Friday night I debated my friend Dr. Jerry Hendrix on the subject of aircraft carriers at the US Naval Academy. The good folks (Claude Berube) at the
Naval Academy Museum (you MUST visit--superb) convened the debate, and the good folks at the
US Naval Institute (Mary Ripley, Pete Daly) handled the live-stream which is now cached as the Youtube file attached to this post. I write today not to postmortem the substance of the debate--I leave that to your own judgements--but more properly to describe the experience.
Let's face it. As a naval thinker and advocate, the opportunity to participate in the event Friday night was catnip. I've written widely about aircraft carriers (
here,
here,
here,
here), and within the small and self-important group of people who think and write about such things, I am considered a strong supporter of the continuing role of the carrier. My opponent in the debate--Jerry Hedrix--is a brilliant advocate of a very different view, and he and I have gone back and forth over carriers several times across the interwebs and over the telephone. In fact, he and I had been talking about an event just like what happened Friday night for three or four years, as we both believed a thorough airing of the issues would be worthwhile. And we are both show-offs.
Needless to say, that while I had some level of knowledge and preparation simply by virtue of the work I've already done, the event demanded a significant amount of study. This included re-reading everything Jerry has written and taking careful note of what he has said. It included reading whatever I could find on what other carrier critics have said across decades of criticism. It included reading the various defenses of the carrier that have been written by others. It included reading publicly available studies that have already dealt with questions of the carrier's utility. I began amassing information about a month ago, and began dedicated study on the day after Christmas.
The day before the debate, Jerry called me to tell me that a media figure wanted to interview the two of us on Friday morning (the morning of the debate), and to ask me if I were interested. I declined, as I had formulated a carefully orchestrated plan for how the 15 hours before the 7:30PM debate were going to be spent. Driving to DC for an interview was not among them. It is this kind of inflexibility that drives the Kitten crazy. It is this level of prioritization/focus that got me a spot in the debate.
The debate was structured thusly: I began with an 8 minute opening, he followed with an 8 minute opening, each of us then had 4 minutes of rebuttal, then two minutes of quick hits each, then two minutes of closing each. I prepared an opening statement and a closing statement, which I provided to a number of friends for their review and opinion during my preparation. Their wise counsel made my words tighter, more straightforward. About a week ago, I recorded both on my smartphone and listened to them over and over while driving to and fro. I'd replace the file with a new one when revisions were made.
My goal when I do formal public speaking events is to craft a speech completely, read it a hundred times or so, and the read from the pages in front of me as a guide--usually the first sentence or phrase in each paragraph followed by eye contact with the audience to end sentences and paragraphs. Watching the video two things are clear from my opener: 1) I didn't read the speech enough, as there were a few stumbles and 2) I made a lot of audience eye contact that rally doesn't show up that well on the video because of the high angle the camera was shooting from and my modest height--so when I looked at the folks in the audience, it still looked like I was looking down at my script. I videotaped myself doing the speech here in the ManCave several times, making sure that I could get in all I wanted to say in 8 minutes.
Now, I had a lot to say. The subject is not unknown to me, and Jerry's writing had created a rich source of material from which I could pre-emptively respond. But the opener could only be 8 minutes long, and I had to make sure that I hit the big, important points in that 8 minutes, and rely on the remainder of the time to be able to get some of the other points I had loaded.
In addition to the prepared scripts for the opener and closer, I created a three column 8 pitch type cheat sheet of major points that I anticipated Jerry would make, along with short word/phrase bursts to job my memory on longer responses to each that I had written in my preparation. This turned out to have been perhaps the most important time I spent in preparing, as there were a few times where he made points I was quite prepared for during the both the debate and the Q and A.
Prior to the actual debate it self, there was a reception held in the Naval Academy Museum, and truth be told, as I laid out my day, it stuck out as a sore thumb of discontinuity. I was focusing like a laser beam on this task, and the thought of meandering around making idle chatter when all I really wanted to do was concentrate bothered me. I told the Kitten that I bet Mitt didn't have to do any cocktail parties right before his debates. But like many times in my life when I become metaphysically certain of something, I was wrong. I attended the cocktail party because I felt I owed it to the sponsors, but in retrospect, it was a thoroughly positive experience. First, because I had a lot of friends there, folks who agreed with me and offered their confidence in my abilities, and those who disagreed with me, but who wished me well anyway. Second, it took my mind off the task at hand, which turned out to be important. The one hour I spent in the superb Naval Academy Museum, listening to a fantastic woodwind quartet, chatting with friends and well-wishers....was time well spent--much better than sitting in a quiet room going over notes I had already gone over countless times. Additionally, the one hour nap I grabbed earlier in the afternoon didn't hurt.
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| The note I propped up on the debate podium |
The setting for the debate could not have been better. Mahan Auditorium is a beautiful room, cozy, but ornate and beating with importance. Lining the walls behind the balcony seats behind glass are a series of large, captured battle flags from the War of 1812. I'm a bit of an emotional sod to begin with, but standing on that stage, looking at those flags, thinking about the men who earned them and the history I have inherited from them--well, it got me a little verklempt. But there's no crying in debating, and so I sailored on. Prior to the debate, I stowed my one (insufficient) bottle of water under the surface of the podium (note to self: remember Marco Rubio) and arranged my notes for ease of use. I propped a brief note to myself against the front of the podium, a reminder to me of my tendencies to speak too quickly when nervous and to be a sarcastic and cynical jerk much of the rest of the time. The Kitten asked me before the debate whether we could prop a few of these around the house as reminders. She's such a kidder.
The rest of the story is contained in the video. This is only the second formal debate I've ever done, and I can honestly say I performed a bit better than the first--which leads to the conclusion that one really has to do this a lot to get good at it. Another conclusion I had was reinforced respect for anyone who does this on truly cosmic stages, like Presidential candidates. In my little world, this was an important debate and there were people who were counting on me to give our side a good go. But in the grand scheme, this was minor league compared to the issues and pressures that two Presidential candidates must face when they square off. I have immense respect for those people.
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