While this article is true for the majority of high schools around the country, policy debate can be slow, understandable and extremely eloquent if you know where to look.
Urban Debate Leagues (UDL), often produce championship level debaters that use poems and music as evidence and make arguments up entirely from their own thoughts.
The format of policy is extremely loose and just because the tactics that are most commonly used can be seen as anti-intellectual that doesn't mean that you can't be extremely good while appealing to layman as well.