, "you are still not being straight with the American people."
Cheney, who was rubbing his hands together as Edwards addressed him, looked as if he was about to grab the North Carolina senator by his gorgeous hair and swing him around the stage.
And so began the 90-minute sneerfest, variously dubbed a "ruckus at the roundtable" .........where the rhetoric veers into the undefined zone between "spirited exchange of ideas" and "personal attacks." Some call it "the line," as in the line of decorum that debate participants should not cross, at risk of being deemed "mean-spirited" or, literally, "over the line."
In many cases, staying this side of "the line" simply means using code words in lieu of more charged rhetoric......
......... he wouldn't call the president of the United States a liar. That would be over the line.
Like art and porn, what constitutes a breach of "the line" rests in the eye of the observer.........
"Definitely one of the sharpest debates I've seen," says Alan Schroeder, author of "Presidential Debates: 40 Years of High-Risk TV." He says Cheney-Edwards nearly approached the nastiness of a previous benchmark -- the 1976 debate between Walter Mondale and Robert Dole, in which Dole bemoaned all the U.S. servicemen killed in "Democrat wars" through history......
........."Heck, we're not playing powderpuff bowl here," says Simpson, a close friend of Cheney. "Heck, my old man ran for Senate in 1940 and they burned his car." In other words, to heck with the "line.".........
.........In general, Wittman says, a politician can get away with slandering an opponent if he addresses the recipient as "my distinguished colleague" or "the distinguished gentleman from wherever."
Simpson often waxes nostalgic about Republican Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon, who, according to a 1957 newspaper account, called his "distinguished colleague" Republican Sen. Homer Capehart of Indiana "a tub of rancid ignorance."
Those were better days.
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