Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who is advising several Democrats on Capitol Hill, said whoever defined the debate would win it.
For example, a 1998 study by two former Ivy League presidents, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, not only presented powerful arguments for affirmative action in higher education, but also defined the debate.
With some drafts circulating and others still largely in the mind's eye of Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who heads the Finance Committee, opponents have defined the debate and befuddled the public.
Mr. Silver also defined the debate as a choice between preserving state spending or letting local property taxes rise to cover the loss of state aid, an argument Mr. Bruno echoed.
That post and its siblings have ignored the huge wave of protests from consumers, reductively defined the debate as being about the morality of theft, and have tried to intimidate both enemies and timid allies.
As the Middle East's most stable democracy turns inward, experts say a growing majority of Israelis have given up on the land-for-peace paradigm that has defined the debate for decades, cementing the country's shift to the right in politics, policy and public discourse.
That controversy has usually defined the debate around the philosophical foundations of economic analysis of law.
This has defined the debate about whether the stimulus is working.
In the past decade, federal interventions have defined the debate on equity in education, but noticeable progress -- measured by college enrollment and completion for minority populations -- has been mediocre at best.
Without getting into one of fashion's endless dog-ate-my-homework excuses ("It's not that we want thin models, it's just that we only make the samples in a size minus two, so then you see we have to use thin models!"), it is true that catwalks do not set the ideals or define the debates or create the dysmorphias.
