# Am I the only person bewildered to learn that somebody won that debate?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-bewildered-to-learn-that-somebody-won-that-debate/636828>\
**Category:** Politics & Elections\
**Created:** [October 5, 2012, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-bewildered-to-learn-that-somebody-won-that-debate/636828 "2012-10-05T17:30:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2012, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-bewildered-to-learn-that-somebody-won-that-debate/636828/81 "2012-10-15T20:17:22Z")

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> [@BigT](#):
>
> … The point of a debate is to provide information that will make me agree with you. Lying is cheating. … The point of a debate is that there’s supposed to be some sort of assurances that we are hearing the truth. …

I dunno where you got this idea – from high school speech classes? There is no team of judges to enforce rules or determine veracity. A moderator can’t be expected to know every detail of what a candidate might end up lying about. And even if a moderator calls someone out on _something_, then they get into a squabble about semantics and what was “really” said.

It has to be up to the other debater to call out the lies, and Obama failed miserably at that task in the first debate.

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