"It's dangerous to go and listen what they say."
Debates are dumb and made for TV. Don't watch them.
This week’s soundtrack: Zola Jesus- “Dangerous Days”
The Republican Party will host its first primary debate of the 2024 presidential election cycle this week and the latest news is that the frontrunner says that he is going to skip said debate. In lieu of appearing on the debate stage, Donald Trump says he will appear on a counter-programmed interview with Tucker Carlson on Twi—, er, X.
There has been some hand-wringing about this particular news, but I want to stake out some ground online to say that all of these debates are useless and a continued degradation of the political system. Debates are made-for-TV events that do little to enlighten voters. They only reward non-transferable skills like quips, good looks and insults.
This is likely obvious, but it bears repeating: the job of elected official is nothing like standing on a debate stage like a high school student. The questions do not bring forward much other than talking points and the verbal fisticuffs between candidates that do little to educate the public about the candidates. This cycle will be no different.
In my previous life, I spoke to Dr. Mitchell S. McKinney of my alma mater specifically about the value of debates to voters. He was much more positive about them than I am and was, but he did acknowledge that they are not as relevant as they once were.
I urger you to put yourself into an undecided Republican voter’s mindset in a perfect world: You don’t know if Trump is electable, but you have some reservations about the rest of the field because you haven’t been paying close attention. You want to learn about the other candidates, be they Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Nikki Haley or whoever else.
With respect to this hypothetical voter, thirty or sixty-second answers to policy and politics questions will not illuminate you in the way that two hours tooling around online. Google their names and the issue that strikes you – “Doug Burgum abortion,” for example – and you’ll learn a whole lot more and you’ll waste far less time.
Trump is a creature of television and knows that this process is not going to help him. He knows that a zinger sent his way from Chris Christie can only hurt him, which is less than whatever gain he could get from making a pudding joke at Ron DeSantis’ expense.
(Say what you will about DeSantis’ lack of charm, a rational GOP electorate should be all-in on the guy. He is, by modern conservative American standards, a very effective governor of a red state. He’s fairly popular down there and he’s ruled in the ways that national conservatives often preach. And yet… he’s charmless and has a bad campaign and is gross and so on. Never has the rational voter theorem been better disproven than in his case.)
People running for office are increasingly beholden to appearing at controlled, predictable events, which is why the memorable bits of debates are always those unpredictable moments (Trump talking about his piece size, Lloyd Bensten telling off Dan Quayle, the fly on Pence’s head, etc.). Even outside the presidential and vice presidential debates, people seem to remember the “Rent is Too Damned High” guy more than they remember what office he was pursuing (governor of New York. Andrew Cuomo won that election.).
Televised debates are entertainment and pretty crappy entertainment, at that. Go see a movie instead (I thought Oppenheimer was terrific).
All this comes as Americans have more and more things to occupy our time. Even with the TV strike, we’re coming out of the worst of COVID-19, so things like politics become harder to follow. And there’s a lot to follow in our politics.
Jerusalem Demsas has a wonderful piece over at The Atlantic about the wide variety of offices and races to which Americans need to follow and how that connects to voter participation.
Americans are used to pundits and civic leaders shaming them for low-turnout elections, as if they had failed a test of civic character. Voters are apathetic, parties don’t bother with the hard work of mobilization, and candidates are boring—or so the story goes. But this argument gets the problem exactly backwards. In America, voters don’t do too little; the system demands too much. We have too many elections, for too many offices, on too many days. We have turned the role of citizen into a full-time, unpaid job. Disinterest is the predictable, even rational response.
Of course people prefer the shorthand of a TV show full of villains, heroes and everything in between. Debates – as all things at the intersection of politics and TV do – rely on these semiotic nonsense and it’s how we end up with TV hosts and c-list movie stars as presidents.
Lulu Update
As you’ve certainly noticed, Lulu has to abide the indignity of my putting stupid baseball hats on her for social media purposes. Sunday was no different, as I celebrated Spain’s World Cup win by taking a photograph of my Spain World Baseball Classic hat teetering on my girl’s head.
A Recommendation: Eating Something Truly Stupid
A few friends of mine and I have an annual tradition of heading up to the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair to look at the farm animals, check out the newest in carnival game technology and eat fair food. We’ve been doing this for 15 years now, which means that we’re all pretty firmly in middle age and can’t eat the garbage like we used to eat.
Nevertheless, I am hopelessly devoted to eating something very stupid and I discovered the churro stand last year. Churros are not a stupid food. But, with a little ingenuity, they can be. The churro stand takes two big churros, adds a huge double scoop of ice cream and makes an ice cream sandwich.
I tried the chocolate version this year and it was delicious. I prefer the vanilla version (I had it last year), but I’m never going to say no to a very stupid food experience that stuck me in a food coma – I ate a taco and a pupusa a scant 20 minutes before the monstrosity above – and made sure I didn’t eat for a full 22 hours afterward.