What the public wants:
When the American public chooses someone to be President of the United States, they mostly want someone who will represent their interests, keep the country safe and secure, and improve our mutual prosperity. The problems that face our country today are many and complicated. There are no easy answers to any of them.
Unfortunately, the public does want easy answers. Politicians are happy to oblige.
What candidates want:
Political scientist Dan Nimmo cynically comments that the way to get elected is to campaign as a candidate who has brand-new ideas to solve problems that cannot be solved. I almost believe that he is right! But let’s not get too cynical. Although intelligent solutions will not get rid of all our problems, they could help a lot. All the same, the pile of candidates debating at Otterbein College last night for the Democratic nomination for the presidency excelled at giving superficial solutions to difficult problems. The debate format encouraged them to be superficial. The moderators’ ridiculous and inconsistent questions shoved the debaters off the cliff and tumbled them down into Superficiality Valley.
Example #1:
Let us look at one of the evening’s better answers. Moderator Erin Burnett asked Bernie Sanders about all the jobs supposedly lost in Ohio due to automation. Here is Sanders’ entire answer, which was restricted by the 75-second time limit:
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| Bernie Sanders |
Furthermore - and I hope we will discuss it at length tonight - this planet faces the greatest threat in its history from climate change. And the Green New Deal that I have advocated will create up to 20 million jobs as we move away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
We need workers to do childcare. We need workers, great teachers to come in to school systems which don't have the teachers that we need right now. We need more doctors. We need more dentists. We need more carpenters. We need more sheet metal workers. And when we talk about making public colleges and universities tuition fee and cancelling student debt, we're going to give those people the opportunity to get those good jobs.
During that quick, well-prepared answer, Sanders gave two sentences about the United States’ “collapsing” infrastructure. Infrastructure failure is indeed a big problem, and it is a new one – when I was young, highway bills passed automatically. Today, they fail automatically. Congress won’t spend money to keep the roads open. And, yes, we could put many people to work rebuilding our public facilities. We need that badly. But only two sentences? And no details at all?
Also, Sanders spoke two sentences about climate change. Global warming does threaten our economy, and, yet, millions of conservative voters won’t even admit that it is happening. A coming existential catastrophe is worth only two sentences? Sanders said that he would try to talk about the issue more later in the debate, but time didn’t allow him to do so.
And don’t forget that Burnett’s question was about job losses supposedly due to automation in Ohio! Sanders never hit the question head-on, did he?
Example #2:
Here is Pete Buttigieg’s entire answer about President Trump’s policy in Syria, which is much in the news this week:
BUTTIGIEG: But this is really important, because what this president has done shows that American leadership shapes the behavior of our allies, or sometimes allies, too. Remember, the problem right now is not just that - with our competitors. And, for example a place like China, the people of Hong Kong rise up for democracy and don't get a peep of support from the president. It's just not the behavior of adversaries like Russia. But our one-time allies, like Saudi Arabia, which the CIA just concluded was responsible, as we all knew, for murdering and dismembering an American resident and journalist.
And Turkey, which was an American ally. That's the point. We had leverage. But when we abandon the international stage, when we think our only choices are between endless war or total isolation, the consequence is the disappearance of U.S. leadership...
COOPER: Thank you, Mayor.
BUTTIGIEG: ... from the world stage.
Buttigieg raised important points, which all deserved more time. But he left important questions unanswered. With respect to Turkey, what leverage should the United States apply? How did President Trump’s policies represent a choice between “endless war or total isolation?” Trump’s Syria policy was even briefly criticized by some of his closest supporters. But what is the best solution? What should be done now? How could the problems have been avoided? Buttigieg didn’t have time to tell us – even if he knew, of which I am unconvinced.
Superficiality reigned supreme
The debate’s superficial format encouraged the candidates to give the superficial answers that most of them preferred to give. Former Vice President Joe Biden, who gave some of the evening’s most articulate answers, summed up the debate’s format problems like this:
BIDEN: And this is one of the reasons why these debates are kind of crazy, because everybody tries to squeeze everything into every answer that is given. The fact is, everybody's right about the fact that the fourth industrial revolution is costing jobs. It is. The fact is also corporate greed is they're going back and not investing in our employees, they're reinvesting and buying back their stock.
Biden, and most of the other Democratic candidates, were quite confused about basic, high-school level economics. They weren’t as wrong as the Republicans are, but wrong enough. At the same time, economic issues, job losses, and income equality are difficult questions that no one can answer in a 75-second speech. Biden was right that the debate format was "kind of crazy." And, yet, this is how we expect the public to choose a president.
I have commented several times that a debate format needs to offer all the debaters equal chances. Once again, that didn’t happen. That’s partly because the ridiculous format for last night’s debate prevented the debaters from having a good discussion, but also because the moderators, as usual, did a terrible job. Let’s look at the figures from FiveThirtyEight. Front-runner Elizabeth Warren spoke 3695 words during the debate. Joe Biden, running second in the polls, spoke 3084 words. Tulsi Gabbard spoke only 1497 words, while billionaire candidate Tom Steyer squeezed in only 1318 words. If readers think that Gabbard and Steyer had little worthwhile to say, I agree. The fact remains that a good debate format should offer everybody an equal chance. By giving more speaking time to the front-runners, the moderators guaranteed that the front runners will still be the front runners tomorrow. As a retired debate coach, I would like to think that the best debater, not the most popular debater, would emerge from the event. Once again, that couldn’t happen. A bad format always means a bad debate.
Were things better in the old days?
I have been thinking about the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. At that time, many people seemed disappointed in them. Compared with the nonsense going on today, however, the 1960 debates were paragons of excellence. My question: was last night’s debate awful because the candidates were awful, because the dreadful format prevented the candidates from being good, or because American political life in general has deteriorated over the last 69 years? Stay tuned, because I plan to talk about those issues in coming weeks.
Photo of Bernie Sanders: United States Senate
Phto of Pete Buttigieg by Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons
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