1115.org

Tonight should be a barnstormer, as George Bush and John Kerry square off in the first of three Presidential debates. Truly, there is no better way to see where each candidate stands on the issues, and how the two men match up with another.

In a perfect world, I could write the preceeding paragraph without the sarcasm. But this isn’t a perfect world, and the debate tonight isn’t really a debate at all; it’s a shallow competition of one-liners and memorized talking points, of personality over policy. It’s a carefully planned pageant that barely has more substance than your typical campaign commercial, but gets free airplay during prime time.

Of course, the debates have been going in this direction for quite some time. The winner isn’t the best prepared or the the most accomplished; it’s the guy who embarasses himself the least. People remember Al Gore sighing when the cameras panned to him during Bush’s answers in the 2000 debates, and the fallout from that gave Bush the win more than any of his rhetoric did.

Fearful of something similar happening during this election, the representatives of both candidates have agreed on a debate format that is even more soulless and plastic than in previous campaigns. The audience will be carefully selected. The candidates will not be allowed to ask each other questions directly or even address each other with proposals. The agreement even stipulates that cameras only show the candidate who is talking at the time, so that the opponent’s reactions remain unseen. To give the media a small bit of credit, they have refused to comply with this particular provision. But wait, there’s more:

A 32-page agreement reached last week between the two campaigns sets out the rules for the debates with great specificity, down to details such as the temperature of the hall, what kind of paper can be used to take notes and who can be standing in the wings backstage.

After all this, the candidates might as well be replaced by robots, programmed to spit out a pre-recorded answer whenever a topic is introduced. And while minimizing surprises and mistakes appeals to both candidates, where does it benefit the American people? When we are denied the opportunity to truly compare the candidates on merit, the debates become nothing more than an informercial. We deserve better than that….don’t we?