In the midst of all the “debates” going on now–debating a blogger code of conduct, debating debates among the candidates, and debating the many and various issues in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign–comes a really excellent point about debating that I think we’d all do well to consider.
Mickey Kaus at Slate “fisked” a Malcom Gladwell story in New Yorker magazine about co-pays and health insurance. I think he made a great point here:
Like many New Yorker policy articles, Gladwell’s reads like a lecture to an isolated, ill-informed and somewhat gullible group of highly literate children. They are cheap dates. They won’t think of the obvious objections. They won’t demand that you “play Notre Dame,” as my boss Charles Peters used to say, and take on the best arguments for the other side. They just need to be given a bit of intellectual entertainment and pointed off in a comforting anti-Bush direction.
Forget Gladwell and Bush in the quote–think about that nugget of advice provided by Charles Peters: “play Notre Dame.”
I think all of us are guilty at times of reflexively relying on our partisanship to dismiss arguments, ideas, proposals, or policies offered by the “other side.” We really ought to confront their best arguments because maybe, just maybe, the “other side” might have a point.
We could adapt Peters’ maxim to the Virginia Way: “play Virginia Tech.”
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