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 ...
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