Greetings Munchkins:
It’s dad again. Ranting and raving about another issue that’s been driving me stark raving mad for the last 40 years!
And that issue is the way that candidate debates are conducted. I think it’s just abominable. Let me give you a story from history that will inform you around how I developed this disgust with the debate format.
Back in 1988, Senator Lloyd Bentson was the Democratic candidate for Vice President. He was running against Dan Quayle who was the Republican candidate for Vice President that year. The top of the democratic ticket was Michael Dukakis the governor of Massachusetts. The top of the republican ticket was George H.W. Bush.
Your mom and I were in the middle of our first trip to Washington DC when this debate occurred. We settled down at a friend’s house to watch the debate.
Now a little background is in order.
George Bush needed to find a VP as his running mate. Dan Quayle was young, but he was a well-connected Indiana senator. He was seen as a moderate figure who could appeal to both Reagan’s base and independents. Bush wanted to appeal to the younger voters. Dan Quayle was 41 years old at the time of the election. But he looked a lot younger than 41 years old. He looked more like 31 years old.
The leftist media absolutely savaged Quayle for being young and inexperienced. They accused him of trying to be the next JFK. With that as background, let’s get back to the debate.
During the debate, there was a sharp exchange between Quayle and Bentson. Nothing unusual about that. But then it got nasty.
There was a moment in the debate where Senator Lloyd Bentson stopped, wagged his finger at Senator Quayle and said: ““Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.”
And of course, the crowd went wild. The press went wild. The friends of ours with whom we were watching the debate went wild.
And I thought to myself: That was one of the most abysmal lines I have ever seen anyone deliver in a public setting of any kind.
How fake! How nasty! How ugly!
It was so obvious that he had been practicing that line for weeks. It was so obvious that this line was cooked up by some Madison Avenue clowns to deliver a “gotcha” moment. It was just so fake. I thought to myself: “Just how did that line advance our knowledge of how the candidate would handle foreign policy, defense spending, or growing the economy?
The answer to those questions is not one bit. That line taught us absolutely nothing at all.
But the mob WAS ENTERTAINED.
I was disgusted with the debate process then, and I’ve only become more disgusted with the process since then.
I just don’t see how watching two grown men lay waste to each other like a couple of boys on the playground is helping us to make a selection on who is the best person to lead the free world.
I’ve had 40 years to cogitate on a better way to get this done. And I think I have the solution.
We the people need to start treating this election process like a job interview. Because that is exactly what it is. We are selecting the single individual who is most capable of making an impact for good or ill on the largest number of people in the entire world. His policies will dramatically impact the rule of law, the economic system, and the nation’s adherence to the moral code. Our selection process needs to reflect the seriousness of the decision.
The national interview process shouldn’t look like the boys from the hood “playing the dozens” on national TV.
Who could forget the “debate” between Trump and Biden the last time around?
The moderator asked Biden a question, and President Biden said: “And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”
Complete gibberish from a man that anyone could see was a vegetable.
The most intelligent utterance of the entire debate occurred when the moderator asked Trump to respond to that Biden word salad. Trump’s answer to the moderator was: “I don’t even know what he said.”
Those were literally the most intelligent words spoken during the entire two-hour debate.
You can’t make it up. C’mon man!
And to think, I grew up hearing world class, thoughtful lofty lines from presidents. Consider what we are accustomed to hearing from Presidents and prominent candidates:
Franklin Roosevelt: “December 7th, a day that will live in infamy.”
John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country will do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”.
Ronald Reagan: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.
Robert Kennedy: “Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things as they could be and ask why not.”
Abraham Lincoln: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”
Now we’re reduced to President Biden saying the following in reply to a question from the moderator: “And I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.”
Dude, this is indeed a new low. You can’t make it up.
Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t add President Bill Clinton’s eloquent offering: “It depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.”
And that of course, is the cleanest quote from Bill Clinton that I can give. This IS after all, a family channel!
So, I have a modest proposal for a change to the debate format. Here are my proposed new rules of engagement:
a) The two candidates will not be in the same room during the “debate”. They will be housed in different rooms at the same location at the same time.
b) The moderator will be given a list of ten questions. These ten questions will be a list of questions developed by a reputable polling outfit around the issues that are most important to the citizens. The polling firm will have polled the nation to develop the ten most important issues to the citizens.
c) The candidates will get to review the questions BEFORE the debate. They will have had an opportunity to study the issues and develop their responses to the questions.
d) The moderator will read the questions to the candidates. The moderator can ONLY READ THE QUESTIONS. The moderator is not a part of the discussion. The moderator will not ask follow-up questions. The moderator will not ask “gotcha” questions. The moderator will not “fact check” the candidates. They will read the question and then close their mouths.
e) The candidate will have ten minutes to answer each question. The candidate can use whatever visual aids he feels are required to make his points clear.
f) The candidates will answer the questions in the following format:
1) Restate the problem.
2) State their strategy for fixing the problem.
3) Provide historical evidence that supports that their solution is the best approach to solving the problem.
4) Provide any historical evidence where they have faced a similar problem in the past, the tactics that they employed to fix the problem, and
the results that were achieved. (Data and statistics please)
g) There will be no name calling or mentioning of the other candidate unless it is germane to the question.
h) The 10th and last question will be the only question where the candidate is allowed to discuss the competing candidate. The candidate must limit his discussion points to the following items:
1) A problem the competing candidate faced.
2) The tactics the competing candidate employed to solve the problem.
3) The data driven results the competing candidate achieved.
i) I would also require that the candidates be asked the same questions in real time. That way there is no ability to attempt to gain an advantage from hearing the other candidate.
Here is how this could be accomplished. Candidate A gets the first question, and he answers that question. As soon as he is finished, Candidate B gets to answer that same question. The candidates will not be allowed to watch the competing candidate answer the question. As soon as the competing candidate answers the question, he will “go live” and must answer the same question.
This strategy will allow the body politic to actually conduct a job interview of the candidates. Tell us what you did, tell us how you did it, and tell us the data driven results that you achieved. That’s all we want to know.
We don’t want to hear any name calling, any cute debate one liners, or no nasty put downs.
And we definitely don’t want to hear from the moderators.
Just tell us how you’re going to make our lives better so that “We the people” can make an informed decision.
That is how we should use evidence-based reasoning so that we select the best candidate for the job!
The candidates can go right back to mudslinging as soon as the job interview is complete. They can go back to the pack of hounds that we call reporters and help the legacy media hit their profit objectives. I have no problem with that.
But those of us who like to think will at least have had one opportunity to assess the candidate’s ability to do the job.
Now is this really too much to ask?
Can you imagine if the NFL conducted job interviews for coaches the way we select presidential candidates?
Can you imagine getting 10 coaches in a room, and then letting them take pot shots at each other for an hour on live TV?
How stupid is that?
The way the NFL interviews coaches is that they bring the candidates in to meet with the owner and the other stakeholders so they can ask them questions about the position. Their track record is covered in detail by the executive staff. An offer is made only after every candidate has been run through the gauntlet.
Come to think about it, every corporation in the country conducts its job interviews this way. From the janitor to the CEO, they are all actually interviewed individually for the job. I can’t think of a single company that I know that invites 10 candidates into a room and then lets them take potshots at each other as part of their decision-making process.
This is literally only done for the most important job on earth.
The job where the office holder literally walks around followed by a guy who carries a suitcase with the codes to launch thermonuclear war and obliterate the entire planet.
Dude, you can’t make this stuff up.
It’s insanity. But we do it this way because it’s always been done this way. No matter how obviously stupid it is.
But of course, it makes money for the legacy media.
That’s it. That’s the only value that it brings.
We behave as if we think that the selection of NFL coaches is more important than the selection of the President of the United States. (I know, there’s somebody out there thinking: “And your point is what exactly? 🙂)
Baby, we need to change up before we blow up!
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Peace Out.
Dad
