In 1861, Drs. Earnest Aubertin (Localistic Model) and Pierre Gratiolet (Distributed Model) got into a rather heated dispute about two varying theories on how the brain works. The scientific community then spent years debating which one was correct until the late 21st century discovery that each model was correct in that one fed into the other. The lesson as always, is that good ideas should be built upon rather than worrying about who is right and wrong. Expending energy on 'winning' a debate is useless compared to if the time was spent trying to bring the best of ideas together.
Perhaps our political leaders can learn a lesson from us (as should we all). The importance of the sharing of ideas and actually listening to one another, can lead to much bigger breakthroughs than trying to go it alone. As a collective, humans are pretty smart when they choose to work together. If political parties were more concerned with working together to nurture, develop and put forward great ideas than winning, we could be in a much better position all around.