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Warren Christopher changes stripesans Horowitz

howdy.  long, long ago ('79 - '80) i went to several tournaments as a 
judge for ya'll while an undergrad at MIT.  i can answer your questions, 
i think.

"a. is it fair to the affirmative to have to debate things that are not
reasons to reject the affirmative plan"

yes.  

remember, under affirmative plan focus, the 1AC is the product of months 
of research, analysis, refining and editing, block building, reading, 
telephone calls, and more thought.  it is also the argument run in fully 
one-half of the debates that a team is involved in:  for an active 
national circuit CEDA team, that means it is presented and defended 
about 60-70 times by nationals.  now, the hapless negative MAY have 
heard the plan a few times before the debate, they may also have spent a 
bit of time preparing to debate against it as well as against the myriad 
of other affirmatives it has to debate against.  a few harried minutes 
of lexis-nexis is the time they often get to think things over before 
being carted into the room as the sacrificial goats de jure.  

in CEDA affs win about 70%+ of their rounds:  that is a 50% advantage 
over the negative in round after round - that is an empirical NOW is 
UNFAIR.  it seems to be similar in the NDT.  Kate Shuster recently 
pointed out that it was a very lucky thing to go aff often on Emory's 
way to the NDT Championship.  my guess it's about the same story in HS.
that's because of the above story of life in debate.

also, remember that under "affirmative plan focus" THE motivation for 
the affirmative is to find the "clashless" affirmative:  no disads link, 
no counterplans compete, no topicality arguments are clean.  and they 
get to CHOOSE the plan from an often HUGE set of resolutional examples - 
that means they look over the whole set and pick the BEST, LEAST CLASH 
1AC from the lot.  then negative gets to get up and b.s. about why the 
affirmative links to a Clinton credibility disad on the road to another 
L.

now, plan-plan reverses the incentives.  aff and neg get to pick from 
the same topical pool of plans.  aff still gets first pick.  they should 
pick carefully, because neg gets second pick.  they choices are compared 
in the debate.  an aff which goes for "no clash" loses fast and so does 
a neg.  the neg gets as much and as little prep time as the aff does.  
the teams most prepared to defend their advocacy while answering the 
other's advocacy should, ideally, win.

a final pre-empt:  if you are facing a 50% disadvantage now by being 
negative, the EQUIVALENT "unfairness" by introducing plan-plan is a 50% 
advantage to going negative.  no one has come close to arguing that 
plan-plan is THAT skewed negative and a lot of plan-plan debates have 
occurred:  my guess is that it is about 50-50 aff/neg.

"b. I understand that it does not come under the "theory" of P2 to have
permutations, but I mean, why not?  Why can the affirmative not argue 
that the counterplan is not a reason to reject the plan, that you could 
just do both?"

great question and it is THE right question to ask.  the answer is that 
a "negative plan" is NOT a reason to reject the plan.  it is only if you 
ASSUME that the ballot is cast based on whether or not to adopt the 
affirmative plan that this question is relevant.  plan-plan says that 
the judge decides whether to adopt the affirmative plan or whether to 
adopt the negative plan.  NOT whether or not to adopt the affirmative 
plan.  see the difference?  that's why competition and permutations are 
irrelevant - they are artifacts of affirmative plan focus.

"c. does not the negtaive get a huge advantage, i.e. I prep out my HUGE
counterplan that I can run EVERY negative round unless the other team
is running my counterplan as an affirmative.  Does that not crush 
research, etc??"

the first part of the question you answer yourself.  just substitute 
"affirmative" in every instance that you use "negative" above and you 
describe NOW.  but under plan-plan each side gets the SAME ability to 
prepare.  and affirmative speaks first so they get first pick.

the second question is more difficult to answer.  the answer is no, not 
"crush research", but does it increase or decrease the research burden, 
i dunno.  remember, aff now coasts answering a few disads and making 
sure their non-uniques get updated while neg tries like hell to link to 
affs that don't give them any links or just give up and research a few 
generic disads to get okay on.  under plan-plan those who win can extend 
their advocacy while answering the other team's advocacy.  that requires 
research.  a simple way to think about this is:  you're aff and you know 
that folks will have "HUGE" negative plans to run against you - you can 
lose or you can RESEARCH answers against those negative plans.  same 
thing when you're neg - you know the affs know that ...

finally, remember, if plan-plan is SO good at giving negatives an 
"unfair advantage" then you can do one of two things:  keep losing when 
you're negative or run plan-plan.

respectfully,
michael miroslav korcok
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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