An average person lies three times in a ten minute conversation. This is what a study from the University of Southampton concluded last year. That without counting tortic exaggerations and interested omissions. Is it possible that in such a short talk any of us can be so mendacious? It looks awesome. But if you do the math, it turns out that in the face-to-face on Monday between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo some thirty lies would have been spilled. And yes, this time it would be said that there were many more. The lie is already the big issue of this campaign. The PP has spent months drawing a president installed in falsehood as a form of government and, after Monday’s debate, it will be the PSOE that insists that Feijóo practices both lies and cynicism.
The face to face hangover was bitter for the socialist team, taking into account the high expectations placed on the result of the television show. Sánchez’s environment recognized yesterday his astonishment at the start of the debate led by Feijóo: “A mountain of lies,” said the president. If they were, he failed to refute them. On the socialist side, the PP is accused of having adopted far-right practices such as the “Gish gallop”, which consists of machine-gunning the opponent with fallacies to paralyze him: when he tries to respond to one, two have already fallen further.
The fact is that the economic bloc, the first, should have been the most comfortable for the socialist and it was not like that. Whether with truths, half-truths or some falsehoods, Feijóo set his pace and took advantage of the confidence bonus that, fair or not, voters usually give the PP in these matters. Even Feijóo’s obsession with debt was intended to reinforce the image installed for many years of a wasteful PSOE with public accounts.
Sánchez and his ministers replied yesterday with the new slogan, which is to label Feijóo as a liar. They identify his way of proceeding with Trumpism and its hoaxes, techniques imported by Vox. Curiously, the PP has been accusing Sánchez for months of being a compulsive liar. The president tried to refute him with a phrase that was incomprehensible in the heat of the debate when he repeated that Feijóo’s thing is the “mirror technique” (actually, the reflection technique). Sánchez wanted to say that his rival accused him of exactly what he was doing. It is something that the president has been discussing for some time with his collaborators, stunned by the depth that what he considers caricatures of his person have been acquiring. But without a doubt, few of those who were watching television – or rather no one – understood what Sánchez was referring to with that expression.
Meanwhile, Feijóo wore the yellow jersey yesterday after fulfilling his fundamental objective, condensed in the final minute of the debate, when he addressed the voters directly to ask them for a sufficient majority so as not to depend on Vox. Indeed, the PP considers that it has averted any flight to the extreme right – even recovering voters – and without losing in the center, thanks to a forceful performance in form and without getting too wet in substance.
The euphoria in the PP was patent. They consider that they have managed to end the expectation of a socialist comeback. By staging the signing of the commitment to support the most voted list, Feijóo wanted to convey the message that he wants to govern alone, that he prefers an abstention from the PSOE rather than support from Vox. And he already places Feijóo in the next step of the campaign, which will be to appeal to socialist voters to vote for him to avoid the influence of the extreme right.
The next television flying goal is the three-way debate that Feijóo has declined to attend, next Friday, with Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz and Santiago Abascal. In Sumar they hope that the PSOE will hold out and her candidate will win her particular duel with Vox for third place. This debate can serve to encourage the disenchanted on the left.
But it does not seem that Sánchez has much to gain in this debate in which Abascal will undoubtedly go looking for a brawl. Feijóo withdrew so as not to be contaminated by Vox and Sánchez, for the moment, maintains his presence because he pledged his word to go where they called him and to show Feijóo’s little desire to debate, but the spectacle can be little comforting for an image presidential.
