Kamala Harris. Donald Trump. Gish Gallop.
All three are expected to attend Tuesday's presidential debate, even if most of America is unfamiliar with one name in that lineup.
GG, as I have come to call it, is a shell game/debate tactic that takes its name from Duane Gish, a prominent figure in the creationist movement who deployed dubious arguments, selective data, and quick lies to overwhelm his opponents in public discussions of the theory of evolution.
The disinformation technique, dubbed “Gallop Gish” in 1994 by National Center for Science Education founding director Eugenie Scott, is essentially the art of burying your opponent in falsehoods, outlandish rhetoric and red herrings, making it nearly impossible for them to cut through the subterfuge and correct the lies within the timed confines of a debate.
For the GG method to work in our favor, it requires criminal levels of confidence and exhibitionism. I'm not suggesting that former President Trump studied the late creationist's playbook, if there is such a thing. For that, you'd have to read it. But there are a number of instructional videos.
In those recordings, Gish advises potential debaters to avoid talking about too many topics in public, to avoid overly technical arguments, and to limit themselves to a few simple arguments, such as insisting that fossils are not proof of human evolution but fakes and hoaxes. Does this witch hunt sound familiar?
If the secret to Trump's ascendant failure is for sale, why don't morally more flexible politicians take advantage of the technique?
“There are a lot of mini-Trumps: Marjorie Taylor Green, Kari Lake. JD Vance would like to be one of them, but he has the personality of a potato,” says famed polemicist and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media organization Zeteo and author of “Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking.”
“The problem is that Trump, love him or hate him, clearly has something else going on in his personality. He’s shameless and weird, but it’s there. The only thing he’s ever done well in life is reality TV, not business or real estate development. He brought that style and that unfortunate malign talent to the 2016 presidential stage and has capitalized on it ever since,” Hasan says.
The Harris-Trump debate will certainly loom large on Tuesday, when ABC News broadcasts the Harris-Trump debate live from Philadelphia. Need proof that I’m not trying to sell you made-up fossils? Last month, the Republican nominee dropped a minimum of 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in an hour-long press conference, according to a team of fact-checkers and NPR journalists.
Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in their second presidential debate in 2016.
(Saul Loeb/Associated Press)
Vice President Harris is better prepared than most when it comes to cornering an obfuscated opponent. She began her career in Alameda County prosecuting cases involving child sexual assault, homicides, and robbery. She later became the managing attorney of the Professional Criminal Unit in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, where she oversaw the prosecution of repeat offenders.
“In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, she did make the case against Trump, and if she sticks to that… [tactic] “If she says that on the debate stage, he’s going to be in trouble,” Hasan says of her speech last month at the Democratic National Convention. “She has pointed out that he has indeed been found guilty of rape. If she says that on the debate stage, he’s going to lose his mind.”
Despite eight years and two election cycles in which Trump, knowingly or unknowingly, applied Gish’s gallop strategy during his bid for the presidency, American debates still function around the assumption that each participant will argue in good faith. Trump’s rivals Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton and President Biden are among the unfortunates who showed up to their sword fights with a sword (some sharper than others) only to find Trump armed with the verbal equivalent of a leaf blower and a chainsaw.
Biden has consistently derailed debate protocol, thrown moderators and his rivals off balance, and left the audience less informed than before the debate began. The moderators have been virtually at a disadvantage during this round of debates because they have agreed that there will be no real-time fact-checking of the candidates. Biden’s latest disastrous debate with Trump is a case in point.
“The moderator just has to nod,” says Hasan. “If you watch the first debate in June, there's a moment where… [Trump] says Democrats kill babies after they are born. And [moderator] Jake Tapper simply says, “Thank you, Mr. President.” There is no opposition. The rules of debate do not allow it.
It's a stage made for the Gish Gallop.
