Captain Ed, this morning: [1]
Earlier today, I noted [2] Fred Thompson’s sponsorship of the Fox broadcast of the next Republican debate, and called it a “shrewd move”, which resulted in some, ahem, mixed reviews from CQ readers. It occurred to me that I hadn’t explained why I found Thompson’s tweak of the debate such a sound move, or at least not in quite a while.
Put simply, presidential debates are disasters waiting to happen to candidates. Good things almost never happen at them, and the format is calculated to play gotcha games with candidates in both parties. It forces a “lightning round” mentality onto complex policy issues that rewards simpletons and punishes the thoughtful.
What candidate in his or her right mind would want to participate in that exercise?
(Chuckle) No kidding.
This is precisely why , I think, Thompson decided not to enter the race until everybody else had already shot themselves in the foot several times. The only thing that could come out of the race being as early as it is, this cycle, is a larger number of early victims, and larger campaign costs. The utter uselessness of such debates, particularly this early on, (Ed does a fair job of pointing this out..) is getting to the point where it’s beyond debate, anymore…. to coin a phrase.
Granted, as the captain points out it filtered Ron Paul, leaving him wondering just what the hell hit him. It did the same thing to John McCain. Anything that can do that is certainly an advantage. But beyond that, I don’t know of any positive outcome of the earlier debates and early cycles. As Ed says, correctly:
We don’t need to see the chorus line of candidates every two weeks, asked the same questions and delivering the same 60-second responses. It’s superfluous. No one watches these debates who don’t already have access to much more detailed and intelligent policy positions from these candidates.
Exactly so.
Let’s also examine another issue that nobody’s bothered bringing up; election fatigue.
At some point, the amount of attention being paid to elections by the voters… or at least by the consumers of news, whom stats say don’t vote, in majority… has to wane. A close parallel of the ever the earlier election cycles would be Christmas decorations going up before Halloween. THe leaves aren’t down at the stores already have their Christmas displays up, and Christmas music blaring on the Musak. By the time Christmas finally shows up, the 4000th playing of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” has even the most ardent fan of the holiday season reaching for the Uzi, the extra ammunition, and the camouflage gear… resulting in the worst example of reverse anti-climax imaginable.
This so it is with this election cycle, which, let’s face it, started about fifteen minutes after George W Bush was declared the winner for his second term. John Kerry had barely finished his concession speech when the leftists in the news media were already wondering who the next democrat candidate would be… would Al Gore run again, or would John Kerry try it again, and so on. The whole thing took on the quality of the media saying to the voters “Yeah? Wait till next year”
Which of itself, raises the issue of whether or not this early push to the election season isn’t the democrats trying to get a leg up. if so, I suspect it is a plan that will backfire. In some ways, I suspect it already has. The reasons are simple enough;
At some point between then and next November, Americans are simply going to wink out. The timing of that event will certainly be hastened by the repetition of events that Ed describes. People will no longer care about minutiae such as Rudy Giuliani’s seventeen year old (And thereby non-voting) daughter listing her support on her Facebook account for Barrack Obama. (Gee, a 17 year old in a rebellious phase? Yeah, that’s news, huh?)
Though, I suppose that the voters will take some interest in the latest entry into the Prius Racing Team. (Quick; do you even know what I’m talking about here? If not, you’ve already winked out on this stuff.)
At the bottom line, the only group of people in America that benefits from this nonsensical rush to the White House this far in advance of the election provides is big money work for the usual Washingtonian political pundits, who otherwise would be more properly twiddling their thumbs until perhaps to June or July of next year.
Given the propensity of presidential candidates to destroy themselves with their own words over a given period of time, however, perhaps there is one advantage to all of this; we will likely have the opportunity come next summer to question the more ardent supporters of Americans surrender in Iraq why they were so willing to do that in the midst of what will be then, an obvious path to success. Watching the Democrats trying to backpedal from that, will be the most amusing political spectacle in years, the most educational, and likely the most productive.
The advantage of that happening, of course, is that the democrats won’t be pushing their overly long election schedule on us in the next cycle. They will be the ones on the front line to shorten it, thereby minimizing their exposure to damage in that next election.