I read both the Instapundit and Scripting News regularly and so I’ve been following the little spat they’ve been having with some trepidation: how would Dave’s unique social skills fare against the John Kerry of the blogosphere?

On the other hand, this post from Matt Deatherage (linked from Scripting News) seems to capture the essence of why Dave doesn’t get why the Respectful Disagreement session went as badly as it did:

Dave’s [...] never going to back down just because someone says so. Prove him wrong or sit down. People like Glenn Reynolds are quite unused to this concept.

Ad hominems aside, the “Prove him wrong or sit down” school thought of though works well in science and engineering, it works less well in policy where the ultimate proof of right and wrong may come generations later, if at all.

It works especially poorly when applied to a facilitator of debate, and this seems to be the crux of the problem which Dave blissfully ignores.

The impression I get from the blogs covering the session is that Dave brought this very same quality into a forum in which he was the moderator (or discussion leader). Now moderators can and do have partisan agendas, but the skilled ones steer the conversation and try to give views they support more play — not firewall ideas they don’t like.