As was done for the Catholic Forensic League (CFL) national tournament, Extemp Central provides you with this topic area analysis for the United States extemp portion of next week’s NFL national tournament in Kansas City, Missouri.
In the final installment of our four-part series, we explore four of the thirteen topic areas at the 2010 NFL National Tournament in United States Extemp.
Topic Area #10: National Security and Homeland Security
Topic Area #11: The Obama Administration
Topic Area #12: State and Local Politics: Major Elections, Budgets, Welfare, and Immigration Issues
Topic Area #13: U.S. Policies, Programs, and Regulatory Policy
Keep reading to explore these areas in further depth.
Topic Area #10: National Security and Homeland Security
Arguably no other cabinet department this year has had as many problems as the Department of Homeland Security. Amid criticisms about immigration policy, the underwear bomber, the Times Square terror plot, and the Fort Hood attack, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been pressed to resign by the Republican Party for the better part of 2010 (so look for that as a question). Also, the Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair resigned last month and that has led some Washington observers to speculate that there is a turf war in the national intelligence community that is harming national security. Unsurprisingly, this topic area could turn into a second foreign policy round if the national security part of the question concerns America’s alliances abroad and its cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other countries to protect its economic interests and contain the threat of Islamic fundamentalism (i.e. Somali piracy). For sources, extempers should check the Department of Homeland Security’s website and print summaries of its policies and objectives. Furthermore, online records of some of the Congressional testimony of Homeland Security officials and security experts can be found online. The National Intelligence Council’s (NIC) prognostication of threats confronting America by 2015 is worth a read and is available here: http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2015.html#link12a. As with the American judiciary topic area, knowing your Constitution is important here in case any constitutional questions arise concerning the rights of terror suspects who are not American citizens. In this topic area you will likely have to gauge the success of security policies that have been implemented or recommend solutions to national security problems. In answering either question, you need to clearly explain what is being done about the problem or not being done. For example, if you are talking about the use of full body scanners at airports you need to explain why they are implemented and how they work. This demonstrates that you have a good command of the subject and are aware of why the government has justified their use. Sometimes in homeland security rounds you have to take risks. In 2002 at the Charlotte nationals I had a question about how airline safety could be enhanced and I recommended a plan that included behavioral profiling. I had to walk a fine line in that speech so that my analysis of behavioral profiling did not become racial profiling, but the risk paid off and I went straight 1’s for the round. You’re audience will know basic facts about current security policy and will have left or right-wing biases on the subject. It is best to fight these biases by brining a myriad of perspectives into your speech and showing why one is better than the other based on current circumstances. Even if judges disagree with your conclusion, you have a better chance of winning their rank if you include their view in your speech and prove your argument.
Issues you may face in this round include:
- America’s military presence on Okinawa
- America’s military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Korea
- America’s role in stopping Somali piracy
- The constitutionality of using full body scanners at airports
- If Janet Napolitano should resign
- How secure America’s borders are (north and south)
- What the biggest threat to American national security is
- How America can best combat the spread of Islamic fundamentalism
- If America has any major domestic terror threats and what it should do about them
- How Denis Blair’s resignation will impact the intelligence community
- If the Patriot Act should be repealed
Topic Area #11: The Obama Administration
This is a yearly topic area at NFL and they merely switch out the name of the president in question. For this round you need to be aware of all of the major figures in the Obama administration. This deals with officials that are not major cabinet officials. David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Robert Gibbs and Obama’s controversial “czars” fall into this category as well and will arguably be a bigger focus within this topic area than other cabinet officials. If you are unaware of what the chief-of-staff, White House press secretary, senior advisor, and these czars do then you need to find out before you go to Kansas City. Find brief descriptions online, read them, and then put them into your files because you might have to recall that information. You also need to be able to characterize Obama’s leadership style in this round. Based on his actions so far, Obama seems to be a delegation-type president as opposed to a micro manager. Some conservative publications like The Wall Street Journal have tried to paint Obama has a micro manager, but that was merely because he tried to tackle a ton of controversial issues at once, which isn’t the same as micro managing them. However, an extemper might be able to craft a convincing argument based on their evidence that Obama is a micro managing president because the jury is still out on that subject. I can’t stress enough that you can ill-afford to bash Obama or his officials in this round. Yes, you can point out their faults and explain why they are bad but you need EVIDENCE to prove your point. You may hate Obama, but if you don’t have facts and just assert things left and right you will alienate your audience quickly. Based on my experiences, most judges in the speech community are liberal or lean left, so that gives you another reason to be careful in this round. Again, this doesn’t mean that you have to take a pro-Obama stance on any issues dealing with the competency of his cabinet or on his actions so far, but you need to have evidence that proves your anti-Obama stance, and make sure it’s a mixture of evidence from papers of various political persuasions, so you don’t come off as a right-wing ideologue.
Issues you may face in this round include:
- The recent controversy over job offers to Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff and if the Department of Justice should have an independent inquiry into the matter
- If Robert Gibbs is an effective press secretary for the White House
- The constitutionality of Obama’s various czars
- The impact of the Blagojevich trial on the Obama administration
- Complaints that Eric Holder is exercising too much of a role in national security policy
- The ability of the Obama administration to react to a crisis
- Who the best cabinet official is in the Obama administration
- If Obama needs to shake up his economic policy team
Topic Area #12: State and Local Politics: Major Elections, Budgets, Welfare, and Immigration Issues
Whew, this is the longest topic area of the bunch and there are tons of issues that extempers can confront in this round, which I will list below. This is the second domestic politics topic area and this one will be concerned with local races in 2010, notably for governor’s seats in states like California, Texas, and New York. Overall, there will be 39 governor’s races in 2010 and I would recommend extempers go online and look for a survey of all 39 races. Last year, the University of Virginia broke down many of them but if that report is no longer available you can use Wikipedia to give you a quick overview of the subject. Just don’t take any information on there as the ultimate truth unless its cited and you have checked the citation. Since the national economy is in terrible shape it is not surprising that states budgets are in terrible shape as well. If you don’t have a “state economies” folder in your file box then you need to spend the next few days putting one together. There have been several articles published this year about states collective budget deficits and how their chances of being bailed out by Washington D.C. are slim because Washington D.C. is out of money. This topic area used to be referred to as “state and local issues” and was usually a bad topic area to run into. There used to be questions about things like Utah’s water problem and although those questions might exist, with lots of actions on the state level this year that have attracted attention like Arizona’s immigration law, Los Angeles boycott of Arizona over that law, Chicago’s gun ban controversy, etc. there are a lot of issues that extempers can play with. I’d recommend that domestic extempers spend a day going to local papers like The Arizona Republic, The Houston Chronicle, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Charlotte Observer, The Miami Herald, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and seeing if there are any worthwhile stories that should be cut for this round. As a fair warning, this topic area does not usually come up in prelims and I can almost guarantee you that you will hit it in the elimination rounds. Since the elimination rounds only factor into your cumulative score and prelims are discarded this is not a round to take lightly.
Issues that you might face in this round:
- State budget deficits (especially California and Connecticut’s recent credit downgrade)
- Arizona’s immigration policy and spat with Los Angeles
- Texas social studies curriculum and Arizona’s ethnic studies ban
- What role states should play in immigration policy
- The role of sanctuary cities and their impact on national immigration policy
- Water problems for Western states and the Great Lakes
- The Asian carp problem in the Great Lakes
- Governor’s elections in major states like California, New York, and Texas
- 2009 governor’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and what they say about the political landscape
Topic Area #13: U.S. Policies, Programs, and Regulatory Policy
This topic area encompasses anything and everything about the United States and there’s a reason for that. You know what it is? My prediction, with which I have nearly 90% certainty, is that this is the topic area for finals. If you have seen previous national final rounds (and if you haven’t you should view at least one of them with NFL.tv) you will notice that they are a hodgepodge of U.S. domestic policies dealing with social and economic issues. This is where you run into your questions about poverty, teacher pay (if you didn’t hit that in the education round), Social Security, etc. Since this topic area is so broad there isn’t a lot of advice to offer that hasn’t been offered in the other topic areas so far. All that I can say is that knowing the history of various social programs can greatly help you. If you know when a program was founded, what its initial goals were, and how those have changed you can paint a better picture of if that program has been successful and whether certain modifications need to be made to it or not. Also, keep in mind that political forces and special interest groups like to manipulate Congressional policy so those forces need to come into play if you discuss what legislation Congress will pass in the future concerning a certain policy issue (i.e. financial regulation). I’d also recommend that extempers read 2006 United States Extemp National Champion Colin West’s article about keeping judges attention in the November 2008 edition of The Ex Files for tips on handling questions for this round.
Issues that you might face in this round:
- The financial regulation bill
- Reforming unemployment benefits
- Social Security reform
- How America can help those who live in poverty
- If the U.S. should continue foreign aid to other nations because of the economic crisis
- New campaign finance reform
- Comprehensive immigration reform
- Cap and trade legislation
- Future bailouts in the economy for sectors like the news industry