Search This Blog

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Do the debates serve any purpose?


 
 
 
I won't be watching the debates - I'll let someone from the news (or Jon Stewart) tell me what was said.  Personally, I've never heard anything substantive come out of a presidential debate.  To me, they are just opportunities for one candidate to make a strategically placed quip at the other candidate's expense.  Meanwhile (it seems to me), the television and studio audiences are sitting back, waiting with baited breath, for someone to make a mistake, get a fact wrong, or forget something.
 

Is this how we would expect our President to govern? Is real diplomacy conducted under studio lights, and in sound bites? Or, as I believe, are solutions hammered out in meeting rooms, over time and with painstaking detail?
 

It is said that races have been won and lost during debates (remember Nixon's sweaty upper lip?).  Not everyone agrees: Mike Donning of Bloomberg News, for instance.
 

Regardless - to me, political debates are uncomfortable, mean spirited wastes of time.  I'll just let someone else tell me what happened.

No comments:

Post a Comment