Reasons Presidential Debates Are Irrelevant

When you realize debates are based on quiz shows by design, you suddenly understand their many nonsensical quirks. Why is everyone standing, instead of sitting like most civilized people do at multi-hour events? (These Austrian candidates look much more comfortable, even without any of them being septuagenarians.) Why are there so many short questions, rather than a few broad topics followed by long responses that can really dig deep into issues?

And most significantly, why does precious little of each event consist of candidates actually clashing by countering each other's arguments and then responding further to those counterarguments? (You know, debating.) We're stuck in this format wherein a host asks a question, a contestant tries to answer it, and then we move on to the next question. That's fine for seeing who can answer "Who won the 1972 Oscar for Best Picture?" but not so much for hashing out complex policy and philosophical differences.

There are absolutely alternatives to this format. The CBS network executive who designed the first debates later regretted his choice and proposed that candidates talk to each other at length with no limits (an idea eventually depicted, maybe a little too idealistically, in a special live episode of The West Wing). Other proposed formats involve changing the moderators' role in other ways, or letting candidates read each other's statements in advance and prepare rebuttals. But the parties resist any new format that could potentially leave candidates more vulnerable. Better to let them give their standard sound bites and quickly move on. Speaking of which ...

Think about how a good journalist will conduct interviews. To get anything substantial, the interviewer should cut the candidate off when they talk about something pointless, and when they finally hit on what matters, they must press for more details. You can't just ask a single question and leave a timer running for one minute. During the next debate, I wish a candidate would say (as they admit to thinking), "We've been talking about my health care plan this entire campaign, but you want me to explain why it's best now in 45 seconds? How about instead I explain why you should go fuck yourself?"

So candidates in debates often lack time. But here's the weird thing: They also have too much time. One minute is not enough to go into detail about anything, so the candidate will usually default to a couple of prepared bullet points, which takes maybe 20 seconds. And unless they carefully prepared one-minute blocks about every topic possible (look back, and you'll see Mitt Romney was freakishly good at that), they'll then have 40 completely empty seconds, which they'll fill with whatever comes into their head, no matter how unconnected it is with the question.

One proposed solution to this is called the chess clock. Candidates could take roughly as long as they want over their answers, but this would be deducted from the total time they're allowed to speak all night. This would both let them finish actual thoughts and strongly discourage them from pointless padding. If you're succinct throughout, your reward is that you get to just deliver your stump speech at the end. Or let everyone go home early, it's your choice.

Related: 5 Common American Political Beliefs That Don't Add Up

By the way, we could get many more candidate fuckups (i.e. useful information) if we un-muzzle the moderators and let them question candidates more aggressively. Suspend the debate rules in a way opposite to that West Wing suggestion I mentioned before, letting the moderators interrupt the candidates constantly. Think to those videos you occasionally see of an interviewer truly grilling a politician, except instead of critiquing one candidate, the moderators hit them all. Elections are zero-sum, but debates don't have to be. I have an idealistic version in which all the candidates lose. (And the electorate wins through becoming more informed, I guess.)

Related: 3 Things That Make Political Discussions Nearly Impossible

The moderator asks Elizabeth Warren to respond to top economists who say her proposed tax hike will stifle growth and investment. She replies, "They're wrong," lists a bunch of things we can spend money on, and says that'll fuel growth. This exchange, boring as it is to recount, is about as good as the Q&A debate format can get. The moderator challenged the candidate and invited her to argue against a point. And even so, I came away learning nothing.

Some people said the tax cut will hurt the economy, then the candidate said it won't. I, the lay viewer, don't have enough info to decide who's right. Warren could have given the exact same answer if they were talking about an $80 trillion or $800 billion tax hike instead of an $8 trillion one, and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I need someone else to come in authoritatively and declare some facts to be true and beyond debate. Without that, all I can do is say, "Well, the candidate sounded convincing. So I should believe her? And vote for her?" If she'd sounded unsure or stumbled over her words, would that have been a sign that she's wrong?

Political campaigns will draw voters to whoever's more enchanting, there's no getting around that. But the media should work to counter these cults of personality instead of encouraging them by hosting competitions to see who can speak prettiest. Put them in a situation where their charisma is stripped away. Have them do the debate nude. Or make them eat increasingly hot chicken wings the whole time. Or both. I don't know. Figure it out.

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For more, check out Why Presidential Debates Can't Be Honest:

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