What Real Political Debate Should Be and Can Be

Tell Young People You Know to Audition for the In The Arena

I know haven’t written in a while, for which I apologize. But I write now to unabashedly promote a really cool venture that I hope at least some readers (or their young adult children) will find of interest.

As context, I want to dredge up a theme I developed in one of my early substack posts, which sang the virtues of debate – as a way to improve K-12 education and to help save democracy. https://robertlitan.substack.com/p/debate-can-revolutionize-education. Indeed, those few words from the preceding sentence almost copy the subtitle of the last book I wrote, published in 2020, a year that seems a lifetime ago: https://www.brookings.edu/books/resolved/.

For the first two years after the book was published, I worked hard with a number of gifted and talented teachers around the country to organize seminars to help teachers use debate techniques in the classroom. The curriculum was based on the book, the experiences of the great teachers who led these seminars, and the experience of two of the organizations that I discuss extensively in the book: Argument Centered Education, pioneered by Les Lynn in Chicago, https://argumentcenterededucation.com?, and the Boston Debate League, now led by Kim Willingham, https://www.bostondebate.org/. More power to them and to other teachers who are using debate to motivate kids to love education, and to give them valuable skills they can use in whatever careers they decide to pursue.

               But as important as all these efforts are, and as much as I want them to continue, they will take time, a lot of time to be deployed in at scale in the way they should be. Moreover, K-12 education took an awful turn during the pandemic that I didn’t anticipate when I was writing the book, up to the time it was released. It wasn’t just the closure of schools that set back education for this generation of students a year or more (I will not wade into the messy pro and con debate of whether schools should have been closed, though I think much of the critique against school closures ignores the huge uncertainties about the contagiousness and risks of the pandemic at the time, when deaths were spiraling  and visibly displayed on nightly TV). But the political polarization that had infected national politics at the time I was writing has since seeped into state legislatures and local school boards to a far greater extent than I had thought back in 2019-20. Measures adopted since then in some states making it unlawful for teachers to teach certain subjects, https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-passed-laws-restricting-school-curriculum/, inhibit debate-centered instruction, more so than I had naively anticipated when writing the book. Still, there is much in the K-12 curriculum that is non-controversial and can be effectively through debate techniques. https://debatecenteredinstruction.org/.

               Meanwhile, political discourse in this country continues to become even more uncivil than it was back in 2020. I don’t think I need to tell readers who are the prime exemplars of this trend. You know who they are. I also won’t spend time here expounding on reasons why too many Americans either reward this kind of behavior with their votes, or excuse or normalize it, except to restate a clear fact: that the late Senator-intellectual Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1993 essay “Defining Deviancy Down” rings truer today than when he wrote it (sorry I can’t provide a link to the article, I searched the web and it’s only available behind a paywall).

               So, is there any hope? I firmly believe that despite the polarization, there is still a silent majority in this country that wants a return to civility in public life, and that would welcome civil, reasoned political discourse from the leaders who want to serve in public office, at all levels of government. The challenge is to find a way to demonstrate to that majority, at scale, what that reasoned discourse looks like. And better yet, use young people – our next generation – to show the way.

               One of my former colleagues at the Kauffman Foundation, where I was privileged to work for about a decade of my life in the 2000s, shares that view. His name is Tim Kane. Politically he is center right to my center left, so we kind of balance out. He, too, has a substack column in case you’re interested all “WhyAmerica,” and to his credit he posts a lot more frequently than I do.

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               But most importantly for purposes of this post is that Tim and are I both former college debaters who firmly believe in the huge political, civic and educational importance of having as many people as possible not only trained in the basic of debate, but to appreciate and take account of the arguments of proficient debaters, using real facts and logic, to inform the way they vote and participate in civic life. Over the past two years, the two of us, with a lot of help from a terrific group of advisers, have worked to develop a reality TV show, In the Arena, that features outstanding young people debating a different highly salient public policy issue each week, but providing solutions, not just reciting talking points. The format of the show would be much like American Idol, featuring an initial cohort of participants, who would compete, be winnowed down, until an eventual winner is crowned. The show not only would provide the kind of role models we want our future leaders to be like, but also to demonstrate to our current leaders what real, civil discourse looks like – with the hope of modifying their behavior as well or lose their seats to someone else who displays the kind of skills and temperament of the young people on the show.

               Last summer, Tim did the heavy lifting, with the help of a great production company, Susie Films,https://susiefilms.com/,produced a pilot of In the Arena and a great trailer (I’ll get to that in moment). We shopped the show to major cable channels and streaming platforms, got a lot of positive feedback, but ultimately the decision-makers at these outlets decided that in this polarized political environment, especially in this all-important election year, it would be too risky to put on the air.  

               We understand the risk aversion, but we also firmly believe each platform made a major mistake. And now we’re out not only to prove them wrong, but to show that in this age of viral media, with Youtube and other video distribution platforms like Instagram, there is a huge actual audience for this kind of programming. And then once the show is successful, maybe the mainstream platforms will reconsider. Or the show will be so successful on non-traditional media that it won’t need any of those platforms.

               We plan to shoot a full series of the show in August in Washington, D.C. and are now recruiting young people who would like to be part of that first season, and maybe even to win!

I realize that the demographic of the readers of my posts is well past the age for debating on the show. But some of you may have children who would love this opportunity, or know of others who would love to seize it.

Here’s all interested volunteers need to do. Go to this website and follow instructions:

. (The video contains the trailer for the pilot show Tim and Susie Films did last summer).

And if you want to know more about the endeavor, feel free to message me on my linked in page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-litan-566917/.