Wake Me Up When the Debates Are Over
Enough is enough. It’s time for fewer presidential debates with fewer candidates. And real debates, not these freeze-dried forums in which candidates give sound-bite answers that are overly parsed by a media settling for the trivial pursuit of degrees of difference. It’s time to drill down into the big issues with the candidates, the candidates who have realistic chances to win, that is, and get them to engage in a serious back-and-forth. That’s what a real debate is about, and that’s why Hillary Clinton saying she doesn’t want to say where she stands on some key issues like, oh, say, you know, getting Al Qaeda, merely the folks who attacked us on 9/11, is so silly.
Tuesday night’s AFL-CIO affair with the Democrats in Chicago drew the lowest audience yet, less than a million. At this rate, the campaign will already have bored us to tears by the time it gets going in earnest with the primaries and caucuses of January.
I’m a political analyst by trade, as into this campaign as anyone, and I could barely force myself to watch the thing. I was much more interested in the new William Gibson novel, which I nearly read through the “debate.” I would have done, actually, but for the fact that my blog readers at New West Notes were going to want at least some sort of report.
These events were fun in the beginning. Going to the first, in Carson City, Nevada this past February, was a blast. We hadn’t seen the candidates together before. But after six months and scores of these things — most, thankfully, untelevised — they simply haven’t developed as events. The cattle show of real contenders and wannabes in each of the parties still crowd onto the stage, play a game of verbal ping-pong with once-over-lightly answers to disparate questions, and move on to whatever’s next on their schedules.
Let’s have real debates, with focus on big issues, like reforming education, protecting the environment, winning the Terror War beyond Iraq. And let’s clear the stage of the folks who have no chance of being the next president of the United States.
I remember the Reagan Library debate in May. I was still working out which one was Sam Brownback and which was Mike Huckabee. Actually, they might as well be the same guy, because neither one is going to be president.
Tommy Thompson, you’re the wrong Thompson. Tom Tancredo, your one issue of anti-immigration is already co-opted. Duncan Hunter, you were a big wheel as House Armed Services chairman. But a presidential campaign isn’t an act of decompression. Ron Paul may be the fastest runner ever to run for president (I’m told he ran a 9.7 second 100-yard dash back in the day), but all his campaign is accomplishing is reminding us that Internet polls aren’t exactly scientific.
Let’s put Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, assuming he gets around to running, Mitt Romney, and John McCain up there and let them have at it.
On the Democratic side, Dennis Kucinich is a good guy. I like him. He’s running the same anti-war campaign he ran in 2004. The high water mark of which was his carrying Maui. Wowie.
Mike Gravel is entertaining, but in what way is he a real candidate for president? Sure, he was a U.S. senator. Back in the ’70s. From Alaska. Which then had fewer people than most California counties you’ve heard of.
Joe Biden and Chris Dodd are major U.S. senators, chairs of the Foreign Relations and Banking committees. Biden wants to talk about his plan to partition Iraq. He already has the forum to do that. Dodd always wanted to run for president. He’s finally gotten around to it. Maybe in a different year, these two credible senators would be real contenders. But not this year. This year, there are four real contenders.
Let’s put Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson up on stage and see what they can do when they’re not limited to the short, essentially unrevealing answers we’ve been getting.
What we have going now is a turn-off and a dumbed-down bore. And with America facing huge choices as a country, it’s a disservice to our democracy.
This is América! Nice cartoon!
On the money! These debates are so boring they may put an end to democracy by themselves.
First, Tancredo isn’t “anti-immigration”. Second, if he, Hunter, and Paul are not there no one is going to raise the issue of immigration: not the moderators and not the candidates.
That would certainly suit the MSM and the candidates just fine, but it would be even more of a public disservice than the current debates with puffball questions from hack moderators.
The better way to do this would be to include everyone, but just to change the way that questions are asked. Instead of a moderator asking a puffball and getting a predictable response, experts in various fields would be able to ask each candidate a series of questions, and those questions would be designed not to simply elicit their positions but to show whether they’ve really thought their positions through. More on that plan here:
petitiononline.com/debateit
Alternatively, user generated content could be used, with known quantities choosing which questions were toughest:
tinyurl.com/yrmhbo
Bad idea, the fewer candidates simply means less exchange of views, well
then, let party pick the candidate and
people can vote for lesser of two evils( assume you are for only two parties-fewer candidates ). Iran as a
similar system, fewer candidates and less debate.
Wow! What a wonderful idea! Let’s just let a handful of you political “experts” and CNN/FOX/MSNBC Talk show hosts… errr… “commentators” decide who we, the little people of America, get to see and vote between. After all, I really shouldn’t be able to vote for who I want to vote for… or be able to shop around. No, I’d prefer to just sit on my couch and let you parade no more than 3 Presidential hopefuls in front of me to review as if it were a beauty pageant. Who had the best hair, again? And after that, you can just tell us which one of those 3 has the most money, and therefore is going to win regardless of who we vote for… so I might as well vote for that candidate. Besides, it’s just not safe to let me vote the way I want to… it’s just plain un-American! We all know that you, William Bradly, are soooo much smarter and wiser than all of us little voters, so why don’t you just go ahead and cast my vote for me. That is what you want, isn’t it?
PajamasMedia: You just lost a reader because of this nonsense.
William: “Bad idea, the fewer candidates simply means less exchange of views…”
What? You’ve got to be kidding. What ideas? I can’t imagine a more “ideas free” zone than the current presidential debates. I got more ideas watching the Food Channel.
Disagree with you 100 percent. I want to choose who to vote for, not someone else who limits who I hear from. Go back to Russia, you’d fit right in where Putin get’s ‘re-elected’ each time!
I’m confused here. Who chooses these ten people in the first place? Why them? Someone like Kucinich has been running for Pres since WWII or something like that and still hasn’t got more than one percent. Isn’t it time for a few fresh faces?
And,yes, I agree with Mr. Bradley. These debates (if that’s what you call them) are sooooo boring.
Another “expert” deciding who us peasants will get to vote for. Just what we need. Given the track record you guys have, you might want to re-think that idea a bit.
As for the debate format, I agree that the numbers are probably too large for a real exchange of ideas. One way would be to limit each debate to three candidates chosen at random (not by William Bradley) with the participation alternating untill all had been asked the same questions. Not perfect, but better than the joke we have now.
It’s been done before. Many debates late in the game only ask for candidates with a certain percentage of support; it makes it easier to relate to the show, I think.
So then I guess at this point of the race in 1975 you’d have written off Jimmy Carter and his 2% name recognition as unelectable and dumped him from the Democratic debates.
How about this, eliminate the questioner and let each candidate ask another candidate a question? Make it random or let the candidate decide who to ask. It could be a very entertaining bloodbath.
What we really need are blog debates. The canidates are given the questions, and given a week to answer. All the answers are posted at the same time. Then it gets interesting, because each of the canidates ( as well as the rest of the blogosphere ) can fisk each other’s responses. The other advantage is that when responses are written it becomes much harder for the canidates to avoid answering. They can’t just run out the clock and changing the topic becomes much more noticeable. Canidates would also be encouraged to link to supporting facts and figures giving them no excuse for being vague.
It is amazing that Hillary and friends sound exactly like Ahmadinejad as far as US is concerned. The democRat plans for Iraq and Khomeinists Taliban plans are totally identical. Here is a report of today’s Khomeinist proposal for Iraq, you be the judge:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_iraq
I strongly believe some democrats as their partners in Europe are stealth anti Semitic and punishing Bush for his strong support of Israel, and his stands against Islamists and anti-Israeli forces. It all started from the time Bush denied to meet with Yaser the terrorist. From that time liberal media and their history books branded Bush the worst President of US history. This title was repeated by the most incapable politician in the history of the US the Carter the peanut man himself. The same person who allowed Khomeinie to come to power I the first place and caused all of these.
Here is the REAL problem…
“…give sound-bite answers that are overly parsed by a media…”
and this is a media created problem.
Back around 1983 or so there was a discussion on TV (PBS?) where all living ex-presidential chiefs of staff sat around and talked about stuff.
There was only one topic on which they all agreed. That was when the moderator made a snide comment about politicians only talking in sound bites.
The short answer is that the CoS all agreed that pols had to talk in sound bites because that’s all media would publish. And this way, at least they got to craft their own sound bite message rather than have the “unbiased” media do it for them.
If the media would report complex, nuanced arguments and positions WITHOUT generating nothing but parsed sound bites, maybe we’d have some real debates.
It will take at least two generations for the trust to be rebuilt if we started now.
Don’t bet on it.
Well Bill, it looks like you’ve started a debate.
Boring? As if we don’t already confuse entertainment and news enough, you want to make the Presidential debates more entertaining? Good grief. This is 2007. You’ll have plenty of time NEXT year (month after month after month) to watch the frontrunners. Don’t rush it. (psst: the front-runners will still be giving their stock non-answers next August, too. You heard it here first.) How are you going to get that “change” everyone is screaming for……..by knocking out the low-polling candidates before anyone except the political geeks is even paying attention? Yep, we want change all right. We, as a country, are scared shitless of it.
Dead on the money. The Dog and Pony Show “debates” are becoming nothing more than a place for candidates to repeat 45 second rehearsed answers to anticipated questions and little or no time to make points and counter-points.
Four people on stage is more than enough- probably too many. 8 or 9 is a mess. After campaigning for some 8 months and failing to gain traction, it’s now clear that neither Tancredo, Hunter, Huckabee or Brownback have a chance.
Ron Paul never had a chance, since the tinfoil hat brigade just isn’t that large of a demographic group.
Yeah Susan. Carter getting elected proves that you can never underestimate the stupidity of the voting public.
Well, I guess the Paul-estinians are back at it again here… “Don’t you dare deny our beloved Dr. No participation on debates or I will never read PJM again”. Boo-freaking-hoo. William, great article!
Yeah, we do need to get people out of the debates… No cross-dressers, no magic underpants wearers, and no lobbyists. Looks like Rudy Guliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thomson need to go home.
I’d be perfectly happy to let the larger number of candidates stay in, but have each individual debate not include so many people. There are 56 possible matchups of two candidates; at the rate we’ve been going (with two Dem debates just three days apart), we could probably get through ALL those matchups by December. Give each pair a topic that seems partcularly appropriate to drawing differences between them — like, give Obama/Hillary “our relationship with Pakistan”. Give “Edwards/Hillary” healthcare. Some topics can repeat.
Or, we could just draw up a list of topics, and interview each candidate in depth, for an hour, on just that topic.
But these idiotic “forums” with 90-second answers? They stink. Even the one with the most aggressive, unfiltered questions — the YearlyKos forum — was largely dull.
Just curious – now that the WRONG people have actually WON the straw poll, you still wanna tell us all who deserves to be in the debates?
Or are you sticking with McCain and his 101 votes – FEWER than Duncan Hunter?
All you people deseerve Bilery, Obama and Edwards. Enjoy one of the above four year term. I’ll just sit back and laugh at the blunders forthcoming.
It’s almost inevitable that one of the “Big Three” will be elected. It will be amusing to sit back and watch the blunders of the forthcoming 4 year term. THAT’S IF THE PEOPLE DON’T WAKE UP. Please listen to ALL the candidates. The ones on the end might surprise you, and be the candidate you’re looking for
‘big