ABSTRACT
Misdirection and distraction are part of a magician’s repertoire for creating a convincing illusion. A similar statement could be made about presidential candidates’ strategies for convincing audiences that they have answered a question. By telling a story or adding an example, candidates can disturb the fl ow of argument and shift the issues under contention. Debate consultants teach candidates to perform what strategist Brett O’Donnell called “the pivot” and reporters called “dodging the question” (as cited in Spiegel, 2012). Candidates can use pivoting to shift the ground of a debate, avoid responding to challenging questions, and address their own talking points. Scholars, reporters, and the public have not failed to notice this practice, but in the course of the presidential debates, candidates continually use their “magic” to pivot away from questions they don’t like and toward the answers they prefer to provide. I use Action-Implicative Discourse Analysis (Tracy, 1995) to examine the use of these pivots by President Obama and former Governor Romney in the 2012 presidential debates. Both candidates used a number of practices to attempt to shift grounds and control the topics of the debate. The control of those topics has important implications not only for avoiding topics, but also for creating a clear(er) clash of issues, refuting opposing positions, and attacking an opponent’s credibility.
