At last the juiciest bits are upon us. Debates! The brawls
of brains! The best chance for all to find out where
candidates stand on the tough issues, how they act under
fire, under pressure, in a challenging format. Let the
respective cheerleaders for both parties gather round the
tube hooting and jeering their favored and hated ones,
while the undecided shush them and listen attentively,
making mental notes all the while. You want democracy? This
is democracy American-style, two lone gunmen both trying to
be the last one standing. Finally.
Sure, recent debates haven’t been all that exciting, or
enlightening. The biggest thing to come out of the 2000
round was Al Gore’s sighs, and a bewildering array of ways
to fit compassion and lockboxes into answers. Those events
felt more like prolonged PR infomercials than exchanges of
ideas. But isn’t that just politics? And every debate still
has the potential to turn intense and meaningful, right?
Well, yes and no. Yes, it’s politics, but no, don’t expect
to learn much beyond sound bites. The truth is debates
these days are more scripted than your average WCW match.
The outcome may not be decided, but everything else is.
Back only a decade and a half ago, all presidential debates
were controlled and sponsored by The League of Women
Voters, a non-partisan group that routinely tortured
candidates with difficult questions and uncompromising
rules. In 1984 Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale were so
scared of what might happen, they vetoed 68 proposed
panelists, trying to avoid uncomfortable questions. The
League called a press conference to vehemently chastise the
candidates; the next debate, the League got their favored
moderators.
If you’re over 30, you may remember a time when candidates
faced a whole host of journalists at any one event. Anyone
from the roundtable could ask a question; if an answer was
evasive, they could follow-up or call the candidate on it
and force a more direct response. If the candidate was at a
loss, he might be up there for 4 and a half minutes looking
foolish.
That changed in 1988. Two years prior the heads of the
Democratic and Republican National Committees, Paul Kirk
and Frank Fahrenkopf, formed the Commission of Presidential
Debates (CPD). The two men resigned their posts and became
co-chairmen of the CPD. What had become a non-partisan
process became bi-partisan. A trivial change? Hardly.
For those 1988 debates the elder Bush and Michael Dukakis
negotiated terms for their debates, and handed it to the
League of Women Voters. The League called their rules a
sham and refused to have anything to do with them – at
which point the CPD stepped in and gladly filled the void.
Since that time all debate formats have been decided upon
by the candidates themselves, through negotiators under the
protective guise of the bi-partisan CPD. And as you might
imagine, the format has wound up quite watered down. The
debates are now so banal that critics complain they are
little more than glorified joint news conferences.
One glaring difference is third party candidates are cut
out. While they are rarely a true contender themselves, an
independent will affect the outcome of elections fairly
often: see Perot, Ross, 1992 or Nader, Ralph, 2000. While
the party it favors may vary by election, it is in the
general interest of the two majors to keep the playing
field to themselves.
There are also plenty of overt and covert differences in
the makeup of the debates formats. Instead of panels, the
candidates are questioned by a single moderator chosen by
their negotiating teams – someone likely to throw softballs
their way. Follow-up questions are long gone, meaning the
candidates only have to worry about memorizing prepared
answers to questions they already know the basic shape of
(since they are also decided beforehand).
Oh by the way, the definition of a debate – a discussion or
argument between two or more sides – that’s gone too.
Neither candidate is allowed to address the other. After
one candidate responds to a question (in a short 2 minute
time limit) the other can talk about the answer for up to a
minute and a half in certain circumstances. Usually,
though, most of that time is spent answering the question
themselves, not responding to something their opponent has
said.
In Town Hall debates – with audience participation – in the
past the parties have had all questions vetted by the
moderator before they could be asked. The audience itself
is very carefully selected – picture a high-priced lawyer
culling a jury, and you get the idea.
But the level of control goes much deeper than that. The
date is chosen by the candidates – in 1996 Clinton decided
to have the debates during the World Series; he had a large
lead and thus wanted low viewership. Dole agreed in
exchange for cutting Perot out of the process, fearful he
would siphon more Republican votes than Democrat.
The political parties also choose the location. Again in
’96 the candidates chose cities not recommended by the CPD,
which rubber-stamped the process anyway.
The candidates agree to attire beforehand. Even camera
angles – something Gore’s team didn’t correctly prepare for
in his debates. His famous sighs occurred when a
split-screen showing reactions was allowed. In the other
debates that year only the candidate speaking could be
shown – and according to those who were there, Bush would
have looked just as bad had he been televised responding to
Gore in those debates. But W. was smart enough to keep such
things off the screens.
If you’re team is well prepared you should never have such
a gaffe. Your candidate should never need to look as
nervous and shifty as Tricky Dick did contrasted with JFK
in the first televised debate. Indeed, control is pervasive
enough that the debates are mostly about which side can put
on a better show. The toughest issues are often avoided,
and policy talk rarely sets the tone of the debate. It is
which candidate stays on message best while looking most
Presidential and most likable.
All this can be done because the CPD provides a neutral
cover behind which candidates can hide their back-room
dealings (until this year, their Memoranda of Understanding
concerning debates were never released to the public). If
the two sides openly hosted their own debates than they’d
need to worry about appearing fair and democratic - not so
when the bi-partisan CPD let’s the negotiators use their
office space to hammer out deals.
The general public may not be fully aware of the exclusive
nature and selective processes used to make up debates
these days, but they are responding to it. Despite a
substantial increase in the U.S. population, the number of
people watching Presidential duels has dropped over 26
million from 1992-2000. Is this really all the CPD’s fault?
Perhaps not, but the fact it has occurred on their watch
while they have been taming the nature of these debates is
certainly suggestive.
Walter Cronkite has been quoted calling the CPD debates an
“unconscionable fraud” that is “sabotaging the democratic
process.” Others are less kind. They note the CPD is a
tax-exempt organization, yet it breaks many laws set to
govern such entities. Corporations basically sponsor the
debates, sometimes with free beer being passed out as
lobbyists argue for alcohol-friendly legislation and other
such shenanigans. That sort of thing is supposed to be kept
far from allegedly neutral commissions like the CPD.
A number of non-partisan groups are banding together trying
to educate the public about the highly partisan nature of
Presidential debates today, and they seem to be making
progress. For instance, Open Debates (opendebates.com)
believes it was through their pressure that this year’s
Memorandum of Understanding was published. Still, expect
change to be slow.
Does this mean you should turn off the TV when the debates
come on? Of course not. We trust you to be media-savvy and
to handle yourself well in the face of biases. Most people
can watch QVC without buying every third item.
Watch the debates, but remember: You aren’t really being
presented with the issues, you are being sold an image.
Watch, just don’t buy cheap.