Let’s quit calling these silly spectacles “debates”
13 comments April 17th, 2008
 
Back in the day, before I knew better than to participate in such nonsense, I occasionally served on panels in candidate debates.
I performed this dubious service in races for the U.S. Senate and House, the governorship of Illinois, the state legislature and various local offices.
But one day it suddenly occurred to me that I was thereby making myself party to a charade, and I have since declined all such invitations.
I grew tired of the preening journalists like me asking questions calculated more to make us look smart or tough than to elicit information that might actually be useful to voters. And I hated the formats with their time limits and their gongs to be sounded when the limits were violated.
Besides, these exercises weren’t really debates. They were parallel news conferences. As often as not, they didn’t reveal the candidates’ real priorities or their views on certain matters of great interest to sizable segments of the electorate. And they almost never involved frank, unfiltered exchanges between the candidates.
All of this comes to mind in light of the debacle aired on ABC last night and in anticipation of the coming 150th anniversary of the historic Lincoln-Douglas debate in Freeport.
Honest Abe and the Little Giant didn’t need show-offy journalists or rigid formats to help them engage in worthy discourse on the issues of the day. They just took turns having their say.
Wouldn’t it be great, once the general-election campaign for the presidency begins in earnest, to have the Republican and Democratic candidates meet on regular occasions for honest-to-God debates without interference from the insufferable TV celebrities?
A moderator would serve, if at all, just to break up clinches. Otherwise, the candidates would set their own agendas and ask their own questions of each other. You wouldn’t need the participation of  self-important eminences like Tim Russert or Charlie Gibson, who would just screw things up anyway.
Viewers would decide for themselves whether the candidates took too much time or were evasive in responding to questions. It would behoove the candidates, without interference from media luminaries, to behave themselves and display some grace.
So how about it? Let’s you and I and the rest of America meet up with John McCain and (probably) Barack Obama in Freeport on Aug. 27 for a truly worthwhile celebration of the Lincoln-Douglas sesquicentennial.
