A Modest Proposal
We’ve been in a more or less constant election cycle since late 2003. We went from being in the run-up to the ‘04 election, to the election itself, to a protracted runup to the ‘06 election, to the run-up to the ‘08 election starting pretty much as soon as the polls closed in November ‘06. I don’t expect that will change; the only thing that will be different, I suspect, is a different opposition party doing the talking.
And there’s been no shortage of talk… the endless rounds of the Sunday talk shows, dozens of commercials (including 3 renditions of the “3am” ad, as of this writing), and 30 or so debates.
The problem is that debates, as they’re done now, aren’t debates; they’re a series of campaign commercials at worst, or position papers in miniature at best. There’s no real opportunity for give-and-take, nor is there the degree of substance that comes when two people have to take opposite sides of an issue and show that they know something (or don’t know jack) about it.
With that in mind, here’s a modest proposal, with plenty of time before the general election to make it happen: let’s see, just once/for once, an actual debate on television. Not a series of soundbites in reply to a series of insubstantial questions on as many issues as will fit into 90 minutes, but a true Lincoln-Douglas debate, with one candidate arguing the affirmative of the issue, and one arguing the negative.
This ought not to be difficult to pull off. There’s no shortage of issues on which both parties disagree, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s that all three of the major candidates rather enjoy the sound of their own voices. Mindful of the fact that the broadcast networks wouldn’t touch something like this with a ten-foot pole, I hereby nominate PBS to make it happen. We deserve, even if only for one night, to hear the candidates speak, honestly and in depth.
Tags: Barack Obama, Debates, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, PBS, Politics, Television