Space in your AC is a precious commodity. You have sixminutes to lay out the bulk of your argumentative arsenal, and prepare towithstand a host of more or less predictable Negative strategies. ManyAffirmative debaters make the core of their strategic logic a state of nearparanoia about wonky tactics the Neg might deploy. Dense, analytic, spikeyframeworks are designed to set traps into which the unsuspecting Negative willfall if they try to up-layer with theory or purposefully muddy the round. I’msympathetic to this instinct; many obnoxious Negative tactics do screw uprounds on a regular basis. Nevertheless, I think that many of the frameworkarguments Affirmatives run in response don’t have the strategic utility theyimagine. Below are three common framework arguments that I believe aren’t generallyworth your time when compared to better substantive development of a positionaladvocacy.
1. Presumption
Many debaters start their case positions asking the judge topresume Affirmative in the absence of offense, generally for a host oftheoretical reasons like Affirmatives losing more often, time skew, Neg flex,etc. In a world where many judges think that skeptical defense against astandard can somehow constitute a take-out of the entire case position, I guessthis scenario looks somewhat more likely than I think it really is. Similarly,inflexible requirements for how thoroughly arguments need to be re-explained inan extension increase the probability that a judge will decide that the roundis utterly devoid of offense. (I admit to being guilty of this type of rigidityin the past).
Nonetheless, at the end of the day I don’t think you getmuch strategic advantage from a presumption spike. Trying to wash the standardsdebate by piling on dozens of blippy, non-comparative objections is a weakstrategy. Not only does it require you to essentially abandon your substantivestrategy for the round, it also requires you to make your judge so uncertainthat they disregard all offense entirely. Similarly, proforma objections to your opponent’s extensions areunlikely to convince a judge that there is no reasonable risk of offense in theround.
This argument just tempts you to spend time extending it asa “backup” plan in case your real strategy doesn’t work. Not only is thatperceptually weak, but it trades off with execution of your substantivestrategy in rebuttals. Your instinctshould not be to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. Thebest affirmative debaters never winon presumption. They win by executing a deliberate, meaningfully plannedstrategy that actually engages with the substance of their opponents’positions.
2. Prefer AffirmativeInterps
It’s also common for the AC to argue that the judge shouldprefer reasonable Aff interps. This is usually justified by the idea that Negcould always run some type of topicality argument, and if that argument wins itkills 6 of the Aff’s 13 minutes of speech time. The basic idea is to preventthe Neg from up-layering with theory that they are going to kick in the 2NRanyway.
I think this argument is problematic for several reasons.The first is that it doesn’t actually solve the problem. All topicalityobjections will claim that the Aff interpretation is unreasonable, which meansthat the debate on the theory flow has to play itself out regardless of thisspike. If the Neg interp is manifestly unreasonable, then you can make thesesame arguments as “Err Aff on theory” in the 1AR, where they are morepersuasive and more strictly necessary. Moreover, this argument doesn’t preventthe Neg from up-layering with other kinds of theory objections. There are manystock theory arguments that don’t plausibly criticize any Affirmative “interp” (unless“prefer Aff interps” means “the Aff should be allowed to do whatever it choseto do,” which seems like a strange way to read this argument).
Second, this argument is too often used to bolster somewonky, hidden interpretation in the AC that the Neg failed to recognize. “TheNeg conceded the spike in the third argument that he couldn’t runcounter-plans, and the spike in the fifth argument that he couldn’t rundisadvantages, so there is no risk of negative offense. Remember he alsoconceded that you prefer Aff interpretations, so don’t let him challenge itnow.” Good grief, I guess the idea is that turnabout is fair play when it comesto ridiculous theory. ACs should just have an actually reasonablyinterpretation, and then they will be ahead on any silly theory objection theNeg runs. Why give the 1NC legitimate grounds to run the theory arguments youare so afraid of?
3. I don’t have todefend implementation.
This argument has a long history, but I was surprised tohear it come roaring back to life at the Glenbrooks. It is and has always beenunequivocal nonsense. Impacts come from an advocacy. It makes no sense to say thatthe resolution is normatively good unlessit is implemented. To say that the resolution is normatively good isprecisely to say that it should be “implemented.” I haven’t the foggiest ideawhat it means to affirm or negate but not defend implementation.
I think when debaters say something like this, they arereally trying to make one of two arguments. First, they might be trying to saythat they don’t defend a specificimplementation. In other words, they don’t defend a plan, they affirm the “wholeresolution.” Presumptively this means that the Affirmative should defend all topical advocacies (which is usuallythe opposite of what they are trying to accomplish). The response to sillycounter-warrants or DAs to obscure Aff advocacies is to say that they havelittle epistemic weight because they are not representative of the resolutionin general (they are extreme or obscure examples), not that they have no linkbecause “the Aff doesn’t have to defend implementation.”
The second type of argument this debater might be trying tomake is that their impacts can be non-consequentialist. This is really astandards level argument about which types of impacts are weightier thanothers, not a framework argument about what the Aff has to defend and not. Evenif your impacts link to non-consequentialist standards, they still derive fromyour advocacy. It may be that we should adopt the resolution because it isrequired by a Kantian moral rule (for example) and not because it has good consequences.But that just means that the implementationof the resolution is required by the rule, not that you don’t have to defendimplementation in the first place. If implementing the resolution in fact violated a Kantian moral rule, thatwould be a reason not to do it. A turn to that effect couldn’t be “no-linked”because the Aff claims not to defend implementation.
Conclusion
The best frameworks are short and sweet: A reasonableinterpretation of the resolution to give you strong, substantive answers tosilly theory objections, followed by deep development of a substantiveadvocacy. Put away the bag of tricks, it’s a crutch that’s keeping you fromdebating at your very best.