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Draft. Not for Publication. Not for Quotation. All Rights Reserved. |
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Draft. Not for Publication. Not for Quotation. All Rights Reserved. |
The quarrel over NAFTA was settled when Ross Perot,
its loudest opponent, lost a debate with Vice-President Albert Gore. Gore's was
the voice of informed reason and Perot's was the screech that betrays the
fantasist. And now the sequel of the President's NAFTA treaty is his encumbrance
by a $20-billion Mexican loan guarantee and a widening public surmise that Perot
may have been the realist and Clinton the fantasist. Revelations like that ought
at last to teach us not to dismiss a man's arguments just because he sounds
like a nut.
Murray Kempton, New York Review of Books, April
6, 1995 On November 9, 1993, Vice-President Al Gore debated Ross Perot on the
subject of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. They met on CNN's
"Larry King Live" before the largest television audience in the
United States ever to watch a cable offering (N.Y. Times, Nov. 11,
1993:A22), just eight days before the pivotal votes by the Senate and House of
Representatives.
When the Clinton administration announced that the
Vice-President had challenged Perot to a debate, many White House staffers were
reportedly stunned by the decision. They echoed fears that Perot's avuncular,
endearing, down-home style would effectively subvert Gore's attempts at
introducing reasoned arguments; or, as Ed Rollins put it, that "Gore will
give intellectual answers, and Perot will hit the emotional buttons and spit out
sound bites." (Rosenbaum, 1993a:A10) Taking on Perot was evidence of
"desperation." A "hail Mary" pass. And, indeed, the New
York Times reported on the day preceding the debate that NAFTA was in deep
trouble in the House, with 149 representatives likely to vote for the measure,
209 likely to vote against and 76 officially undecided (Ifill, 1993).
Still, the White House strategy had a certain logic
in its favor. Given that Perot's standing in the polls had dropped in the
previous six months, and assuming that the public might be tired of Perot, an
anti-Perot strategy might succeed. If opposition to NAFTA could be closely
identified with Perot, and if Gore could undermine Perot's credibility in the
debate, then perhaps the NAFTA agreement could be rescued from defeat
(Rosenbaum, 1993a). The Wall Street Journal (1993:A14) said in an
editorial:
The Clinton White House took a significant risk with this debate and deserves a large measure of credit. Essentially, they detailed Al Gore to take on a formidable bully and in the event, exposed the real face of the anti-NAFTA movement.
Significantly, as it turned out, the anti-NAFTA forces
did nothing to distance themselves from Perot, even after the White House had
made its strategy clear. Thus, an intelligent, interested reader could have
rationally surmised that Perot was the chief spokesperson for the anti-NAFTA
position. It was not until after Perot's debacle on Larry King Live, that the
distancing began (Ifill, 1993).
There seems little question about whether Al Gore
trounced Ross Perot in their debate on NAFTA. The Wall Street Journal
(Nov. 11, 1993:A14) reported that respondents to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll
made Gore a 59-32 winner. Of greater significance s o far as this essay is
concerned, support for NAFTA grew to 57% from 34%, whereas opposition to NAFTA
barely budged. Undecideds went from 28% to 7%. It is small wonder therefore that
Congressional opponents of NAFTA began distancing themselves from Perot
immediately following the debate. Interestingly, Perot's unfavorable rating went
from 39% to 51% (New York Times, 1993). The following week, NAFTA passed
with the support of previously wavering Congressmen, some of whom credited the
debate with having made a vote for NAFTA politically popular.
The question to be addressed in this essay is whether
viewers' decisions to become pro-NAFTA on the basis of the debate were rational.
The question is theoretically interesting since the debate seemed to turn less
on the evidence and arguments presented than on character displays and attacks
by the two debaters. I will argue that the decision was rational, given a
situated, rhetorical view of rational judgment. Yet this notion of
"rhetorical rationality" is not without its problems. After analyzing
the Go re-Perot debate, I will offer some concluding comments on how we might
best approach those problems. First, I shall explicate the concept of rhetorical
rationality.