What do broadcast journalist Jane Pauley, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Congress of Racial Equality founder James Farmer Jr. have in common?

They are all former debaters.

Debate, like no other extracurricular activity, hones skills in research, analysis, logic and the ability to weigh both sides of an issue.

In fact, at the end of a forensic season, if you were to ask which side of a resolution a debater actually supports, you'd probably get a shrug. Once forced to examine all the evidence on any topic, he or she can't help but conclude that the truth lurks in the gray netherworld between black and white.

According to Timothy M. O'Donnell, chairman of the National Debate Tournament, "Compared to intercollegiate athletics and other costly endeavors, debate is, dollar for dollar an inexpensive, educational and effective way to both promote schools and enhance the quality of the academic experience."

Recently, a documentary ("Resolved") and a feature film ("The Great Debaters") glimpsed the dark side of debate as well.

The "Resolved" trailer (http://www.debatemovie.com/) begins with four young men apparently speaking in tongues, as they intersperse undefined jargon (flow, topicality, kritik) with an alphabet soup of federal agencies.

Then the real shocker grabs your attention. A speaker named Sam rears back and starts literally spitting out words — at the totally unintelligible rate of 400 per minute. His auctioneer-like delivery is only interrupted by audible gulps for air. There is nobody in the audience, save the judge.

No wonder intercollegiate debate is on the decline. In fact, only one in 10 schools now support the once de rigueur academic pursuit.

Assisted by stop-motion animation, "Resolved" chronicles the advent of "the spread," a technique originally instigated by a national champion wannabe during the early '60s.

Instead of leisurely issuing a few well fleshed-out arguments in a 10-minute constructive, he would spew as many points as possible (quality giving way to quantity) to propel his opponent into attempting to "cover" or respond to each during a five-minute rebuttal.

Most teams competing before the spread became established, carted evidence around in a recipe card box. Today, refrigerator dollies are required to lug five or six oversized Rubbermaid tubs bursting with cards.

If you'd rather view debate's golden years, rent Denzel Washington's "The Great Debaters." The film follows a team from historically black Wiley College (Marshall, Texas), that packed auditoriums by amassing a string of Jim Crow South-stunning victories over white competitors. Renowned poet Melvin B. Tolson was the coach. Farmer, Wiley's most famous alum, told American Legacy: "I debated Malcolm X four times and beat him. I'd think, come off it Malcolm, you can't win. You didn't come up under Tolson."

While Tolson insisted only he was capable of constructing arguments for his students, as conquests boosted confidence, the debaters started substituting their own thoughtful analyses — peppered with vivid personal anecdotes.

Only once was the playing field between black and white debaters actually level, however — when both teams, armed with a stack of the same books and only a day to prepare, argued civil disobedience without their coaches in Cambridge, Mass. Actually, the film fudged. In real life, Wiley faced-off against USC on April 1, 1935. Harvard wasn't the reigning debate power at that time.

When "Resolved" shifts to Louis Blackwell and Richard Funches, who came out of nowhere — namely Long Beach Jordan High School — to become state champions, there are echoes of the golden years. Even though their inner-city school lacked travel funds and subscription databases, their hard work paid off.

In 2006, however, the dynamic duo felt led by Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" to debate the structure of debate itself. "We decided to throw out all the evidence," Funches explains in the film, "and (conversationally) talk about why debate wasn't educational for us."

This approach, although it won the ballots of many "fed-up-with-spread-debate" judges, didn't result in a second championship. Reform, like virtue, is its own punishment.

Is there a lesson here for either Barack Obama, who recently reneged on his promise to restrict himself to public funds, or John McCain, whose name is eponymous, if not synonymous, with campaign finance reform?

Like the first debater to exploit the spread to his advantage, Obama, according to experts, will spread $300 million in television ads throughout all 50 states before Election Day. McCain, however, who opted to honor his pledge, may well realize the cost, like young Funches and Blackwell, of standing on principle.

Besides Pauley, Alito and Farmer, Karl Rove also claims to be a former debater. We would be wise to remember the principles-challenged political operative's parting words upon vacating the West Wing on August 31, 2007: "You all had something to do with keeping me employed."

— Beverly Kelley, Ph.D., who writes a biweekly column for The Star, is an author and acting chair of the Communication Department at California Lutheran University. Visit http://beverlykelley.typepad.com/my_weblog. Her e-mail address is kelley@clunet.edu.