EDITORIAL – There is substance in brevity

The television analyst TV5 commissioned to do the panel analysis of the Presidential Debate Round 2 on Sunday straight from Cebu City left a lot to be desired from the audience after the coverage.
The audience actually started to notice the professor from the get-go and while his credentials may have earned for him the spot on that chair, his views were a different matter. As he rattled his preliminaries, he was starting to send wrong signals of leanings and the audience was quick to notice him as posts on social media began to flood. An analyst’s job is to provide the view of the forest to the audience and then break it down to the trees. He must be equipped with enough background and a deep understanding of the different personas involved in the debate. As much as possible, he keeps a fair share of commentaries on all subjects and be ready to inject new thoughts that surface as the debate wears on.
However, the fairness of a cold judge did not surface from the depths of his mind and each time he utters a word, the more his leanings are emerging.
At one point, he dumped a candidate’s answers for being less substantive. He did not dig the one-liners. He said they spoke nothing.
At that point, he obviously was missing the point. With all due respects to his opinion, his appreciation of kilometric answers made to sound brilliant where uttered like symphony reflected a fancy for glib more than fact and realism. By contrast, he hated brevity. Short of calling it empty.
This is a debate, an artform that men try to develop to become a master of persuasion. It calls for a style personal to each debater as his choice on how to pursue his arguments and carried through his manner of speech and presentation. If he chooses to be brief and spew fire in short spurts, it his way of expression but even the one-liners can be significant. It’s not the length that’s the measure here but the weight in which each argument is anchored upon.
The presidential debate indeed is a test of one’s depth and character—not just with the debaters but also the other participants.