That line of argument seems contrived for debating purposes.
Within the enforced, conversational, give-and-take of the debate's structure, crafted language (i.e., language that utilizes rhetorical devices) comes off as artificial and contrived, and debates don't provide the place for a sweeping emotional climax.
Ms. Schiavo's ambiguous predicament invokes so many serious ethical questions in fact that it was baffling to see the news channels concentrate on nothing but contrived Washington debates.
Contrast the last 12 months: some debate contrived, some real, some ideologically synthetic, some evanescent, but all searingly public.
"He's contriving, discussing, debating, reflecting, as we know him," Mr. Meile wrote.
After one US election debate, the Conan O'Brien show somehow contrived to get its sensationally impertinent puppet, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, into Spin Alley.
This is not the contrived "classical music is dead" quandary that has been debated repeatedly for decades (controversially in Mark Vanhoenacker's 2014 Slate article "Requiem: Classical music in America is dead").
Because the audience had seen the unplugged, petulant Bush in the first debate, it knew that his subsequent reinventions were as contrived (if not as effective) as Sally Field's in "Sybil".
As I wrote at the time, it seemed deliberately contrived to exclude any kind of left-wing ideas from the debate.
I don't buy the criticism that he contrived a cynical political potpourri to pander to every side in the debate over the war.
