Shallow debates

Let the games begin.

It’s election season again, which means it’s time for presidential debates chock-full of grammatical errors and bad personal hygiene and often lacking in the information department.

But after last week’s highly anticipated vice-presidential standoff, no one seems too excited about hearing what the prospective commanders in chief themselves have to say. 

Then again, we shouldn’t expect anything revolutionary to come out of the candidates’ mouths during a debate, with the possible exception of new vocabulary words that would make Webster roll over in his grave (“Strategery,” anyone?).
While substance arguably made its way into the Biden-Palin throw-down, candidates for public office traditionally try to appeal to the moderate voter, which ensures they’ll be idealistically close to the most voters and minimize the number of those they alienate.

So does anything relevant actually go on during a debate, or is it an ultimate “bridge to nowhere?”

If you think about it, this glorified confrontation is simply a televised fiasco in which two potential world leaders hit each other over the head with massive amounts of hearsay. Here’s a typical interchange:

Candidate A: My opponent wants to scale back health care coverage. His plan will deny insurance to 1 million citizens with preexisting conditions.

Candidate B: (Rolls his eyes.) My opponent is clearly not familiar with my plan for health care reform. It will actually extend coverage, and it will do so without raising taxes. It’s funny, but this reminds me of a 95-year-old, apoplectic grandmother I met on the campaign trail ...

Candidate A will fervently insist that his opponent is unfamiliar with basic economics, while Candidate B will come up with a different set of numbers to support his views.

Neither will present an unfavorable statistic or dollar amount – or mention which programs they’ll need cut to keep their spending down – and when it becomes clear that they’re caught in a no-win numbers game, one of them will turn the audience’s attention to a completely different issue.

The fun will begin again over the ardent entreaties of the moderator to “please stay on topic.”

To recap: During a televised debate, no one’s going to say anything substantively new, and the numbers the candidates spew are taken out of context, are unsupported, often unchecked and, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. But you’ll still watch then, right? You betcha.

But presidential debates aren’t completely useless. Since Kennedy’s days, they’ve provided an opportunity to judge which candidate is better looking, or at the very least, whose comb-over is less offensive.

For many, debate-watching parties introduce a new political element into the same, repetitive drinking games: “He said ‘my friends’ again? Man, I’m gonna be sick!”

For better or worse, presidential debates are an American institution. Despite their often disappointing content deficiency, in their absence, many people would fail to take the initiative to familiarize themselves with the candidates and their platforms.
And, in answer to your next question, no – it’s not November yet.