http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/political-debates-ruined-politics-213714?lo=ap_c1 How Debates Have Ruined Politics
Political debates have become popularity contests that tell us nothing about who’d make a good president. Get rid of them.
By H.W. Brands
March 09, 2016
The historian Henry Adams asserted in the early 20th century that the trajectory of American presidents from George Washington to Ulysses Grant was enough to refute Darwin’s theory of evolution. The country was clearly regressing, he said. The ruin of democracy was inevitable.
If Adams were alive today, he’d probably say the same about the course of presidential debates. Political debates have a long history in the United States, going back to the contest over the ratification of the Constitution. And in that time they have deteriorated from principled contests over deep issues of republican governance to the vulgar displays of personality we see in the current campaign.
By Thursday, we will have had four debates in seven days. And what will we have gained? Debates today, mostly frivolous popularity contests in which the candidates thump their chests and trade one-liners, tell us next-to-nothing about which candidate would actually make the best president—in fact, they put the most substantive competitors at a serious disadvantage.
The debate over the Constitution pitted Federalists against Antifederalists. The arguments of the former included the Federalist Papers, the most trenchant political briefs in all of American history; their focus on issues rather than personalities was highlighted by the fact that the essays were written pseudonymously, as were many political works in those days. The practice reflected the widely accepted belief that an argument should stand on its own merits, regardless of the author.
The most memorable debates of the 19th century matched Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas in a battle for an Illinois Senate seat in 1858. Again the issues were front and center. The candidates spoke at great length on slavery, sectionalism and the Constitution, and the audiences followed closely. Politics was serious business, and all involved treated it as such.
Modern presidential debates began with John Kennedy against Richard Nixon in 1960. Television was discovering how to cover politics, and the influence showed. Those who listened to the debate on the radio preferred Nixon, but television viewers favored the more telegenic Kennedy. Even so, at a crucial moment of the Cold War, American voters demanded that the candidates address the life-and-death issues that confronted the country, and both candidates delivered.
By the 1980s things were changing. Television dominated the media world, and television viewers expected to be entertained. Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in debate in 1980 not by greater mastery of issues but by deft one-liners. “There you go again,” he said with a smile and a shrug when Carter recited Reagan’s record of opposition to Medicare. The line conveyed nothing of substance yet much of personality, and voters ate it up.
More telling was the line Reagan used against Walter Mondale in 1984. An initial debate between the two showed viewers a Reagan they hadn’t seen: stumbling, confused, frustrated. The dismal performance raised grave questions about Reagan’s age and his fitness to continue in office. Even the Reagan-friendly Wall Street Journal asked if he was too old to be president. Reagan finessed the worries with a second-debate quip about not exploiting his opponent’s “youth and inexperience.” The remark completely sidestepped the real issue, but viewers and voters laughed, and Reagan rode the laughter to reelection.
Yet it was the rise of primary debates in the 1990s that did the greatest damage to the collective intelligence of the republic. The “fairness doctrine” of the FCC had inhibited political debates during the era of the NBC-ABC-CBS triopoly, for the big networks faced sanctions if minor candidates were left out. But the FCC dropped the doctrine as cable news networks proliferated in the late 1980s, and the multiple outlets competed for face time with the candidates. The political parties and candidates couldn’t resist the exposure.
Debates became a form of reality television before that genre was broadly recognized. The sponsoring networks competed for ratings, and the debates themselves competed for viewers amid a rapidly multiplying array of other programming. To catch viewers surfing through a hundred channels, the debates had to deliver arresting moments. They started to be reviewed, even in the political press, like television dramas—or comedies—and the reviews often said more about style and mannerisms than about content. Al Gore’s sighs in 2000 elicited greater comment than almost anything he said.
The current season’s debates, which last week plumbed new depths of inanity on the Republican side, represent a continuation of the trend. Donald Trump or someone much like him could have been predicted. Personality is everything; substance nothing. (The Democratic debates have been higher minded, but chiefly because there are now only two candidates. Democratic viewers and voters would be mistaken to think their party won’t look like the Republicans the next time they field a large crop of wannabes.)
We have reached a point not simply of diminishing returns, but, like the central banks of several countries lately, of negative returns. Debates today don’t merely fail to reward attention to issues, they actively punish attention to issues. Trump has led the way with a campaign built on emotion and personality, and his success has compelled other candidates to follow suit. Issues are boring, comparatively speaking, and boring doesn’t draw viewers and voters.
Moreover, recent debates have brought out the worst in voters’ emotions and the candidates’ personalities. The schoolyard taunts and adolescent boasts hardly befit the office the candidates are seeking, and the spectacle risks making an international laughingstock of the one who gets the job. Can Americans really imagine Trump as the leader of the free world? The free world can’t, and this matters.
So let’s get rid of the debates, at least in the primary season, where the negative effects of the recent developments are most striking. What would we lose? The very occasional insight into a candidate’s ability to think on his or her feet. But presidents don’t have to think on their feet; indeed we don’t want presidents to think on their feet. We want them to reflect, to consult their advisers, to weigh all the facets of a question and not act rashly. Which underscores another detriment of debates: They tell us nothing about what presidents actually do.
What else would we lose? The antics, the shouting, the relentless dumbing-down of campaigns, the compulsion felt by decent moderates like Mitt Romney to sell their souls to the radical elements of their parties, the media circus surrounding each new installment of the political soap opera, the faux candidacies of book-floggers and auditioners for television shows of their own.
What would we gain? Better candidates, as qualified men and women discover they won’t have to endure the demeaning ordeal the debates have become. Better insight into candidates who would have run anyway but now have to alter their candidacies to play the currently ridiculous debating game. Better coverage, as the media would have to follow real stories about the candidates rather than lazily report the latest round of mud-wrestling.
Lesser-known candidates might have to work harder to gain national attention, but hard work never hurt anyone. And maybe they would do that hard work before running for president, which is the natural order of affairs.
Viewer/voters might complain at first. What—no circus tonight? But the jolt would do them good, for it would encourage them return to their grandparents’ habit of insisting that candidates for the highest office in the land show respect for that office by concentrating on the issues they would face should they attain it.
It’s too late to salvage this campaign season. But the next campaign is likely to start as soon as this one is over. Wouldn’t it be a relief to have what passes for debates not to look forward to? And perhaps to prove Henry Adams wrong?
