MegaAwesome

Techpresident points to Harry Shearer’s silent debate series:

I know that they’re not really for everybody, but I think it’s hilarious. Number 3 (Edwards v Huckabee with Russert moderating) is my favorite.

I agree that candidates don’t say much during the debates, and I blame the format. Hopefully by 2012 or 2016 we’ll have some amazing technical breakthrough and the ‘raise your hand if…’ style debating will be a thing of the past. As interesting as the YouTube debates were for novelty, they kind of made me wonder why the candidates even showed up at all. They could have just posted video responses on YouTube themselves and stayed at home that night watching cartoons in their underwear (I assume that’s how they spend their free time). That way they could have addressed more of them and in more depth.

My favorite televised event so far is still the Logo forums, where each candidate came out one at a time and fielded questions from a panel. The format was fantastic, though the theme wasn’t really aimed at my demographic.

Why can’t we do something like this for broader topics like foreign policy and the environment? One candidate at a time, no fixed time limit for answers, and a panel that can ask all the follow-up questions it wants. Sort of like Charlie Rose or Inside the Actors Studio. The issues that a president is expected to face are too broad for a 90 second answer, and so instead we get a bunch of people who don’t even really try to answer the questions and moderators who choose instead to play stupid ‘gotcha’ games and try to trip up the candidates on ridiculous non-issues. There is certainly a place for analyzing the words a candidate chooses when they lay out a talking point or strategic decisions they make about where to focus their time and money, and maybe even to throw comments their spouse made in the past at them, but these ‘debates’ so far have been pathetic.

We need to expect better from our presidential candidates than a good ten to fifteen word answer on the most complex issues in the world. We should be asking not only what they think, but why and how they got there. There are a lot of things on the table in this election, like health care and the environment, that hint to broader themes that we should be hearing more about.

Such as: What is our place in the world? What is the role of the American government in the national economy? Foreign Affairs has had a tremendous series allowing candidates to submit essays on their plans for American foreign policy, and it would be nice to see more of that.

But at the same time it should be recognised that candidates, and presidents for that matter, aren’t going to have all the answers. There are going to be times when they simply don’t know or haven’t really thought about a given topic, and that has to be ok. The gotcha questions from debate moderators and 10-second clip mentality of the network news has a heavy deterrent effect on the candidates’ willingness to say that they don’t know something, or that they might have changed their mind on a position. Instead we get sound bites and non-answers, and that’s not good for anyone.

It’s important to remember that whoever wins the game gets the keys to an unimaginably powerful military and a single poorly thought out decision could mean disaster for millions in this country alone. This is a hell of a job, and I wish more time was spent emphasising that.

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