Clinton's Moment

It will not come as a big surprise to most of my readers to know that I was on the debate team in high school. I actually captained it my senior year (blush). I was also a starting linebacker on the football team. That was a pretty unusual combination in those days and nobody knew quite what to make of it, least of all me.

Anyway, the debate “resolution” was picked by a set of judges and whether you were assigned to argue in support of that resolution or against it was not your choice, so not infrequently you found yourself defending positions that you did not really support personally. That did not mean that you did not defend them with all of your resources, since you did have a personal desire to win the debate. I always liked it better when I got assigned the “side” of a debate resolution that agreed with my personal convictions, but I enjoyed the debate regardless.

Once in a while my opponent would really nail me with an argument. Those moments were always a kick for me. Yes, I’d lost my point, but I still felt a fierce joy that I had just witnessed something really cool. In a way it was a bigger kick than making a winning argument myself. I expected winning arguments from myself. They were in my notes and I had planned them, led up to them and knew they were coming. When they came from my opponent they were like revelations. I could never help smiling at him/her.

Last night there were moments when it seemed to me that Senator Clinton was carrying out an assignment. She was told to hit Senator Obama on the plagiarism thing, but it looked to me like that was just sort of her “assigned side” of that issue. (The audience wasn’t too thrilled with that one either.)

At one point she went after him on the “empty words” thing and he turned it around to say that in effect she was not insulting him with that accusation, but rather was saying that all the millions of people supporting him were too stupid to see beyond the empty rhetoric. It was a really good comeback, and I saw something in Clinton’s face at that moment that I could relate to.

She loved it. Did you notice? She lit up and laughed out loud. She had watched herself get hoist on her own petard by her debate opponent and she was delighted for him. Many are oohing and aahing about her closing statement, but for me this was her best moment. She was respectful of the art of debate for its own sake, and I have never seen her in a more human moment.