Conrad Hake is a friend of mine from Kansas and offers up commentary and advice from the Silicon Valley on whatever topic interests him.

I was listening to this morning’s Presidential News Conference and it took me back to the old debate days in High School. I think debate is a subject that more students should participate in and the tournaments are fascinating. Each debate season has one single topic and two teams compete per debate and I believe there are about 6 debates each team participates in per tournament (don’t hold me to facts on the number, because, yes, I am just that old…). The interesting part is that each team alternates their stance on the topic in each subsequent debate. For example, first debate, Pro. Second debate, Con.

It really points out the relativity of rhetorical truth. A good debater will absolutely convince you of his or her passion and belief in one side of the argument. You would be amazed if you saw that top debater in the very next debate showing why the other side is definitely the way to go. But, this brings me back to the News Conference. The battle is not really a battle of facts or even a battle of truth – it’s a battle for the framework! A President (and this is true of all Presidents, not just one of a particular persuasion) will accept a question as presented if he likes the framework. He will change the question if he does not, usually by leading down another path and many don’t notice that the question as asked was never even addressed!

We are doing this as a society on so many of the important issues of our time. If I succeed in framing the abortion issue as an issue of taking an innocent life, I have won the argument for pro-life. If I succeed in framing the argument as choice that only the mother can make, the pro-choice argument wins. On immigration, are these illegal immigrants or are they undocumented workers?

At the end of the day, where does it leave us? Usually no closer to the solution. Instead, we have become a society of rhetorically armed camps proudly carrying our banners of moral indignation and justification, not a generation of problem solvers. And I don’t buy the argument that solutions need to be compromise until we reach the lowest common denominator. Good problem solvers take a confident position, but with humility. What they are seeking is, ideally, a breakthrough understanding achieved by people with faith that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that bright people can make creative surges upward, together as a team.

Have we lost faith in this process?

~Conrad Hake

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