Debate Dysfunction – a Bipartisan Malady

Debate Dysfunction – a Bipartisan Malady

In this so-called “Information Age” in which we live, and given all of the various sources from which one can attain related information, one might be tempted to come to the erroneous conclusion that people today are better informed about politics, in general, and presidential candidacies, specifically, than ever before. With the sheer number of intramural debates being televised in this election year, one might also be tempted to come to an equally erroneous conclusion, that people today are better able to select the best candidates to support in their respective parties’ nominations. As much as we would love to believe both of these to be true, sadly, we strongly suspect quite the opposite.

A major part of the problem…are the debates, themselves.

One look into both the most recent Democrat and Republican debates reveals much as to why there is so much dysfunction in the selection of a presidential nominee. The fix would be quite easy but, as usual, the powers-to-be will sadly never go for it, much to the disservice of the American citizenry.

On the Democrats’ side, Thursday night’s debate in Milwaukee offered more acrimony between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders than we have seen to date. Yet, this encounter revealed little if anything to sway their Democrat constituents one way or another. Why? Because the PBS debate moderators Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff offered softball questions to front-runner Hillary Clinton and utterly failed to ask the former first lady the most important question concerning her own campaign, which is “How does she expect to gain the trust of the American people when she, her underlings in the Department of State, and the Clinton foundation are all under criminal investigation by the FBI ?”

On the Republicans’ side, Saturday night’s debate in Greenville, South Carolina approached the food-fight instigated by the late John Belushi’s character “Blutarsky” in the iconic motion picture comedy Animal House (ironically, the character John Belushi portrayed ends up being a U.S. Senator in the closing scene of the movie). The three stooges in the debate, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump spent much of the evening hurling insults back and forth in a three-way pie-throwing contest, largely because the CBS News debate moderators, John Dickerson and Major Garrett, along with Kimberly Strassel, a Wall Street Journal columnist, failed miserably to maintain control in what initially began as a substantive debate on the issues. For their own part, the remaining three candidates, Ben Carson, John Kasich and Marco Rubio each were able to maintain their respective composures by wisely staying out of the free-for-all between Bush, Cruz and Trump. Yet their messages were largely overshadowed by the acrimony on display that night.

Adversely affecting both the Democrat and the Republican debates, and how they are moderated, is the presence of…the live audience, whose raucous behavior- cheering, booing and taking sides- only serves to inflame the acrimony, encourage the childishness and ultimately waste valuable time- things that are most unhelpful in the selection of the next president.

If the debates, going forward, were to return to the format of the 1960 Kennedy Nixon debates, which were televised in a studio set apart from a live audience, a more substantive and informative debate- one which would better serve the American people in their selection of the next president- might be possible.

Then again, when all of the networks ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, Fox Business News, Fox News, MsNBC, NBC, etc., view these debates in the paltry prism of ratings and money, why should the public entrust these enterprises with something as prescient as the selection of the next president?

Why, indeed?

 

-Drew Nickell, 14 February 2016

© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.