European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 21, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 columns the stars and stripes William f. Buckley to mis impressions May elect the president the prolonged fuss Over he forthcoming debates Between the presidential candidates reminds us How unwarranted the emphasis we put on them is. It May be probably is that die illusion is self inflicted thai debates Are that important. Yet it is an accepted part of our Politi Cal history that Richard Nixon went Down because he lost that firs debate to John Kennedy with the ensuing effects Nixon traumatized Kennedy transfigured. We tend to think that Ger Ald Ford s confusion of Poland with swe Den had something to do with his narrow defeat at he hands of Jimmy Carter. We know thai Lyndon Johnson saw no Point in debating with Barry Gold Ater that Nixon the challenger saw no Point in de bating with Hubert Humphrey and that Nixon the incumbent saw no Point in debating with George Mcgovern. Finally we know that however Brumma Gem the soundings we were Given to be Lieve that Ronald Reagan s off form performance against Walter Mondale in 1984 actually made possible i Don t be Lieve it a Mondale upset had it not been for the Strong rebound of Reagan a fort night later. When is it a debate when an Exchange obviously a meet the press format lends to be an Exchange though when one thinks Back on some of those programs featuring Larry Spivak As interrogator it s True hat the guest often found himself doing the work of a wit Ness on the stand doggedly pursued by a prosecutor. The Brinkley Snow is More an Exchange than a debate since the Gavel gently pounds Down on the interrogators after they have been allowed one or at most two Piston stroke follow . Some two weeks ago i participated in a debate formally classified As such by the producer who dictated the format. At no Point did any of the eight principals they were on the right Jack Kemp Jeanc Kirkpatrick Henry Kissinger and myself and on the left Gary Hart George Mcgovern Patricia Schroeder and Paul Warnoc have More than three minutes in which to press their Points. Three minutes is usually in sufficient time to develop the rhetorical dimensions of political analysis. A proper debate of he kind still sponsored in . Colleges and most Success fully in Cambridge and at Oxford gives the opening speaker 10 to 12 minutes and the Opportunity of a five minute rebuttal. The convention is that the affirmative speaker will go first and last. A typical debate format Between two contestants goes As follows a is or. A Speaks for 15 minutes. B-1s. A a rebut Talb-5. Questions from the floor for 20 minutes. A i Surry butial a-5. Now nothing of the sort is planned Between George Bush and Michael Dukakis. What the blood gallery will be looking for is Speed and wit Ana decisive Ness and the general impression left. Abraham Lincoln spoke at the Douglas debates for an hour. Any presidential candidate who spoke for one hour at a debate would end up with the electoral count of maybe Massachusetts. An effective debate depends on the capacity to build in the mind of the listener. The scholars of the Middle Ages acknowledged learning As com posed first of grammar then of logic and finally  in the first the student needed to be taught the tools of learning the meaning of words Llic composition of a sentence. Logic was the study of Structure As in mathematical and Geometric structures. In rhetoric the first two were to get subsumed Lan Guage plus Structure gave us the higher plane by which people Are moved. It in t easy to retrace these step in three minutes with the result that we Are reduced to evaluating Quick cracks bites the journalists Call them. Be Lieve it or not the Young Fop was incautious enough to Challenge John Wilkes inthe 18th Century i was born on mid night the first Day of  that comes As no Surprise sir. You could Only have been conceived on the first Day of  thai kind of stuff is Good fun but let s face it if it were the primary criterion for going to the while House it would be occupied by Johnny Carson. And after eight years George bums. And so on. Deftness of manner and Quick Wil Are wonderful and wonderfully useful Tut we have no reason to believe that these were properties exercised by Pericles and god knows they were nol exercised by Queen Victoria. So that a debate be tween presidential candidates becomes primarily an Exchange endangering the two participants if one should Luffer there you go again at the hands of the other. Beyond that one get just that impression of the candidate. And of course an impression done through to can be a mis impression. And we know that some candidates Bank on Minim press ions.  synd pm Andrew j. Glass Earth showing effects of environmental abuse the ancient greek philosopher Aristotle taught that Uherc were but four Basic elements that made up the Cosmos air water Earth and fire. The run of the news these Days suggests that the greeks May have been right. Last year the world turned hot and dry. This year the world did so again shattering records. Wildfire swept through the american West scorching millions of acres. Floods inundated Bangladesh spawning epidemics. The mightiest Hurricane to strike the Western hemisphere in a Century left a track of destruction while disrupting millions of lives. What s going on arc vie headed toward a world wide environmental armageddon arc the gentle years of milk and Honey no More to be seen honest answers arc hard to come by. News bulletins All Loo often simply serve to scare rather than to in form. Is ill the weight of he evidence suggests that we humans have at Long last managed to alter he Way our planet works and not at All for the better. Earlier this year James Hanson director of the Nasa Goddam Institute for space studies told a sen ate panel that readings from More than 2,000 weather stations around the Globe coupled with a compilation of hundreds of thousands of historical temperature readings from ships at sea and other sources have persuaded him that major weather changes Are at work. In sum Hansen testified that five of the 10 warmest years since records have been kept have been in this decade. Last year was the warmest on record. Readings from the first five months of 1988 Indi Cate that if a drastic Cooling trend fails to come about in the next few months this year will not Only supplant 1967 As the warmest year but the year to year increase i n temperatures will also be a record. Scientists set the Odds against such a change occurring merely by Chance at 99-to-l. Instead they see a High probability that these changes Stem from the triggering of the Long dreaded greenhouse effect the phenomenon by which Man made hydrocarbons actually can alter the Earth s Basic atmosphere. Nasa s meteorological calculations were based on worldwide readings for the first five months of 1988. They were taken before the great june july August drought that parched much of the Midwest and served As the underlying spark for the massive fires which have blackened so much of Yellowstone National Park and other great forests. So the background scene is not at All encouraging. Perhaps such ominous signals will in due time con Vince us that we should try harder to live in Harmony with nature even if that Means altering our Priori ties and letting go of some financial profits. Indeed a turnabout toward sanity May have already begun. Eight Yean ago As a presidential candidate Ronald Reagan said something silly about tree Caus ing pollution. Now vice president George Bush Rea Gan s conservative political heir goes to dirty bos ton Harbor and heresy be damned pledges to employ Federal tax dollars 10 clean up a mess that the Liberal governor of Massachusetts Michael s. Duka Kis allegedly allowed to fester. Even Hie soviets who once loved nothing More than to fire up their blast furnaces have begun to respond to environmental concerns. They have abandoned a plan to reverse the course of two siberian Rivers that now flow into the Arctic Pecan after concluding that the ecological risks outweigh any potential agricultural benefits. For some of us however it May already be too lately shift course. For instance in 18 18 a colossal storm swept up Tampa Bay flooding much of Florida s Low lying water table. Studies show that today such a storm would wipe out some 275,000 Homes. As with so much else in nature s grasp the question is not if it will happen but merely when