In comparison to Captain Kirk, Captain Picard is a superior captain and leader.

I am glad Pro has provided some categories of superiority, since that will hopefully prevent this debate from sliding into subjective opinion. Pro will be arguing that Captain Picard is superior to Captain Kirk, and I will be attempting to negate that claim. -> Tactical ability <- Pro contends that Picard invented an evasive attack manoeuvre named after him, and indeed he is correct. However, Kirk also has a manoeuvre named after him - Pattern Kirk epsilon, used by Picard himself in the Nemesis movie. The enterprise-E also had a number of other battle manoeuvres named for Kirk [1], so it likely that Kirk has also invented some unique manoeuvres, and this point does not count in favour of Picard exclusively. Regardless, Kirk has proven himself time and time again as a tactical master, as well as being acknowledged by some extremely worthy people. In the episode "Balance of Terror", where the Romulans are first encountered, he manages to defeat the enemy ship despite it having cloaking abilities and powerful plasma torpedoes, using a number of unorthodox tactics such as hiding in the tail of a comet and mirroring its movements to simulate a sensor ghost. The Romulan commander repeatedly acknowledges Kirk as an exceptional tactician. [2] In the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan, he defeats Khan despite the enemy taking the Enterprise by surprise at first and severely crippling it. He does this (and this is explicitly stated) using his superior ship to ship combat experience. I can provide many more examples if my opponent should wish it. From this, we can see that it is absurd to suggest that Picard is a superior leader simply because he has had a manoeuvre named after him. Kirk has proven himsekf again and again in this regard. -> Judgement <- Since it is quite difficult to compare 'moral philosophies' between the two (none are explicitly stated), I shall attempt to argue that Kirk's actions more consistently contribute to a 'greater good' (not an easy thing to define, but I'm sure we all have an intuitive grasp of what it means). I cannot be bothered to go through every episode and film in the series and count how many times each has saved the world/universe (although I'm sure Kirk has the advantage in this regard), but I shall provide key examples where Picard has show extreme lapses of judgement, putting his ship and crew (and sometimes the entire universe) in grave risk for inadequate reasons. Perhaps the most grievous example of this is when he meets the Borg 'Hugh' and has the chance to send a virus into the Borg collective using him. Because Hugh begins to exhibit signs of individuality, Picard decides not to use him. Apart from being a dodgy way to assign value to life (why are individuals worth less than people who work in tandem with others), this absurd decision literally costs billions of lives from all kinds of civilisations in the future, as well as condemning earth to threat after threat. This horrible lapse o judgement clearly shows Picard to be unable to make the correct, tough decisions when it matters. [1] . http://memory-alpha.org... [2] . http://memory-alpha.org...(episode)