Dialogues in Americanism, a transscript of three debates at Pasadena, 1963-64, edited by Michael Gazzaniga. Regnery, $3.95 There was a time in American political history, or so legend would have us believe, when the formalized, catch-as-catch-can debate provided a nation with its favorite sport. In the Senate, the forensic battles between Hayne and Webster provided a whole generation of schoolboys with set orations. On the hustings, the seven marathon engagements of Lincoln and Douglas achieved a fame they perhaps did not deserve. In high schools and colleges, debating once ranked at least with tennis and rugby in terms of campus status.
Alas, no more. Only a handful of stemwinders remain in the Congress. The Statehouses are reduced, by and large, to second-raters who mumble into microphones. Television has taken over the political campaign; and the lost and lively art of debating survives but feebly in the public schools.
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