Are Debates Necessary? That’s, Well, Debatable

Here come Bill and Bob. But so what?

Televised debates are the ultimate fiction and the biggest redundancy of presidential campaigns. They are the big cliche, the icing on the tip of the rest of the iceberg you never see.

The media love them, much of the electorate watches them. Ever growing in prominence since the pivotal Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960, they are now the popular currency and Holy Grail of electioneering. They’re even entertaining, sometimes even suspenseful or memorable, as in Ronald Reagan repeatedly telling Jimmy Carter, “There you go again,” in 1980 or Lloyd Bentsen stuffing Dan Quayle in 1988’s clash of vice presidential foes.

Yet they resolve nothing except which candidate gives the better performance in front of TV cameras on a given night. As if that will make the United States safer and healthier in the next four years.

Such will be the case Sunday when President Clinton and challenger Bob Dole compete in the first of their two televised debates, followed on Wednesday by another between Vice President Al Gore and Dole’s running mate, Jack Kemp. The second Clinton-Dole match, on Oct. 16, will have a town hall format that involves members of a studio audience, an atmosphere especially conducive to Clinton’s folksiness. Sunday’s initial encounter will be more traditional, with a single moderator.

Grinding loudly Sunday night and Monday will be the usual conveyor belts of post-debate gab, the irritating practice of reporters giving their opinions under the pretense of analysis and interpretation, a burgeoning phenomenon in much of journalism that former Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor calls the “punditocracy.”

On television, there will be pundits galore to help the multitudes who are mentally challenged sift through the complexities of the posturing they have just witnessed. You will not only hear Machiavellian myth spinners from both major parties declare stunning victory, and the debate outcast and reform Party candidate, Ross Perot, tell Larry King on CNN that Clinton and Dole were both slugs who avoided addressing the real issues affecting the real people (down where the rubber meets the road). You will also hear network sages reveal who won and who lost, who looked good and who didn’t, who flubbed and who flowered, who got off good lines and who didn’t.

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And, barring something unforeseen--such as Clinton or Dole drooling uncontrollably or doing a loopy Capt. Queeg with ball bearings--you will be no smarter afterward about the candidates than you were before the debate. It can be no other way.

Break it down:

For starters, how are these learned men, Clinton and Dole, spending much of their time prior to the debate? Cramming, that’s how--filling their heads with stuff they hope will impress the nation, stuff they’ve either forgotten or never knew. But it should already be in their heads if they’re such hotshots, right? Unless knowing this stuff doesn’t really matter. And in that case, why pretend it does? And if it does matter? Well, every student who has crammed for a quiz knows that the burst of brilliance is fleeting. All of those smarts vanish afterward, returning your intellect to reality.

What else are the candidates doing? They’re rehearsing their roles, as any other actors would do. Both are practicing looking presidential, projecting just the right stature: strength but warmth, brilliance yet plain folks, the insider’s knowledge without the insider’s mentality.

In addition, Dole is practicing looking young and vigorous, Clinton practicing looking younger and more vigorous. If he thought he could accentuate the 73-year-old Dole’s age by wearing a beanie, he’d do it.

Clinton is also rehearsing ways to make the reputedly shorter-fused Dole lose his cool, and Dole is being reminded to stay cool when provoked.

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What does all this have to do with the presidency? The short answer is nothing, the long answer absolutely nothing.

In fact, televised debates mostly emphasize the exact qualities that no thinking voter would desire in a president:

* They emphasize flashy TV skills over substance. It’s true that the nation’s medium of choice is TV and that a president who cannot communicate to the nation effectively via the small screen is at least partially disabled. Not as severely, though, as one who’s seamless on camera but ragged in the Oval Office, which is the chief executive Americans may get one of these days if they are substantially influenced by who appears to triumph in presidential debates.

* They emphasize speedy answers. The candidate who weighs a question (“What would you do if . . . ?”) thoughtfully before responding, a trait you’d want in a president, appears indecisive, flustered, out of touch or flat-out musty. Crisp sound bites resonate louder than sound thinking.

* They emphasize ad-libs and a quick, agile wit--again, the stuff of good TV, but not necessarily good leadership. Just how handy is a cute ad-lib if the president learns that Russian President Boris Yeltsin is incapacitated and his nuclear-armed nation is in turmoil? Does he come up with a snappy one-liner when presented with options for long-term peace in the Middle East or economic stability in the United States?

All of this, of course, is a minority report, the emphasis placed on these debates appearing irreversible, another example of entertainment values bleeding through news.

One of the oft-made arguments for debates is that, if nothing else, they spark interest among the electorate, especially in a year like 1996 when experts say voters are largely indifferent to the presidential race. Just as likely, though, the apathetic will leave the debates feeling about the candidates as they feel about them today.

There they go again.

* NONPOLITICAL FARE: UPN and WB hope the debates give them a new audience. F26