TThe first presidential debate of this prolonged presidential season was a horror show. Preceded by what seemed like weeks of enthusiastic speculation, idiotic predictions, and presumptive pre-debate analysis, when the debate actually took place, it demonstrated the terrible choice the two major political parties gave the electorate: choose the liar and the fear-monger. xenophobe, or choose the confused, staggering man whose attempts to explain politics. (“I support Roe v.that had three quarters”?) It was painful to watch.
We might rightly wonder what presidential debates are for, especially this year. We already know both candidates very well, and if we don’t, we will have another four months to learn that Trump doesn’t care about the duties of the office or the complexities of foreign relations (and cultures), but has a talent for stirring up prejudice, for making people laugh and for making them scared. He doesn’t answer questions. Last night he avoided the issue of the war in Gaza. He addressed the opioid crisis and climate change. He doesn’t appeal to decency, which is (or was) Biden’s strong suit. But decency without firmness is what makes Biden seem, shall we say, despondent. And we can watch this too until November. In fact, this otherwise important president seemed most focused when he talked about hitting a golf ball.
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Part of the problem is that we live in a visual age. As a result, although we value them, our would-be leaders become leaders even if they lack oratory skills. In fact, it is not surprising that the first famous presidential debate, in 1960, occurred when television was a relatively new medium and did Richard Nixon no favors. No one remembers what he said, only what he looked like. (In fact, the first televised debate, between candidates Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower, took place four years earlier, but without them; they used surrogates, Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Chase Smith.) Before that, presidents relied on radio, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” bringing him, and his voice, with its power of persuasion, into the home. Before that, we debated in the public square of newspapers. The word, written with skill, can change minds. Consider Lincoln and Douglas, a debate for a Senate seat, and the rest is history.
Therefore, oratory is important. The ability to persuade, through words, was important. It still exists, which is why last night’s debate was so frightening. When William Jennings Bryan was nominated by the Democrats as their presidential candidate for the third time in 1908, although he had failed twice before, it was because of his oratorical gift. His voice, once heard, was never forgotten. He could address a crowd of 20,000 people and make the audience feel as if he spoke directly to each of them and understood what they needed. They called him the “Great Commoner.” He even started a newspaper so he could write column after column and deliver what amounted to sermons.
And, like all good orators, he could act. He didn’t want the tie too straight. Bryan practiced parts of his famous “Cross of Gold” speech, one of the most famous in American political history, for months and months before he delivered it in 1896 at the Democratic National Convention. He walked onto the stage, raised his arms, and then spoke in the lilting, lyrical phrases of Scripture. “We are fighting in defense of our homes, our families and posterity,” declared Bryan. “We petitioned and our petitions were disregarded; we begged and our supplications were disregarded; we begged and they mocked when our calamity came. We beg no more; we beg no more; We don’t ask for more.” It was a good thing.
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But performance needs substance. And so Bryan would eventually meet his nemesis when he was confronted by a speaker even more experienced, intelligent and dramatic than he was. This was Clarence Darrow, the celebrated lawyer in rumpled clothes whose talent for mesmerizing juries with his impression of humility (some of which was genuine) was unparalleled. Although he was not a politician, or at least not a professional, Darrow was a man who could present a rational argument with great emotion. It was a winning combination.
Take for example the defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two teenagers accused of the horrific and motiveless murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks. Darrow had Leopold and Loeb plead guilty to avoid a jury trial, so he could argue before the judge that their lives should be spared. Claiming that Leopold and Loeb were just teenagers, products of genetics and environment, Darrow said they were essentially without free will. “They killed,” said Darrow, “because they were made that way.” At the same time, let us not blindly and cruelly call for yet another death, he begged the judge. Let us recognize that capital punishment arises from our primal need for revenge, and let us recognize that killing two defective and abnormal teenagers would not prevent other disabled boys, malevolent men, or cruel women from committing murder.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m dreaming, if I’m not living in centuries past, when savagery was savage and the world was wet with human blood?” he concluded at the end of the trial. It was a consummate performance: a rational argument capped off by an emotional argument. Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison.
When Darrow and Bryan faced off in court, both, like Biden and Trump, were considered outdated. They certainly weren’t competing for the Oval Office, and the confrontation took place in a courtroom, not on a television set. But they were disputing the meaning of America and America’s future with far more passion, compassion and reasonableness than anything that happened last night on the debate stage. For all his faults, Bryan was an optimistic idealist who thought he could improve the lives of ordinary men and women. He was a progressive who sincerely believed in—and fought for—reforms such as government ownership of public services, a graduated income tax, currency reform, women’s suffrage, and, for better or worse, Prohibition, which, in his opinion, it would help purify the country by abolishing alcoholism, child abuse and violence against women.
But when he wanted to transform the country into a Christian theocracy, Darrow opposed it. The confrontation occurred in the summer of 1925 over a law recently passed by the Tennessee legislature that prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools. It later became known as the Scopes Trial.
Darrow offered to defend the young professor who had purposefully broken the law (to test her) and once again summoned all his oratorical skills. “Ignorance and bigotry are always busy and need to be fed,” declared Darrow. “Today it’s public school teachers, tomorrow it’s private teachers. The next day, the preachers and speakers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, it is the pitting of man against man and creed against creed, until, with flags flying and drums beating, we are marching back to the glorious eras of the 16th century, when fanatics lit firewood to burn the men who dared to bring some intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”
“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious fanaticism and hatred,” Darrow concluded, “and these fires are being kindled in America today.”
He spoke without notes. He was persuasive and passionate. That’s what I thought about—what we’d lost as he watched last night’s sad, frightening debate.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
