= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Epictetus comments on Communicating via writing vs. in person - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (23)
A president or prime minister will be the public face of the nation. He'd be expected to meet with foreign dignitaries and speak in public. At the very least, a debate gives people an idea of how their leaders carry themselves when under stress in full public view.
Making prepared statements is usually done by a politician's staff. The candidate might make some suggestions and approve/reject a draft, but otherwise such a debate would be staffers vs. staffers.
I'll also note that once upon a time, people attended public debates in part for entertainment.
Overall I do agree. I seldom watch debates, because what the candidates do say is often just a condensed version of the party position that shows up on any one of a dozen websites.
Yeah, that's the argument I was talking about when I said "there is an argument to be made...".
In fact, this is a silly hypothetical because we could have both verbal and written debates.
As it should be. Generally speaking, in the type of races I have in mind, politicians don't sit around hammering out policy ideas and details, they get all of that from their staff and other advisers. I feel like it's more important to know how good their team is, and less important to know how good they are at public debate.
My feeling is that like 70% of the value the public gets out of politicians is the quality of their team and how well the politician integrates with that team.