That’s showbiz
How that nightmare looked from farther away:
Over the years, the presidential debates have become as much about entertainment as elucidation. As journalists we hype them like Vegas world heavyweight boxing bouts beforehand and score them like TV critics afterwards.
Indeed, and it’s maddening. There’s so much palaver about the stupid debates, as if they mattered, when in fact there are much better ways to evaluate the candidates and what they plan to do.
Ever since Ronald Reagan mastered the genre, the debates have tended to reward star power over expertise.
Well there you go. If it works for a Reagan and doesn’t work for a Mondale then it’s not a good instrument.
Presidential debates increasingly have come down to who can deliver Reagan-style one-liners, the jokes or putdowns that are rerun endlessly on the news in the days afterwards. What is supposed to be a job interview has become more like an audition for the role of leading man.
And…that’s not what presidents are for. They’re not our roommates or colleagues, we don’t have to live with them, we don’t even have to like them.
I’ve watched a few debates between atheists and Christians, and noticed that same thing. William Lane Craig is able to command the stage; he is a preacher, not a debater, and using the Gish Gallop and the force of his charisma, he can run over atheist debaters better armed with facts but less charismatic in their manner of presentation.
Donnie is more like preacher in his delivery. The loud, the simple, the extreme declaratives, the exclamation points…he’s delivering a sermon to true believers.
Winning the debate is not, and never was, about having better command of the facts, or delivering the most reasonable argument. It’s about getting buy in. Reagan was damn good at that…too good. He learned from his years hawking crap products and persuading people to buy them. Trump is the same way. He is a carnival huckster, a PR man who has only one product: Donald Trump. And he works his audience like a magician. The media falls in line because they continue to try and make it serious and presidential and important; they actually end up enabling the hucksters by giving great seriousness to words that are lines in a script spoken by a clown.
I see what you did there.
And of course what most people remember from the ’84 debates is Reagan shrugging off serious concerns about his age and fitness for office with a joke about Mondale’s age.
And then four years later, Lester Holt sandbagged Dukakis by asking him if he would support the death penalty if someone raped his wife.
The silver lining in all this is that Trump may inadvertently perform two services for our country this year: the effective destruction of the Republican Party in its current form, and the end of these “debates”.
Heavyweight boxing? No effing way. More like Pro Wrestling, Jerry Springer, the Kardashians, or any number of “reality” trash TV garbage broadcasts that are consumed by the ignorant, poverty stricken masses. The Apprentice being a prime example. Who in their right mind would jump through hoops for some stupid asshole who inherited all his money, squandered most of it, and has the gall to tell people how great of a businessman he is. It’s sickening that anyone would want to impress such a condescending, contemptuous bastard.
Of course Biden is also a career politician, and Donnie Dipshit is right about his record, Biden hasn’t ever broken out of the formulaic government mindset, but at least he has a shred of personal integrity, which is more than we can say for Mr. Dipshit. But it is all about entertainment value and ratings. Mr. Dipshit tweeted about how good the ratings were in an expected display of braggadocio about how the shitty spectacle was consumed. Did Donnie Dipshit *win* the ‘debate’? You bet he did. He forced Biden and Wallace to play his game, on his terms, and no matter what was said or not said, the fact that there was no semblance of an orderly, coherent debate, no substantive policy discussion, and no honest characterizations of what choices there are in this election tells the whole story. Chaotic, phony, and worthless. It’s not even a popularity contest like it was for Reagan, it’s a choice between bad and worse.
Another option, unfortunately, is that he may cement his rule (Republican Party? Not likely. He doesn’t care about party, only himself) and bring the end to democratic governance in the United States.
Maroon @2: “And then four years later, Lester Holt sandbagged Dukakis by asking him if he would support the death penalty if someone raped his wife.”
It was Bernard Shaw, by the way.
It was perhaps in poor taste, but it was the easiest question in the world to answer politically. Dukakis could have said something like this:
“[optional: Bernard, that’s a disgusting and offensive question.] Would I support the death penalty for my wife’s killer? I’d want to do it myself with my own bare hands, slowly and painfully. I would be blinded by my rage and grief, and not interested in hearing any reasons why his life should be spared. And that’s exactly why we don’t let victims’ families sit as judge, jury, and executioner. We have a system of justice where impartial judges and jurors decide on guilt and punishment, and that’s as it should be. So would I want bloody vengeance for my wife? Yes, absolutely. But what I want most of all is to live in a country where justice is done. [optional puffery about how wonderful American justice is, even though it isn’t really true, but this is 1988]”
Rightly or wrongly, many Americans want to believe that their President has emotions, is a fighter, etc. (It’s why some people like Trump.)
Dukakis’s problem wasn’t that he was asked an unfair question, or that opposition to the death penalty was inherently unspinnable. It was that he gave a bland, unemotional answer to a question that should have provoked a reaction. Dukakis had already built up an image as a somewhat robotic technocrat — if he had showed some anger and feeling in his response, nobody was going to paint him as unhinged, it would have rounded him out as a human being. Hell, he could have just ripped Shaw a new orifice and that would have been a much better answer.
Dukakis was a politician. He had no excuse for botching that. One of the frustrating things about Democrats is that so many of them just plain suck at politics, and then complain that voters and the media focus on the wrong things. Well, yeah, of course they do. Voters are mostly idiots. I learned that in 8th grade student council elections, and have found no reason to change that opinion since. It’s one of the many reasons I’m not in politics. But if you’re going to get in the game, for fuck’s sakes, play to win, don’t complain about the rules of the game.
Ack, you’re right, Bernard Shaw. No excuse.
Yes, he could have handled that question better, but it came completely out of left field, and really revealed nothing about his qualifications for the presidency. It was a classic “gotcha”.
While I agree with Screechy overall, I will point out that many people in 1988 still remembered what happened to Ed Muskie when he showed emotion. I realize he actually cried, but hell, that’s not a bad thing. Why can’t a man cry?
The problem with the Democrats is that they persist in believing that people vote rationally. The pundits really aren’t much better on that. The funny thing is, it’s hard to know anyone personally and not realize that people vote (and make most decisions) emotionally. We are not rational beings, but the Democrats want to believe we are. Which is why we ended up with a Joe Biden instead of someone who would have appealed better to the voters. Obama managed to spout policy and still be charismatic, but not many can do that.
Trump seems real to people. Biden doesn’t. I would say that Trump is probably less real than Biden; he is a showman. But…it’s perception that counts, not reality.
I’m not sure I think that’s why we ended up with Biden. (Not that I understand why we did at all.) I think they were trying/hoping to ride Obama’s coattails, i.e. they thought they were playing to people’s emotions – plus that somehow Biden was less risky, because a known quantity, not one of these scary newcomers like Booker or Warren. But he’s SEVENTY FUCKING EIGHT.
Gah. It drives me nuts.
[…] a comment by Screechy Monkey on That’s […]
iknklast @7,
I assume yours was a rhetorical question. Men can’t cry because it’s not a manly reaction. Getting angry is fine.
I’m inclined to agree with Ophelia. I think Biden got the nomination precisely because he is perceived as connecting to people emotionally. He’s seen as still having blue collar roots despite all his years in Washington. (Which I sort of scoffed at, but it’s been pointed out to me that Biden was eternally the “poorest Senator in D.C.,” because he didn’t exploit his position the way his colleagues did.) The whole commuting via Amtrak thing. The tragic death of his first wife and child. Etc. He has a shot at beating Trump on the whole “who would you rather have a beer with” test. (Ironically, they’re both non-drinkers I believe!)
Now personally, I’d be happy to have a drink with Liz Warren. Bernie isn’t my cup of tea, but he’s probably delightfully cranky to shoot the shit with. And so on through the field. But those aren’t common opinions, I think. And so Biden it was.
Yeah, I felt the same about Warren. And she did have those roots…I mean, she grew up in Oklahoma, her father was an army flight instructor, then a salesman at Montgomery Ward, then worked as a maintenance man. Yes, she was a success. Yes, she was the Senator from Massachusetts. But she got herself there. She went to the University of Texas…she worked as a waitress for a while. She went to the same high school as my son (though he was much later, obviously, since he is only 37). That area is a rough area; it’s an inner city area, and one of the roughest high schools in Oklahoma City. She has the roots.
But a woman. And a successful one. She is definitely uppity. That’s what I like about her. I’m uppity, too.
But I will vote for Biden.