I view with heightened skepticism the premise and logic of holding presidential primary debates at this stage of the campaign cycle. Iowans will not be making their way to the state’s caucuses for more than seven months. The campaign has hardly had time to ripen. The issues that will define it are still forming. Most importantly, those for whom a debate is supposed to benefit—the voters trying to make an educated decision—are not, but for the most addicted junkies, paying a bit of attention yet, nor will they be for some time.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to extract some value out of one, assuming it is executed properly.
This was not the case with the Republican debate of last week and probably (I did not watch it) the Democratic one of the week before. Those who planned and executed it did a miserable job and should themselves, I am tempted to say, be executed.
The format was terrible and utterly unhelpful to the singular voter who may have been watching at home. Thirty seconds, at most, was allowed to each candidate per question. That is not nearly enough time to give a meaningful answer. The question would be asked, the candidate would begin their response, and just as they began to delve into the real substance of it Chris Matthews would obnoxiously yell "Time!" All that voters were able to hear were short sound-bites, fragmented thoughts, and gratuitous invocations of President Reagan, whose library played the gracious host and whose spirit the party is in desperate search of.
Understandably, when there are ten candidates on the stage it is practically impossible to give sufficient time to them individually (again calling into question the expositive value and point of having a debate, if it can be called that, at this point). If each and every candidate is to be given equal time then it will be equal to the lowest common denominator, where equal time for all essentially means no time for all.
No shrewdly constructed format can alter this, but one can mitigate it. Question discipline is indispensable. With the quality of the debate being the central prerogative, an abundant quantity of candidates renders imprudent an abundant quantity or diversity of questioning. Discussion concerning those issues of secondary importance have to be discarded, or at least saved for another, more logistically conducive time. That is, questions like "What would you tell a Catholic bishop who refused to serve the Eucharist to pro-choice Catholics?" and "Would it be a good thing to have Bill Clinton in the White House again?" must go unasked and unanswered at the behest of a quality discussion regarding Iraq, Iran, taxes, entitlements, immigration, etc. The former line of questioning would not be relevant even in a format where time is not an issue, let alone in one where it clearly and severely was.
If MSNBC and Politico.com had wanted to extract any value from the debate they would have focused the questioning and the discussion, sacrificing breadth and diversity for quality and substance. Instead of being made to answer a wide-range of questions—some relevant, many not—for only thirty seconds each, the candidates should have been allowed to answer a limited number of questions for at least a minute or minute and a half. Hardly sufficient time, but at least adequate to develop a cogent thought or two.
The exact opposite occurred, and it was this frivolity that rendered the debate utterly useless and a stark waste of time for all involved.
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