Having recently belly-laughed through a national tour production of The Play That Goes Wrong, I don't think the Democratic National Committee planners could have produced a more hilarious debate series if they had tried.
In the play, a hapless, rag-tag cast comically encounters everything that can go awry on a live stage: forgotten lines, misplaced props, pranks, pratfalls, set malfunctions and more.
In the DNC televised debates, misnamed "moderators" who ask gotcha-type questions in a flawed format reduce what might normally be intelligent, thoughtful candidates to frenzied panderers in a fiasco full of sound-bite, shout-down antics.
It's doubtful any of the presidential hopefuls hurling jabs and braggadocio in South Carolina on Tuesday could deliver oratory on par with the legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates. But even Lincoln and Douglas might have looked like boobs had they been limited to 75-second responses.
Only in TV-land is one minute and 15 seconds "a long time," as one of the CBS moderators reminded the panel after several candidates (or contestants, as Mike Bloomberg called the group in a rattled moment) went over their time.
It's a little longer than two 30-second commercials, true, and just a little shorter than a typical feature story on the evening news.
But in the regular world, 1:15 is a ridiculously short time to explain anything of significance to anybody with the expectation of enabling a well-considered decision.
For conservatives who would label some of the furthest-left progressive ideas laughable, the Democratic debates have devolved into downright sidesplitting spectacle.
The facial expressions. The finger-wagging. The sound and fury, signifying nothing in the way of statesmanship. Indeed, several Bard quotes spring to mind as appropriate in assessing the idiocy of a measly minute-and-a-quarter to mutter anything meaningful on serious subjects and matters:
The empty vessel makes the loudest sound. Such a short time elevates volume over substance, and the debates have subsequently become one of the few televised programs in which the commercials don't seem louder.
Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast. There's precious little time for wisdom in a rat-race of words, and haste makes for mistakes, such as when Joe Biden misspoke on Tuesday, wrongly claiming that 150 million Americans had been killed by guns since 2007.
Talking isn't doing ... words are not deeds. Watching the candidates watch the timer, you can almost see them trying to check off campaign talking points from a mental list. Brief mentions of good ideas and successful programs--among long-winded accusations and anti-Trump warnings--were the little candles that shone bright in the wearisome debates, leaving viewers longing for more.
I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed! OK, that quote is falsely attributed to Shakespeare. But too much brevity evidently suffocates the soul of wit; the lost art of eloquent insults remains lost among debaters.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. The 75-second restraint renders thinking to second-class status behind speaking, with the result of lowering rather than raising the level of discourse.
Instead of anybody's best foot being put forward, it gets put squarely in their mouths or in a pile of crap. A forum that should be a conduit of ideas becomes merely a confluence of chatter.
The viewing and voting audience gets chaos, not clarity. Desperation, not deliberation. Asininity, not articulation. None of which is the stuff capable of engaging minds, much less changing or convincing them.
Tuesday's debate was either amusing or embarrassing, depending on political stripe, but in no way informative. That's a true travesty, because everyone onstage had important things to say that voters needed to hear.
People need to listen to Sanders explain his math, and Bloomberg talk more about NYC's charter schools, and Biden bring his experience into context. Steyer tossed a slavery reparations grenade into the mix, but had no time to reconcile that idea's many troubling aspects.
From Klochubar's practical policy ideas to Warren's strong passions to Buttigieg's astute analyses, the debate format consistently deprived the public of coherent dialogue.
Perhaps the League of Women Voters could be persuaded to sponsor the debates again, and bring back some nonpartisan common-sense parameters. A trio of basic ideas that would be transformative:
- Ask obvious big-issue questions to all candidates at once. The luck or un-luck of a crackpot question currently creates arbitrary and unnecessary distractions. Use polls to determine the issues most Americans--not moderators--want to hear candidates expound on.
- Give candidates seven minutes to respond. A normal speaking pace is 130 words per minute, so that would allow candidates the length of an op-ed column to address each important issue's background, their personal beliefs about it, and their ideas on tackling it should they be elected president.
- Only have one mic live, for the person whose turn it is to answer. Candidates talking over each other has been a problem since at least 2012, when one of the Obama-Romney debates featured 122 interruptions in 90 minutes. So let the sole live mic belong to the candidate talking, and be strict about cutting it off if he or she runs over.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 02/28/2020