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Silverfiddle Rant! |
"Where's the Beef?"
Debates are a crappy way to choose a president. What do they prove? How does winning one of these Jerry Springer spectacles of jabs, jibes, japes and carefully-crafted one-liners prove one's readiness for leading the most powerful nation in the world?
Many argue they are
not even debates. Others argue they should only be held once the primary field is winnowed to two candidates, but I maintain they are worthless for determining who the best candidate is.
A much better test would be to subject each candidate to a brutally-dense power point presentation of bureaucratic gibberish and policy gobbledygook, ask them to arrive at a decision, and then quiz them on the consequences of their course of action.
"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy"
NBC's
10 Presidential Debates That Actually Made an Impact prove my point. Each example is from the modern TV era and relies heavily on optics and visual impressions. Lord Bentsen from the State of Texaco reduced Dan Quayle to a grade school boy in short pants, but Bush-Quayle won anyway.
"There you go again!"
Face it, we are far removed from the famous
Lincoln-Douglas debates. The men were competing for one of Illinois's Senate seats, which at that time were appointed by the state legislature, but they are exemplars of debates of that era, and the format is timeless, harkening back to the ancient Greeks and Romans.
We wouldn't have patience today for that
format, in our pathos-drenched, logo-less world where ethos has been reduced to Maoist mob shaming and twitter scolding.
The modern day presidential "debate" needs to be scrapped. There's gotta be a better way.
What say you?