The Debate Debate

"Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all...It was pitiful...I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him 'Mr. President,' and then I felt ashamed."  -- Hunter S. Thompson 
 
“Hillary Clinton was at times, you could argue, even overprepared." -- Chuck Todd.

In 2004 I was working two jobs. By day, I was employed more-than-full-time in the senior management of a City of Chicago department.  And Tuesday and Thursday evenings I taught tech classes at a well-known art college in South Loop.  

(Actually, make that three jobs, because I was also blogging more-or-less full-time, my social life a dim and distant memory.)

Anyway, one of my nights teaching also happened to coincide with the one and only Vice Presidential debate of that campaign.  Cheney vs. Edwards.  And, overburdened with a sense of civic duty as I was, I flagrantly abused my authority as a teacher by wheeling in a teevee set into the classroom and announcing to my class of 20-somethings that their assignment for the evening was to watch the entire debate.  

This was met with some raised eyebrows.  

After all mine was not a political science class, and the general sentiment in that place at that time was that Bush and Cheney were a monsters and war criminals who should be sitting in a jail cell under The Hague.  And it will not surprise you, gentle reader, that this was (and is) a sentiment I enthusiastically share.  "But however you feel about these guys," I remember telling my students, "one of them is going to be one heartbeat away from the presidency for the next four years.  So I believe that taking 90 minutes to hear what they have to say about stuff is not an undue burden."

Groans.

But I was unmoved, so for the bulk of the evening we watched a completely forgettable exchange that I cannot imagine changed a single mind anywhere.   Then I let the class go early because they had suffered enough.

So, let's pretend it's 2024 and the major parties have nominated their candidates, and I am once again an unrepentant education tyrant in charge of a class of 20-somethings for three hours a night, twice a week.  But on this timeline, rather than running away from debates like roaches scattering when a light goes on (from Reuters) --

Republican Party withdraws from U.S. commission on presidential debates

"We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people," the committee's chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement...

--   the GOP consents to the usual sorts of debates and not Trump-approved freak shows, and class night once again happens to coincide with one such event, would I do the same thing again?

But before we get to that, WTF is "biased CPD"?  Cabbage Patch Doctor?  Charged Particle Detector?  Chicago Police Department?  Mysteries abound!

Anyway, would I?  

Probably.  Because I remain overburdened with a sense of civic duty.  Also I was a debater in high school, and a debate judge off and on after that, and have fond memories of people standing at podia contending over an issue.

However, I would now do it in the knowledge that this has become an almost entirely empty ritual.  That almost no one watches them.  That networks have shown they are willing to negotiate away any chance of anything  substantive being discussed in any detail in exchange for the ratings they hope to get by hyping the fuck out of the thing as if it were the World Series Superbowl of Pro Wrestling Olympics.  That if anything does manage to stick in the public memory, it's going to be either completely trivial (a sigh, an eyeroll, a glanced-at watch) or the hyperbolic spin put on it by pundits after the fact.  

Of course Presidential (and Vice Presidential) debates should be substantive.  Should be consequential.  And should be a quadrennial Sorkin-esque celebration of democracy that can hold the public riveted.  

But the fact of the matter is, they aren't.  Not even close.  And there is zero prospect of them becoming anything close to substantive or consequential at any time in the foreseeable future.

They are overhyped spectacles with zero nutritional value -- democracy cosplay designed to give cable news shows and the Sunday Gasbag Brigade rubber biscuits to chew ponderously upon over the next week.  

We watched John Kerry mop the floor with Dubya over and over again, and it didn't make the slightest difference.

We watched Donald Trump use his ratings-clout to bully debate organizers into giving him more favorable terms, and it didn't make the slightest difference.  

We watched Trump just skip debates altogether if he didn't feel like attending, and it didn't make the slightest difference.  

We watched Trump make ridiculous mistakes or just stand there like a lump, and it didn't make the slightest difference.  

We watched Hillary Clinton repeatedly beat Trump like a kettle drum --

As CNN's Harry Enten noted Tuesday morning -- using polling data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research -- the "best" Trump did in 2016 was in the second debate when 32% of people said he won, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll.

The worst debate for Trump, according to the polls? Yup, the first one -- where just 24% of people said he had won in a CNN-ORC poll. 

 

-- and it didn't make the slightest difference.

So have 'em... or don't have 'em... or whatever.  I'll probably watch.  

Some.  

But I refuse to pretend they're important.

I refuse to pretend that they're anything more than one more gone-to-rot relic of our civic religion, all-but abandoned now because the media defenders of the faith have clearly stopped giving a shit about the faith they were supposed to be defending.  

Burn The Lifeboats