Presidential debates — either you believe they represent the public’s best opportunity to compare the personalities, policies and propaganda of the candidates, or you think they’re insipid displays of demagoguery. As it happens, I find a little truth in both views, so I straddle that fence… and thus find myself necessarily chaffed in my nether regions during every presidential debate I’ve ever watched.
One thing I think should be eliminated entirely from the proceedings is a moderator. And this isn’t necessarily being prompted by Chris Wallace’s incompetence during the recent Trump v Biden debate, for which he has been soundly excoriated by both sides. That said, Wallace’s bungling of the gig serves to make my point.
Over the years I’ve often wished I could muzzle the infernal moderator(s) and watch the candidates duke it out, moderated only by their personal predilections, and utterly unconstrained by nit-picky rules imposed upon them by their campaign teams. Moderated discussions are never as brutally honest, revealing, or impactful as good old-fashioned verbal free-for-alls, nor in the end are they any more productive.
Debates are an artificial construct devised by mass-media conglomerates, and therefore ill-advised. Real people do not have teams of staffers to decide the rules of engagement, nor moderators overseeing an argument to finesse how it shall go. For instance, there’s no moderator intervening in arguments I might have with my wife… and frankly I would pity the poor soul who should attempt to “guide the discussion” or give us “two uninterrupted minutes” to make our case, with “time allotted” for rebuttal — we would both turn in unison to the unfortunate interventionist and tell them to shut the hell up and stay out of our business. This is how the world works, and a little reality in political confrontations, especially when the stakes are high, would be a revelatory experience.
Debates are obsolete in the days of online video-conferencing. We could do without the fancy stage sets, as well as the well-trained yet inevitably biased moderators plucked from the bowels of the now discredited mainstream media. I wouldn’t even be in favor of a moderator tag team of say, Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow, with the idea that having anchors from both sides of the political spectrum there onstage to interrupt things is somehow a way to achieve “a fair and balanced debate”.
I think candidates should reinvent the old “fireside chat”, bypass all the rigamarole and schedule weekly, televised discussions where they simply logon to a secure virtual conference room, and begin sharing their thoughts on current events and political positions for all to see. Allow these supremely ambitious people the latitude to have it out. Let the topics flow where they may, allow agreement and compromise (if any) to happen, let the heated exchanges flare as they will, let the insults, accusations, exaggerations and outright lies flourish for all to see.
“Oh no, that would be a disaster!” the pundits, MSM CEOs and other vested interests trying to cash in on the election will say. “We simply cannot allow these two people vying for the highest office of power in the free world to control their own narrative, we must do it for them.”
What utter BS.
I for one do not need to be “protected” by the MSM from the ranting and raving of political candidates. I can (and do) check for myself the veracity and authenticity of politicians’ words and deeds, and draw my own conclusions.
Do you?
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