Each speaker had learned to prevaricate until the bell sounded. (prevaricate: equivocate, palter, hedge) A glib opening led to an inane anecdote, then a vacuous conclusion. (glib: facile, slick, smooth-talking; inane: senseless, silly, foolish; vacuous: empty, hollow, inane) The moderator had heard the gamut of clever evasion. (gamut: full range, spectrum, whole range; evasion: avoidance, dodging, equivocation) A vapid speech could survive applause if nobody remembered the original question. (vapid: insipid, dull, bland)
Under her chair was a pad bearing the words "What happened to the footbridge?" It had belonged to a quiet resident whose letter had prompted the debate. Had anybody answered him? The debaters were struck by the pertinence of a sentence that could fit into a coat pocket. (pertinence: relevance, applicability, appositeness)
She asked them which claims actually pertain to the bridge. (pertain: relate to, concern, refer to) Its budget and design survived. The rest disappeared. That night a clerk drew a line through four pages of rhetoric and wrote the date on which work would begin.