Two years hence, we will be in the middle of "debate season", that charming quadrennial period when we change over from deciding our next president based on "agreement with the voter on the significant issues of the day", to deciding to vote for the one who didn't make a "gaffe" in the debate, or had less 5 o'clock shadow (particularly male candidates), or got in the best "zinger". As we all know, those are the criteria which best show us how well the candidate would lead as the President of the United States.
That said, presidential debates are with us for the indefinite future, meaning that we will continue to allow them to influence our voting, despite the fact that they are immensely artificial. I mean, really -- what is it in anything a candidate says or does in a debate, that remotely suggests that he would be a good president? Once you get past the fact that at least 80% of voters are going to vote for Candidate X because their views agree far more with that candidate than the other one, then literally nothing he does in a debate will change that.
[Note -- for this piece, I will refer to the candidates as "he" and the voter as "she" to avoid the awkward alternatives like "he/she". I mean nothing by it.]
Any voter not in that 80% will learn nothing she didn't already know in the debates. If she is that unclear as to how closely her views align with the candidates, well, Al Gore invented this amazing Internet thingy just for that. Using it, you can actually look up each candidate's position, written in the calm peace of a non-debate environment when it can actually be thoughtfully expressed. If you are too lazy to do so and depend on the debates to see the differences, pity the USA.
Here's my point -- do we remember any sharp repartee from any debate that helped us limn the differences between candidates? Well, no. We remember that Nixon needed a shave. We remember that Obama was shockingly unprepared for his first debate with Romney. We remember Reagan agreeing not to hold Mondale's "youth and inexperience" against him. And we remember Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle he was "no Jack Kennedy" (to which I wish Quayle had had the presence of mind to say "no, Sen. Bentsen, I am not Jack Kennedy. I have been faithful to my wife."). Of course, he won the vice presidency anyway, so what the heck.
So from a purely sane perspective, I would be quite happy if the debates went away. But since they won't, can we possibly start thinking now, two years ahead, how to make them better? By "better", of course, I mean "actually useful and not just a gaffe-fest or zinger counter." As always, we need to start with the end. What do we want to accomplish with the debates?
I hold that the purpose of the debates should be to help the voter see the candidate stating opinions they hold, actions they would support, tacks they would take, etc., regarding issues of the day. Ronald Reagan was respected as president to a large degree because you knew where he stood on everything. He might horse-trade with Congress on certain legislation, but you knew, if his back were to the wall, what his core values were that he wouldn't bend on.
Perhaps that's what we most need. Good, solid questions that would help show the undecided voter what the core values of the candidates are. I would provide those questions to the candidates in advance, so we can get better answers. "What??", I hear you say. Yes, let the candidates prepare what they're going to say, so we get better answers and fewer slip-ups that distract from the message. I would much rather rely on prepared answers, because they better reflect the candidate's actual views. If you think it's more important, and a better gauge of presidentiality, to hinge your precious vote on performance in a debate (i.e., gaffelessness or zingerfulness, or a good shave) rather than positions, I pity you and the country.
Newsflash -- the media are biased. NBC is left, Fox is right. CNN, CBS and ABC are left. Get over it. ABC has Bill Clinton's press secretary as the host of its morning show. They're not going to be shrink-government types over there. Obama's just-departed press secretary was at Time, ABC and CNN. So the networks cannot be trusted to produce an unbiased product, as was shown when a CNN debate moderator in 2012 tried to fact-check the Republican candidate -- incorrectly, as it turns out -- while the debate was going on.
We need to be solving the problem of providing actual, productive debates if we're going to have them at all. As I noted, I'd have all the questions be submitted -- not vetted or changeable by the candidates, but produced and submitted to the candidates in advance, to prepare solid answers. That will also minimize the role and influence of the moderator. I would have either joint moderation between, say, CNN and Fox co-hosts (they're both cable news organizations expected to balance each other out), or an even number of debates, which each produces. Eliminate the audiences completely; there is no need for live applause, laughter, or anything else distracting the message. Have the microphones automatically silence after the allotted time.
Let's start working this stuff now, not after the 2016 conventions, OK?
Copyright 2014 by Robert Sutton
No comments:
Post a Comment