(HOST) After watching debates among the presidential candidates from the start of primary season on through, teacher, historian and commentator Vic Henningsen wonders if it’s really worth the time and effort.
(HENNINGSEN) Do debates matter? I wonder. Are we any clearer on the candidates stands on the issues? Did they have the substantive discussion we wanted? I think the answers are "Not really" and "No."
Modern presidential debates began in 1960, when a tanned and fit John Kennedy confronted a Richard Nixon TV lighting made look unshaven and haggard. Kennedy spoke to the audience; Nixon to the issues – guess who won? Image, it seemed, mattered more than message. Those debates were so important to that close election that candidates avoided them for over a quarter-century before Ford and Carter revived what is now a tradition. After Ford was pummeled for mistakenly arguing that Poland wasn’t under Soviet domination, the pattern was set. Year after year, audiences enthusiastically tuned in, hoping someone would commit a gaffe opponents could exploit all the way to the White House. That led candidates to avoid spontaneity, stay relentlessly "on message", and try to win by not losing – a waste of their talent and our time.
Ah for the good old days of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858! Looming large in American myth, two political giants wrestled with the issue that would ultimately lead to civil war – slavery – in what was as much a moral debate as a political one. They set the standard. Surely they provide a contrast with today’s tawdry show?
Well, yes and no. Despite the moral issues, there’s much that’s familiar. Each stuck closely to a "stump speech." Each pandered to the audience. They traded charges about shady friends. Douglas accused Lincoln of failing to support the Mexican War.
Lincoln quoted another politician so often that Douglas cracked "I thought I was running against Abraham Lincoln" – a precursor to this year’s "I’m not George Bush."
Above all, they entertained. Thousands attended; hundreds of thousands followed them in the press. So many spectators crowded onto the roof of the speakers platform at one debate that it collapsed onto the heads of the welcoming committee below. Would Lincoln recover from a disastrous opening performance? (He did.)
Would Douglas finally lose his voice? (He did.). As many people seemed focused on those questions as on the power of Congress to bar slavery in the territories.
They were competing for a Senate seat and Lincoln lost. But two years later, he would defeat Douglas and two others to claim the presidency, in part because of the persona he forged during the earlier debates.
And maybe that’s what it’s all about – maybe the debates aren’t really about issues but simply an important part of that odd, mysterious chemistry by which Americans bond with those they select for high office. It’s not the slogans, the "gotcha" lines, or the gaffes but simply how a candidate wears with the electorate over time.
If that’s true, then we ought to have more debates, not fewer. But I’m not sure I could stand it.