This article from The Independent gives a good comparison between British debating style,
their interaction with their politicians and American lack of debate
along with deference to Senators.

Galloway: The man who took on America
How did one maverick MP manage to outgun a committee of senior US politicians so successfully? And did he make any lasting impact? Rupert Cornwell reports from Washington, 19 May 2005 […]
We tend to see politics as a public bloodsport. In the US politics is as brutal as anywhere. But the violence usually takes place off-stage, in the lobbying process, in the money game, in the ruthless manipulation of scandal. True, every four years there are presidential election candidates’ “debates”. But – with the exception of Bill Clinton – every recent American president would have been slaughtered weekly if he had to face Prime Minister’s Questions. On the public stage, US politicians are not accustomed to serious challenge.[…]

more below…

Perhaps he [Coleman] believed that a smooth ride would be ensured by the traditional deference accorded the Senate (which is fond of referring to itself, with barely a trace of irony, as “the world’s greatest deliberative body”). In fact, proceedings only served to underline the average senator or congressman’s ignorance of the world beyond America, be it the underlying realities of the Middle East, or the polemical ways of British public life.

Oops, touché – does that mean that you think the Senate is NOT the “world’s greatest
deliberative body?”
How could you say that, you cruel Brit writer! Actually it was a great ‘body’
when Galloway was speaking. Unfortunately most of the great deliberators/Senators
left the room long before Galloway finished his speech.

But anyone expecting such colour in the more august broadsheets will have been severely disappointed. The Washington Post and The New York Times devoted only inside-page coverage. The Times noted that Mr Coleman, despite being a former prosecutor, seemed “flummoxed” by Mr Galloway’s “aggressive posture and tone”. Both singled out the MP’s debating skill. It is a skill on which, alas, American politics place little premium.

The New York Post’s Andrea Peyser called Galloway a thug, a bully, a left-lackey and a viper.
Guess she didn’t like him. I thought he was a Don Quixote throwing
aside the US rules for the Senate and using his visit to slam the US
for the military action in Iraq. He didn’t forget to say “I told you so” either.

Galloway:
“Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life’s blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

 “Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

Full text of Galloway’s historic speech.

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