Ledger

The Debates

It’s spring break Thursday and I’m plodding through 10 a.m. traffic that thinks it’s rush hour. When I-5 slows to a parking lot, I have some free time with which to imagine public embarrassment, something I’d been too excited and/or busy to think much about. My awful high school speech tape, delivered at about 200 rpm, replays in my mind. So does tripping over my own feet onstage at graduation. I think briefly about turning the car around and phoning in a case of the flu, but fear tends to tick me off and I get my second wind of enthusiasm before I’m past Sea-Tac.

The consulate is putting the 16 students up in the Seattle Westin. The hotel lobby is a mix of marble and snooty concierges. I scratch to make sure nothing is hanging out of my nose during check-in. When I get to the room I meet my partner, Lindsay, from the University of Lethbridge. She knows a hell of a lot more about American politics than I do. I casually move the conversation around to exactly what we are expected to do the next day. She doesn’t know. In fact, she’d hoped I did. Oh well; we debate in less than 24 hours. Only one thing to do: a laptop marathon and the dependable comfort of research. By midnight I’ve ingested enough caffeine to jazz an elephant. When I find myself typing random letters, I decide sleep may be in order. I’ve managed not to think about the knot in my stomach for most of the day.

Some strange confluence of the laws of physics occurs and I wake up approximately three seconds after closing my eyes to an alarm clock that insists it’s 7 a.m. Lindsay and I hike the downtown hills on our way to the Seattle Public Library. (For a bit of fun, you should try this in 3-inch heels and a skirt sometime.) We arrive with sore calves, clutching mega-espressos, and it’s show time.

When I’m introduced my stomach starts up the Watusi. I walk to the podium trying not to think about tripping, convulsively wringing my note cards into papier mache. After a two-hour walk to the podium, I face the audience. Breathe in, breathe out, begin.

Now, I’ve followed ANWR casually for a while, but I spent weeks before Crossing Borders reading everything from congressional testimony to USGS and National Academy of the Sciences documents. I search-engined every ANWR-related term imaginable. I interviewed biologists, ecologist, members of the Alaska Inter-tribal Council and my great aunt Sally. I have notes. I have notes about notes. I dreamt about melting ice and polar bears. I know what I want to say. I decide to quit being nervous and say it. I speak as earnestly as I know how, and enjoy it.

Toward the end, I wonder why one judge flinches as though someone had stuck a hot coal in his cowboy boot. I’d quoted Carl Sagan: "When you look at earth from space, it is striking. There are no national boundaries visible. They have been put there, like the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn, by humans. The planet is real. The life on it is real, and the political separations that have placed the planet in danger are of human manufacture… all the beings on this planet are interdependent. It’s like living in a lifeboat." Not what you’d normally consider offensive material, but I see this guy bristle up like a threatened porcupine. He is Slade Gorton, Washington’s Senator until Maria Cantwell clobbered him. But I don’t know this yet. All I know about him is that he seems to develop an odd twitch any time someone mentions politicians in bed with special interest. Interesting, but I’m willing to forgo judgment, though he looks like a poster child for White Male Career-Politicians Anonymous. Later I discover he is a recipient of Sierra Club’s Dirty Water Award, and one of the "Dirty Dozen" politicians named by environmental groups toward the end of his career.

After my speech comes the much-emphasized Q & A. Before the moderator can say "and now…" Gorton is halfway through his first question. What’s odd about this first "Q" is that it isn’t a "Q" at all; it’s an imperative. "I want each one of you give the most convincing pro-drilling argument you can." My jaw drops. My blood pressure skyrockets. I can’t believe I’ve been ordered by a Republican ex-Senator to give a public pro-oil speech. It takes me about two seconds to regain my composure and it’s on. Gorton hammers us with every tired pro-oil cliché ever invented. He is short on fact and shorter on understanding; he even tries the old "but what about the locals who need all that oil money?" argument. This is Mickey Mouse oil argumentation; I point out the oil industry’s dismal record of taking care of the locals after the oil dries up.