Debating Tactics 101: What to Do in a Debate About Nothing

On Harper, Iggy, Layton, 'Ol' Affable' Gilles Duceppe, and the debate, in which 'winning is reduced to 'not screwing up.'

Don't expect a knockout punch like Brian Mulroney's famed “You had an option, sir!” in tonight's leaders' debate, says Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star. “There is not a one-size-fits-all definition of a game-changing debate performance. That varies from leader to leader,” she writes, suggesting that Michael Ignatieff's goal is to banish his cosmopolitan reputation, Stephen Harper's is to look prime ministerial, Jack Layton's is to remind voters he still exists, and Gilles Duceppe's is to avoid becoming a Tory punching bag, as “for many voters, Duceppe is the poster boy for all that could go wrong in a minority Parliament.”

Scott Stinson of the National Post seconds Hébert, forecasting that “short of Michael Ignatieff acknowledging that he really is Just Visiting and that Harvard is quite lovely in the spring, or Stephen Harper producing a black book titled 'Hidden Agenda' from his blazer pocket,” we won't know until May 2 if a decisive blow was landed. Which shouldn't be surprising, since Mulroney's line was “the only time in recent memory anyone can recall an election swinging on the outcome of a perfect zinger.” This doesn't bode well for Ignatieff, intones Stinson, because “if Mr. Ignatieff has not outperformed his main opponent in the debates, he will have lost what is probably his best chance at starting to close the public-opinion gap between himself and the Conservative leader.”

In The Globe and Mail, Tom Flanagan and John Duffy suggest Duceppe is the wild card here, and should use the English debate “to give voters outside Quebec the impression that he wouldn't be a scary partner in a virtual coalition.” Duffy also finds one theme that could shape the debate, the concept of “variable victory”: Harper needs a majority or near-majority to govern, while Ignatieff needs only to remain “within hailing distance” of the Tories to plausibly earn a mandate to form the next government. “This situation is unprecedented in Canadian politics,” writes Duffy. “It could dominate the TV debates, and my guess is that it will dominate the second half of the campaign.”