Positive Liberty

Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a primer on presidential debates. Here’s the short version:

…I was in college and coaching a high school debate team, and the Detroit News asked me and a couple of other coaches to evaluate the Bush the Elder vs. Michael Dukakis debates. I said much the same thing then as I do now, which is that they’re really not debates at all. At very best, they are little more than simultaneous press briefings. There is virtually no interaction between the candidates, who merely repeat the pre-scripted answers that their handlers have given them… those undecided folks whose votes are determined by the debates are rarely swayed by well thought out and detailed policy positions given during the debates (because, of course, there are none), but by primarily superficial things that happen during the debate. The campaign strategists all recognize this fact, which is why the negotiations for such debates focus on seemingly inane factors.

The Kerry team also wanted one of the debates to be “town hall” format, where questions are taken from the audience. Why is this important? Because Bush is notoriously bad at extemporaneous speaking and audience members are more likely to ask an unexpected question than a moderator from the major media is. So the Bush team agreed to one town hall style debate, but insisted that the questions had to be submitted in advance and that the moderator would cut off the person asking the question if they deviated from the text that they had submitted before the show begins. And yes, I find it frightening that the most powerful man in the world cannot be allowed to speak for 2 minutes without a teleprompter lest he say something boneheaded and incoherent. I find it even more frightening that so many people seem not to be bothered in the least by it.

The even shorter version: The debates are entirely bloodless. And that’s the problem. We look to debates to tell us about the character of the candidates, to give us a glimpse inside their heads. And what we get is more of the same recycled soundbites that we can already get by listening to their stump speeches.

What I’d like more than anything else is a free-for-all debate, where the moderators only step in to break up the shouting matches–or the fistfights.

Then you’d see the candidates’ judgment in action. Then you’d see whether they knew when to go for broke, when to hold back–and when it was worth resorting to downright physical violence. And I sure wish the American public knew that before the 2000 election.

I don’t plan to watch. As per my usual, I’ll read about them the day after. It will take me half the time and spare me all the worthless applause. On the off chance that something catches my eye, then maybe I’ll write about it the day after that. The American republic has been around for 228 years; it can wait another day to hear from me.

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