Strategic Maneuvering in Political Argumentation

Abstract

Although political argumentation is not institutionalized in a formal sense, it does have recurrent patterns and characteristics. Its constraints include the absence of time limits, the lack of a clear terminus, heterogeneous audiences, and the assumption that access is open to all. These constraints make creative strategic maneuvering both possible and necessary. Among the common types of strategic maneuvering are changing the subject, modifying the relevant audience, appealing to liberal and conservative presumptions, reframing the argument, using condensation symbols, employing the locus of the irreparable, and argumentative use of figures and tropes. It is difficult to evaluate strategic maneuvering in political argumentation, however, because the activity types dictate wide latitude for the arguers, so there are few cases of unquestionable derailment.

This essay originally was published in the journal Argumentation, 22 (2008), 317–330, published by Springer. It is based on a presentation for a conference on strategic maneuvering in specific fields and contexts, held at the University of Amsterdam in the fall of 2007.

Appendix

1.1 Kennedy-Nixon Debate Excerpt

From the third Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debate, October 13, 1960

MR. SHADEL [Bill Shadel, ABC News]: The next question is by Mr. Cater for Senator Kennedy.

MR. CATER [Douglass Cater, Reporter Magazine]: Uh – Mr. Kennedy, uh – Senator – uh – Vice President Nixon says that he has costed the two party platforms and that yours would run at least ten billion dollars a year more than his. You have denied his figures. He has called on you to supply your figures. Would you do that?

MR. KENNEDY: Yes, I have stated in both uh – debates and state again that I believe in a balanced budget and have supported that concept during my fourteen years in the Congress. The only two times when an unbalanced budget is warranted would be during a serious recession – and we had that in fifty-eight in an unbalanced budget of twelve billion dollars – or a national emergency where there should be large expenditures for national defense, which we had during World War II and uh – during part of the Korean War. On the question of the cost of our budget, I have stated that it’s my best judgment that our agricultural program will cost a billion and a half, possibly two billion dollars less than the present agricultural program. My judgment is that the program the Vice President put forward, which is an extension of Mr. Benson’s [Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture] program, will cost a billion dollars more than the present program, which costs about six billion dollars a year, the most expensive in history. We’ve spent more money on agriculture in the last eight years than the hundred years of the Agricultural Department before that. Secondly, I believe that the high interest-rate policy that this Administration has followed has added about three billion dollars a year to interest on the debt – merely funding the debt – which is a burden on the taxpayers. I would hope, under a different monetary policy, that it would be possible to reduce that interest-rate burden, at least a billion dollars. Third, I think it’s possible to . . . gain seven hundred million to a billion dollars through tax changes which I believe would close up loof – loopholes on dividend withholding, on expense accounts. Fourthly, I have suggested that the medical care for the aged – and the bill which the Congress now has passed and the President signed if fully implemented would cost a billion dollars on the Treasury – out of Treasury funds and a billion dollars by the states – the proposal that I have would be financed under the Social Security taxes; which is less than three cents a day per person for medical care, doctors’ bills, nurses, hospitals when they retire. It is actuarially sound. So in my judgment we would spend more money in this Administration on aid to education, we’d spend more money on housing, we’d spend more money and I hope more wisely on defense than this administration has. But I believe that the next Administration should work for a balanced budget, and that would be my intention. Mr. Nixon misstates my Figures constantly, which uh – is of course his right, but the fact of the matter is: Here is where I stand and I just want to have it on the public record.

MR. SHADEL: Mr. Vice President?

MR. NIXON: Senator Kennedy has indicated on several occasions in this program tonight that I have been misstating his record and his figures. I will issue a white paper after this broadcast, quoting exactly what he has said on compulsory arbitration, for example, and the record will show that I have been correct. Now as far as his figures are concerned here tonight, he again is engaging in this, what I would call, mirror game of “here it is and here it isn’t.” Uh – On the one hand, for example, he suggests that as far as his medical care program is concerned that that really isn’t a problem because it’s from Social Security. But Social Security is a tax. The people pay it. It comes right out of your paycheck. This doesn’t mean that the people aren’t going to be paying the bill. He also indicates as far as his agricultural program is concerned that he feels it will cost less than ours. Well, all that I can suggest is that all the experts who have studied the program indicate that it is the most fantastic program, the worst program, insofar as its effect on the farmers, that the – America has ever had foisted upon it in an election year or any other time. And I would also point out that Senator Kennedy left out a part of the cost of that program – a twenty-five percent rise in food prices that people would have to pay. Now we are going to have that when it isn’t going to help the farmers? I don’t think we should have that kind of a program. Then he goes on to say that he’s going to change the interest-rate situation and we’re going to get some money that way. Well, what he is saying there in effect, we’re going to have inflation. We’re going to go right back to what we had under Mr. Truman when he had political control of the Federal Reserve Board. I don’t believe we ought to pay our bills through inflation, through a phony interest rate.