It’s possible that Gentle Readers have been waiting for YHB to chime in about the joint press conferences held by the candidates for the two Parties’ nominations for President. Sadly, no. I read the transcripts, and there was nothing there worth commenting on.
Many people seem to have found the two events to be pitiful wastes of ... whatever is being wasted. What constitutes a nonwasteful use of the buffoon Chris Matthews is an open question. In the absence of any interest on the part of the candidates in actually debating, and in the absence of the bulk of the voting population in listening to and rewarding debate skills, it’s hard to see that there is any better test of candidate’s ... um ... whatever is being tested ... than by simultaneous appearance on the buffoon Chris Matthews’ show.
I read in the Hartford Courant, however, that Aaron Zelinsky, former APDA debater and current student at Yale Law, has a solution. Are you ready? No, you’re not ready, I can tell. No, it’s all right, I can wait. Are you ready now?
Here it is: “each candidate should debate every other candidate exactly once for one hour.” Mr. Zelinsky undoubtedly has three separate levels of analysis for why we should carry his motion, but it’s the combinatorics that appeal to me. Yes, he admits, that with ten candidates, that means that there would be 45 Republican primary debates. But are there only ten candidates? Should Fred Thompson join in, he would have to debate all ten of the other candidates, bringing it up to 55 hours of Republican debate. And then, with Newt Gingrich, it’s up to 66.
But that’s not all! After all, what we’re doing is guaranteeing anybody who can manage to get the paperwork together the opportunity to debate the top presidential candidates for an hour without interruption. I might even wear pants. Sure, it means I’d have to also debate all the other crazies, but I wouldn’t have to wear pants for those. And most of those crazies would also be APDA dinos, I’m sure, so we wouldn’t have to prepare for them or anything. I think we could get it up to 200 debates pretty easily—and some of them would be with actual Senators and Governors! I’m so there.
Sadly, of course, the prospect of debating 15 crazies for an hour each would probably be a deterrent to actual, qualified candidates with shit to do and all, but that’s not a bug. Do you think Joe Biden or Chris Dodd would stay in the race if it meant debating every guy from Princeton with a gavel? No. Only the truly obsessed, focused, serious candidates would put up with crap like that. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t really be any worse than going on Hardball.
Hey, you know what? Instead of having the candidates respond to the buffoonish prodding of pundits, let’s have the candidates moderate the debates, and have the pundits respond. No, wait, listen: Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John Edwards are the panelists, and the buffoon Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Cokie Roberts are behind the lecterns. Seriously, you could learn a lot from that one.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
a pundit debate could be assembled, by combing through transcripts to near answers to a set of general questions. ambiguity could then be resolved and the illusion of conversation created by using the relevantly responsive statements to create specific questionnaires to send to each pundit by email, after securing their agreement for participation in a comparative survey of television political experts’ opinions on the political outlook heading into the election.
*transcripts for near answers