Debate #1

<> How I wish we could all be transported to the site and time when Lincoln debated Douglas on the transcendent issue of their day, slavery. They spoke their own minds, and their remarks were neither filtered nor moderated by an interlocutor. A score was not kept. But it took our cataclysmic Civil War to eventually resolve the issue they debated.
<> What we saw last night, was an accomplished orator take on a somewhat inarticulate incumbent president. But it would be a mistake to use that perception to assess their respective intellects. Consider, for instance , what it must take to learn how to pilot one of America's most sophisticated interceptor aircraft and what it takes to learn how to steer a motorboat. If glibness is a valid parameter to use when selecting our presidents, we are most fortunate indeed. What a vast reservoir of used-car salesman we have!
<> If these debates are expected to help "undecideds" to decide, let us not be deluded. It is a rare person indeed whose way of thinking about almost anything, isn't already immutably established. In my professional psychiatric experience, I very seldom encountered anyone who was really capable of substantively altering the way they thought. And I include myself in that sweeping generalization. The neuronal synapses we establish, tend inflexibly to obey Newton's Laws.
<> What will finally help us to decide how to vote on Election Day will be events, not words.