# Lack of policy and substance in the Presidential election **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [October 26, 2016, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744 "2016-10-26T02:08:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/1 "2016-10-26T02:08:31Z")
I have been very disappointed by this. I just watched a video of the Maine CD 2 debate between Emily Cain and Bruce Poliquin. It was amazing. They actually had an intellectual discussion about real national issues. Not like the Presidential debates that were full of insults, and kept using ISIS as a red herring to deflect from meaningful issues. Why don’t Hillary and Trump talk about things that really matter? I don’t care about what Fred Trump or Bill Clinton might have done decades ago. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/2 "2016-10-26T05:00:52Z")
Why don’t you consider ISIS to be a meaningful issue or to matter? Along with the related civil war in Syria, it’s probably the most significant foreign policy issue at the moment, with the possible exceptions of relationships with Russia and China. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/3 "2016-10-26T06:14:24Z")
To answer your question, OP: the news networks encouraged the lack of substance with their questions, because they want ratings. They got 80-100 million viewers (if I remember correctly); for a real discussion of issues they might have gotten 10% of that. Train wrecks sell, and train wrecks about sex are just about unstoppable. Which ignores the equally relevant point that Donald Trump is not capable of a meaningful discussion of issues. He might come out with his prepared bits, but as soon as Hillary said something else he would revert to name-calling and saying “wrong!” every time she tried to open her mouth. Believe me, I was hoping to see Hillary mop the floor with him by insisting on talking about policy issues and him not being able to keep up, but that didn’t happen. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/4 "2016-10-26T10:08:41Z")
I can’t track it down, but I remember an old quote that went something like: A successful American presidential campaign is politics without policy, humor without wit, and morals without conscience. > [@boffking](#): > > Why don’t Hillary and Trump talk about things that really matter? This could take a book to answer. It’s for the same reason that fast food advertisements are a diverse bunch of hip, attractive millennials dancing to pop music instead of reporting negative health effects of fast food or where chicken nuggets come from. Politicians are a brand to be sold to the public and their PR campaigns are run like any other. This goes back to the dawn of the PR industry and back when “propaganda” wasn’t considered a dirty word. The masses respond to emotion and baser level instincts like fear and anger. These sorts of personality driven campaigns that focus on shallow distractions are how you manage a democracy while protecting the interests of the elite. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/5 "2016-10-26T10:53:39Z")
It is difficult for the Republican candidate to discuss policy issues due to the fact that he is unaware of any details that concern any policy issues. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/6 "2016-10-26T13:02:55Z")
And Clinton just needs to brand herself as having more substance than Trump, and since 10% is more than 0%, she doesn’t need to go any higher. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/7 "2016-10-26T13:14:07Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > Why don’t you consider ISIS to be a meaningful issue or to matter? Along with the related civil war in Syria, it’s probably the most significant foreign policy issue at the moment, with the possible exceptions of relationships with Russia and China. How many American lives are effected on a daily basis by ISIS? How many are effected by things like our healthcare system? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/8 "2016-10-26T13:24:54Z")
These are not debates in the usual sense. They are responses to questions–from the moderators or the audience. If they won’t ask substantive questions, they won’t get substantive answers. If they had asked substantive questions, they’d have been accused of “rigging” the debate. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/9 "2016-10-26T13:27:39Z")
Did you watch the debates? Every one of Trump’s policy “answers” was a bizarre word salad. Here’s Trump’s economic plan from the third (his “best”) debate: > [@](#): > > Well, first of all, before I start on my plan, her plan is going to raise taxes and even double your taxes. Her tax plan is a disaster. And she can say all she wants about college tuition. And I’m a big proponent. We’re going to do a lot of things for college tuition but the rest the public is going to be paying for it. We will have a massive, massive tax increase under Hillary Clinton’s plan. But I would like to start off where we left. Because when I said Japan and Germany and I’m not just singling them out. But South Korea, these are very rich countries. Saudi Arabia. Nothing but money. We protect Saudi Arabia. Why aren’t they paying? She immediately, when she heard this, I questioned it, and I questioned NATO, why aren’t they NATO questioned? Why aren’t they paying? Because they weren’t paying. Since I did this, this was a year ago. All of a sudden they’re paying. And I’ve been given a lot of credit for it. All of a sudden, they’re starting to pay up. They have to pay up. We’re protecting people. They have to pay up. And I’m a big fan of NATO but they have to pay up. She comes out and says “we love our allies. We think our allies are great.” Well, it is awfully hard to get them to pay up when you have somebody saying we think how great they are. We have to tell Japan in a very nice way, we have to tell Germany, all of these countries, South Korea. We have to say, you have to help us out. We have, during his regime, during President Obama’s regime, we’ve doubled our national debt. We’re up to $20 trillion. So my plan, we’re going to negotiate trade deals. We’re going to have a lot of free trade. More free trade than we have right now. But we have horrible deals. Our jobs are being taken out by the deal that her husband signed. NAFTA. One of the worst deals ever. The jobs are being sucked out of our economy. You look at the places I just left. You go to Pennsylvania, you go to Ohio, you go to Florida, you go to any of them. You go to upstate New York. Our jobs have fled to Mexico and other places. We’re bringing our jobs back. I’m going to renegotiate NAFTA. And if I can’t make a great deal, then we’re going to terminate NAFTA and we’re going to create new deals. We’re going to have trade but we’re going to terminate it. We’re going on make a great trade deal. If we can’t, we’re going to go our separate way because it has been a disaster. We’re going to cut taxes massively. We’re going to cut business taxes massively. They’re going to start hiring people we’re going to bring the $2.5 trillion that’s offshore back into the country. We are going to start the engine rolling again because right now, our country is dying. At 1% GDP. So… uhhh… yeah. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/10 "2016-10-26T14:03:56Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > To answer your question, OP: the news networks encouraged the lack of substance with their questions, because they want ratings. They got 80-100 million viewers (if I remember correctly); for a real discussion of issues they might have gotten 10% of that. Train wrecks sell, and train wrecks about sex are just about unstoppable. Hope this isn’t too much of a side track, but what good are those ratings? Every network aired the debates, so there was no competitive edge, and no one aired commercials during it, so there was no income. So what good did 80-100 million viewers do for the networks? Prestige? I suppose the before and after ads were quite pricey. But I’m still not seeing the massive upside. It would be quite different if it were a sports game that drew those 100 million viewers. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/11 "2016-10-26T14:17:20Z")
They wouldn’t be selling this fluff to us if we weren’t buying it. We say we want policy and substance. But when it’s offered to us, we turn away and look for the fluff. Then we complain about the people who gave us the fluff we wanted and claim they forced us to consume it. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2016, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/12 "2016-10-26T14:22:13Z")
I thought the debate questions were decent enough, except for the stupid town hall question “say something nice about your opponent”. Economy, jobs, ISIS, Syria, Social Security, immigration… all got covered. One candidate could answer coherently, another could not. ---
**Author:** ![Itself](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/d07c76/32.png) [@Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/13 "2016-10-27T03:29:35Z")
> [@boffking](#): > > How many American lives are effected on a daily basis by ISIS? Aside from the humanitarian crises in a failed state undergoing a civil war, there’s the large number of refugees, some of whom enter the United States and more generally affect larger policies like Brexit; it’s possible that ISIS will spread to other areas; yet more instability in the Middle East drives up oil prices (though Syria itself is a very minor oil producer), which in turn raises the cost of living; the threat of terrorism from ISIS or sponsored by ISIS in the United States and allied countires (for example, the San Bernardino atack); and the larger geopolitical issues raised by Russia’s intervening in Syria. If you don’t want the United States to become involved at all— whether or not militarily— with ISIS, that’s a valid position to take. To say that the matter lacks substance, though, is just ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/14 "2016-10-27T07:24:34Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > They wouldn’t be selling this fluff to us if we weren’t buying it. > > We say we want policy and substance. But when it’s offered to us, we turn away and look for the fluff. Then we complain about the people who gave us the fluff we wanted and claim they forced us to consume it. Yes, this. There are lengthy, fairly specific policy positions on many issues available on Clinton’s website. But how many of the 80-100 million who watched the debate do you think will actually look at any of them? (Even the OP doesn’t seem to have looked at them.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lack-of-policy-and-substance-in-the-presidential-election/769744/15 "2016-10-27T17:30:25Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I thought the debate questions were decent enough, except for the stupid town hall question “say something nice about your opponent”. Economy, jobs, ISIS, Syria, Social Security, immigration… all got covered. One candidate could answer coherently, another could not. But even the most coherent of answers is going to be lacking when limited to two minutes. Today’s problems are difficult and the answers are difficult and subtle, and not amenable to soundbites. About the best you can do is to sketch the real answer. Trump can’t even do that. If American voters think that Trump’s “I’ll appoint smart generals to come up with an answer” is equivalent to Clinton’s understanding of the ISIS problem, the issue is not with the candidates or the press but with the voters.