The Politico makes a pretty compelling argument that last night’s debate was a new low for American Presidential theater:
With the country at one of its most interesting—not to mention terrifying—moments in a generation, John McCain and Barack Obama met in Nashville for what was surely one of the dullest and was definitely the least satisfying presidential debate in memory.
There have been boring debates before, of course. Truth be told, probably only a fraction of these encounters over 32 years since general election debates became a fixture of presidential campaigns actually delivered on their promise of great political drama. And even interesting debates are inevitably somewhat stilted affairs, as candidates cleave to their scripts and try to avoid self-inflicted blunders.
But the Belmont University showdown was something entirely different. Place the gravity of the moment next to the blah-blah-blah artifice of the rhetoric and overall insubstantiality of the evening and this is what you get: The worst presidential debate ever.
The authors cite a number of factors that combined to make last night far less than it could have and should have been, but the one thing that guaranteed that this debate would be a complete waste of time were the rules that both sides made sure would be in place:
It would be hard to cook up a duller way of debating than we witnessed last night. The commission allowed the cautious handlers of the presidential campaigns to negotiate a format designed to limit improvisation, intellectual engagement and truth-telling.
The rules were so constraining, it begs the question: why even put a moderator in the chair? Tom Brokaw threw up his hands from the outset, apologizing for the constraints he was under, which didn’t allow him to press on evasive answers or encourage a promising exchange. Too bad he couldn’t have just defied the commission altogether. He should have tossed out the script and said this moment is too important to allow misinformation to go unchallenged and serious issues to be ignored.
It’s not Brokaw’s fault. Or Jim Lehrer’s or Gwen Ifill’s. The problem is the commission that has been invested with pseudo-constitutional status to run the debates but in fact weakly defers to candidates and clings to antiquated formats. No serious candidate would skip a debate. So the commission should use its leverage to insist that the debates are interesting to voters, rather than safe for candidates. Allow moderators to be more aggressive – and call-out candidates for lame answers– and then allow the candidates to go at it over the issues that matter most without time constraints.
The television ratings show voters want to hear from the candidates, and are willing to sit through 90 minutes of boredom to get a glimpse of the two men in one arena. Imagine what would happen if these events were actually exciting and informative.
Of course, neither side will ever agree to that on their own. As long as the campaigns and the two major political parties are allowed to exercise such complete control over the debate process to the point where there really aren’t any surprises because each side knows what will happen in advance. The campaigns like it that way, but it really doesn’t serve to add anything to the process and doesn’t aid voters in making a decision.
So, what’s the solution ?
It’s really quite simple; somehow, the monopoly on Presidential debates exercised by the pseudo-independent Commission on Presidential Debates needs to be challenged and broken. The cable and news networks could do it, if they wanted to, and I bet they’d have the public behind them if they tried. Throughout the year-long primary season, there were dozens of debates sponsored by different institutions ranging from the Reagan Library, to the Des Moines Register, to YouTube. There’s no reason that something similar couldn’t happen during the General Election campaign.
Yes, a candidate could refuse to participate in a given debate for one reason or another, but that refusal would become an issue in the campaign all by itself and, I’m betting, public pressure would force candidates to agree to debate even when the format isn’t to their liking.
This much is clear — if what passed for a debate last night represents the future of General Election Presidential debates, then we may as well just not have them at all.
