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Abstract This study traced the strategic maneuvering and fallacies in 2012 two-prime presidential debates between President Barrack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. The study adopted the Pragma-dialectical methodology and its extended version of strategic maneuvering to handle the two debates. Fallacies destroyed the balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, that the extended version of pragma-dialectical theory was coined to achieve, by breaking the ten rules of critical discussion. The study was systematic in the analysis of the debates as an argumentative discourse. The top-voted segments of both debates followed a pattern that began with reconstruction of the discourse through the transformation processes. The analytic overview which presented the discourse in the form of critical discussion and fallacies were traced on the basis of dealing with them as derailments of strategic maneuvering. The study sought to reach an objective conclusion of declaring president Obama as the winner of this prestigious position inside the frame of the debates. The research investigated the way of developing his performance in the light of keeping balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness and presenting the acceptable form of strategic maneuvering in his discourse. Romney was not neglected, but his strategic maneuvering was examined as he sometimes gains popularity over his rival as in the first debate in Denver University. Fallacies were not be attributed to Romney as the runner-up of the contest, but they were measured in the two candidates’ discourses through the scale of objectivity. |