Presidential Debate Rules MUST Change To Stop Trump's "Gish Galloping"

And to force him to give yes-no responses to direct questions.

The CNN debate last Thursday night was heart-stopping. A very frail-looking, stammering Biden appeared to be gob-smacked by Trump’s attacks, and Trump was widely seen, in America and abroad, as having won the debate.

But when you look at Trump’s tactics—and CNN’s failure to call out or fact-check even one of Trump’s lies—you’ll note that Biden never had a chance, and here’s why, as eloquently pointed out by Heather Cox Richardson’s analysis of Trump’s debate tactic. And it’s a classic debate tactic:

And here’s the clinical definition of Gish Galloping, the dirtiest and most dishonest of “debate” tactics. It’s not debate. It’s the basest manipulation. And look at who/where it came from. Quel surprise!

The Gish Gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Gish Galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution.

So, that’s the tactic Trump used. And it worked. Because it always works for just the reason Heather Cox Richardson says it does. In the Gish Gallop …

Someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond make the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that just hit them.

So, Biden’s being gob-smacked is a natural response to this tactic, which virtually always works, and CNN was thoroughly and unconscionably unprepared to handle any debate in which an inveterate liar, bully, and manipulator would be participating.

What?

• Did CNN not expect Trump to lie?

• Did they not expect him to claim he won an election he lost?

• Did they not expect him to refuse to answer moderators’ questions and keep returning to some fear-mongering issue like immigration?

• Did they not expect him to prevaricate on whether he would honor the results of the next election?

• Did they not expect him to attack Hunter Biden rather than to answer the question put to him?

---

Debate Rules Must Change

Clearly, it wasn’t just enough that somebody could cut Trump’s mic at the end of his allotted time. We need entirely new rules, to include:

1. Moderators need to be joined by FACT CHECKERS—who would immediately CUT TRUMP’S MIC EVERY TIME HE LIES. He can stand there babbling and spewing and sputtering and growing crimson in the face, but nobody could hear any more of his bullshit until fact checkers explain the lie — AND GIVE HIS OPPONENT A FULL MINUTE TO RESPOND TO THE FACT HE JUST LIED AGAIN.

2. Moderators need to be able to frame a response as a mandatory yes-no answer. Example: “Mr. Trump, do you commit to honoring the results of the next presidential election?” And when Trump starts an answer with “If, if, if, if …”. it’s a Mic Mute. “No, Mr. Trump, try yes or no.”

3. Moderators need to be empowered to preempt Gish Gallop. See below.

How To Counter Gish Gallop

There are three techniques, one for the respondent and one for the moderator

• For the Respondent: Don’t address any of the “points” made by the Spewer-in-Chief. Call out the Gish-Galloping and make that the issue! No matter what the Gish Galloper is spewing, none of it matters more than the fact that the debater is using a tried-and-true—but dirty, dishonest, manipulative and craven—technique. Call it what it is: It is the way of the bully. Don’t address a single thing he said. Call out the sleazy manipulation, thereby calling the debater a sleazy manipulator, which he/she/it is.

• For the Moderator: Before the debate even begins, the debater should define Gish Galloping and declare it disallowed. The monitor should carefully explain what it looks like and expose its major objectives:

  • One: flood the respondent with a string of specious arguments that come so fast the respondent is unable to address any of them. Point out that it’s not the respondent’s fault if this happens: that’s the intention of the manipulation, and it works.

  • Two: land as many lies, falsehoods, distortions, specious arguments—AND PERSONAL ATTACKS—as possible in the time that’s allowed the manipulator, while stunning them into an inability to respond, perhaps as much as a response to the sheer obscenity of the Gisher as anything else.

• For the Moderator: During the debate, if a debater starts to string lies or abruptly change subject with a new assault, the moderator should cut the debater’s mic and restrict the debater to one point he or she wishes to make. That will interrupt the galloping, which, in Trump’s case, will so infuriate him that the audience will not have to listen to more lies — and it will also continuously interrupt his dishonest attempt to rip off his opponent’s ability to debate issues honestly and fairly in an atmosphere that is characterized by factual engagement, not screed.

My prediction is that under such debate rules, Trump would melt down in five minutes.

Heather Cox Richardson, in nailing this obscene “debate tactic” has just shown what it is that Trump is doing all the time.