I understand that the TV format probably requires it, but everytime I watch a political “debate” on TV, the format always seems to have barely enough time allotted per answer so that you only get the briefest glimpse into what the candidates believe.
I think especially with the internet, which is much cheaper to publish than television, there should be a longer debate format where candidates are not rushing so much and can have a better back-and-forth. I suspect that on one hand it might encourage rambling, but on the upside it would also encourage candidates to go beyond the pre-canned talking points they get from their advisors, and it would be easier to determine if they even understood the basics of the issues. The in-depth debates could exist alongside the existing TV formats I think.
I haven’t lived in any other country yet, but I have heard that debates in the UK are much more in depth and the candidates have to know their issues a lot better than they do here. Is it because Joe sixpack wants someone who they wouldn’t mind having a beer with, who doesn’t seem too much smarter than them, or is there something about their formats that encourage hardball?
US politicians have a very limited vocabulary and grasp of the issues. They are short because that’s all they can think of to say, and they have limited ability to recall scripted speeches, and teleprompters aren’t allowed. They are pretty pointless exercise.
It’s a function of TV culture. The candidates know that the audience for the full debate will be small. Instead TV news will mine what they say for sexy sound bites. Giving a long thoughtful response doesn’t give you any advantage – all it does is increase the likelihood that you’ll say something unfortunate that can be used out of context to make you look bad. So politicians tend to limit themselves to scripted talking points instead of actually demonstrating that they can talk intelligently off the top of their heads about a topic.
I’m sure there are plenty of U.S. politicians who could hold their own in a proper debate if given the opportunity. But they’re smart enough to know that “debating properly” is a losing tactic in our current media environment.
They’re already two hours now. How long would you make them? Most candidates do stick to pre-scripted talking points, but I don’t think thats a function of the length of the debate.
FWIW, googling the first Cameron/Brown/Other guy debate in the UK was 90 minutes.
THK is right. Some US politicians cannot talk policy for hours. Most serious ones can. I’m sure that Romney, Paul, or Gingrich would both be happy to debate their rivals for hours on policy.
Debates are short because of American attention spans, not politicians’ knowledge of policy.
If you’re talking about the TV “candidates debate”'presentations that happen just before elections the real reason is that they’re not meant to be debates and the candidates Sony want them to bs real debates. No one actually wants to risk “losing”'a debate, so really all they want is an opportunity to make short speeches that can be cut into good sound bites.
Our country is a mess because people give these morons more credit than they deserve. At best, 1 out of 10 could even stand up in an SDMB debate thread. Their knowledge is limited to simplistic summaries of political issues. They can rarely justify their claims, and their ability to avoid direct answers exceeds their capacity to understand the questions.
Romney is as empty as a suit can get. He could ramble on endlessly about nothing in particular but he can’t make a substantive statement about anything without contradicting something he’s previously said. Paul may be pretty bright, and able to speechify at length, but you’re likely to find out things about him you didn’t want to know. And Gingrich has never demonstrated an ability to converse in anything but sound bites, and bites taken out of his own foot.
If Americans can sit through two hours of a mediocre movie, they could listen to politicians who had anything worthwhile saying.
Our country is a mess for a lot of reasons, but not the intelligence of our politicians.
Politicians put forward a persona of folkishnish and soundbites because that wins elections. Being professorial does not.
If you think all of their books, speeches, and papers are ghostwritten, and that everyone who personally attests to their intelligence is lying, then fine. Watch the C-SPAN video of the healthcare roundtable that Obama held, for example. Unscripted (even if the openings were). No teleprompters. More or less serious policy talk. Sure, some of those guys are dingbats. But its a minority, and it’s mostly House members rather than serious Presidential candidates. Or watch Gingrich’s debates with Ralph Nader on Youtube. Or read some of Obama’s writing as a Senator. Or, heck, go meet your personal Congressperson. Rush Holt? Fuckin’ rocket scientist.
Maybe I’m confusing something, doesn’t the PM get grilled by the house of commons? I am very ignorant of UK government but it’s always a shock to think of an elected official answering for their actions which doesn’t really happen here.
This is why I made this thread, because I agree with this. I would like the people running the government to ideally, be morally superior to me, and quite a bit smarter than me…but I don’t really feel politicians are either.
If they were as smart as they should be to be in such important positions, I feel they would be able to articulate themselves better than they do. They always talk about vague topics like “liberty” and “freedom” but they never can defend specifically how their planned policies will defend, reinforce, or increase those ideas. It’s always
1…Policy
2. …?
3… FREEDOM BALD EAGLES!!!
The left really isn’t any better. At first I thought it was spinelessness in general, and it definitely seems to be a part of it, but the right wing soundbites are so EASILY destroyed with 10 seconds long snarky counter-soundbites, but you never hear these. Saturday Night Live does a better job eviscerating stupid politicians and their nonsense than opposing parties. Pre-crisis Anthony Weiner was the only Dem that I saw on the national stage that would go in the lion’s den on Fox news and actually point out their blatant lies and contradictions in simple, easy to understand ways.
I think that conservatives have the advantage in short debates because their positions do not allow for nuance and complex thinking, it is tax cuts, big military, no gays thanks. It takes a lot longer to say “Yes America does need a military but we have passed the point of diminishing returns with our defense spending for a bloated military that is designed to fight 20th century wars against enemies that don’t exist anymore” compared to “WE BELIEVE IN A STRONG AMERICA!”
So I think if longer debates were available for those that wanted them, it would give more opportunity for soundbite, puppet-politicians to show their true colors, and also give more chance for progressives to fully explain complex, nuanced positions. Either way they would keep politicians more honest than the rote talking points they give now, IMO.
Because I’m not sure we could stand it if they were any longer? The political debates here are primarily theater, and the focus is on how good the candidates looked. The theme of the debates is that the candidates want to Look Presidenial[sup]TM[/sup] while saying as little as little as possible and not deviating from their scripted messages. The press tends to oblige. The debates can be interesting but they rarely tell you very much. Making them longer probably wouldn’t help.
Agreed. What would help is a nasty moderator who would either keep them on topic or move forward. Something like…
" Senator Dingleberry, what is your proposed solution for the lack of funding in education?"
“Well that’s a great question, but let me speak for a moment about healthcare…”
“Senator, the question is about Education funding. Do you have anything to say about that topic sir?”
“I’m getting to it, the thing is medicar-”
"thank you senator, that will do. Let the debate record show that senator Dingleberry declined to state his position on education funding. Senator Turdsandwich, same question to you sir. "
Cap off the debate with a nice little head to head summary of the issues and the responses. That would put some directness into their speech quickly I should think.
We can sit here and come up with all kinds of fantasies about the right kind of debate. The bottom line, however, is that participation in any such debate is voluntary, and especially for the front-runner, represents little more than a risk of either a gaffe or of letting the trailing candidate look too good. Why would most candidates agree to any kind of debate other than the kind we already have?
Which is not going to happen while the debates are a joint presentation of the political parties and the TV networks. I’m sure the debate moderators weren’t nearly that aggressive in the days when the debates were organized by the League of Women Voters, but some additional independence could only help.
I think that was exactly his point. The debates are intended to be as low-risk as possible, and the results largely suck and doesn’t help the voters. If the primary goal of the debate is to inform the voters about the candidates, the candidates and political parties shouldn’t be the ones making the decisions about what the debate looks like.
It would only take one candidate calling the other one out. Can’t you see the ads and soundbites now?
Cue low growling synth…
" Senator Turdsandwich refuses to debate in a hardline arena, what does he REALLY think? What is he hiding, what doesn’t he want you to know? (switch music to something inspiring) Senator Dingleberry would gladly go to debate, he wants you to make the right choices on election day. Vote Dingleberry!"
Not necessarily. A tougher debate is more of a risk for both candidates, and all of the nonsense that is associated with the debates is intended to reduce that risk. The candidate who is behind in the polls always wants to debate more often to create more opportunities to make up ground; the one who’s in front is happy to run the clock down and resists as many demands as possible. (Although in terms of presidential candidates, they always wind up with three debates.) In 2008 McCain tried to hammer Obama over the town hall meeting format - he wanted more of those because they played to his strengths - but he didn’t get anywhere with that. People might think less of a candidate if he or she refused to debate entirely or really deviated from past practice, but they probably wouldn’t care much about the format of the debates.
The issue is that the Republicans and Democrats control the debates - which is one reason you’re unlikely to see a third-party candidate on that stage ever again. What should really happen is that the news stations should put news ahead of access: they should stop participating in this unhelpful and unenlightening format and set up independent debates. If that happened, maybe the candidates would be pressured to participate in debates that were not tailored to their advantage. In a worst-case scenario, maybe you’d see the candidates refuse to participate in the independent debate and try to create their own, in which case they might get raked over the coals in the press.
Nearly election season there’s some long-shot challenger who tries this tactic in some race somewhere in the country. Unless the incumbent is in some kind of trouble, it doesn’t usually make any difference and it rarely is effective in goading someone into a debate. Even if it gets you into a debate, once in a debate, it’s to neither candidate’s personal interest for it to be anything more than a series of sound bites.
