Notes from my Knapsack 8-29-24
Jeff Gill
It's all debatable
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Presidential debates have perhaps never been more important in U.S. politics than they have been this year.
Presidential debates have perhaps never been more important in U.S. politics than they have been this year.
Arguably a poor debate performance drove incumbent Joe Biden out of the running for the Nov. 5 general election (Ohio early voting starts Oct. 8). So there's an extra dollop of attention on how Donald Trump and Kamala Harris do versus each other in however many debates they end up having.
Historically, debates really haven't done that much. It is often argued the original TV debate, Richard Nixon versus John F. Kennedy in 1960, had an impact on the election's outcome. The usual claim is those who heard it on the radio thought Nixon won, but if you had your TV on, you thought Kennedy did. (Spoiler alert: Kennedy won.)
Gerald Ford stumbled against Jimmy Carter over how he described Poland's status behind the Iron Curtain, reinforcing an existing downward trend on his polling; Ronald Reagan got off a good line about his opponent's relative youth and immaturity, delivered so well even Walter Mondale laughed uproariously. Did either turn of phrase really deliver the election?
Sometimes people are surprised to hear we've only had presidential debates since 1960. "What about the Lincoln-Douglas debates?" Um, well: that was 1858, but it was for the Senate campaign in Illinois, and Douglas won. It did set the table, though, for the 1860 presidential race. (Spoiler again: Lincoln won that time.)
There's a famous management adage from Edward Deming: "Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets." I think of that when I watch today's presidential debate format, versus the one that gave us Abraham Lincoln as President.
Lincoln and Stephen Douglas had seven debates through the summer and fall of 1858, in different communities all around Illinois. They were held from 2:00 pm to about 5:00 pm. The two took turns starting, and the first debater spoke for (are you sitting down?) an hour, the response had ninety minutes for the second candidate, then the opening speaker had a half-hour to respond.
Shorthand and telegraphy were technologies just becoming widespread, and through them, the debates did become a national phenomenon, with large chunks of the debate speeches being reprinted all across the United States.
But I just think about the vast difference between asking someone to set forward their program across an uninterrupted hour, knowing their opponent was about to have an hour and a half to reply to your proposals. Then thinking as they spoke about how to use your thirty minute reply. As opposed to "you have thirty seconds to reply."
If every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets, then what are we getting from a program of short sound bites and fragmentary replies? Does a short attention span format tend to give us a more distracted and digressive candidate? Or does it just favor that sort of mindset…
(Deming also said "A bad system will beat a good person every time." Spoiler?)
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been in debates before and isn't sure our presidential debate format deserves the label. Debate that question with him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
