If you can remember back to when there were seven channels on TV (and you had to use the second dial to get to three of them) then you probably also remember that with so little to watch, the whole family ended up watching quite a lot of things together.
So it was that I found myself watching the Reagan/Mondale debates in 1984. I would be lying if I told you that 11-year-old me found it interesting. The first debates I really paid attention to were the Bush/Perot/Clinton debates. The chatty independent from Texas briefly swept voters off their feet.
The Clinton/Dole debates that followed were completely forgettable. Two normally charismatic and witty statesmen unable to be very amusing while talking about — get this — policy differences.
I was particularly interested in the McCain/Obama debates. I am a Navy veteran and was born a Republican. Having watched my party come unmoored and then drift further and further away from the views that I thought we had in common, I was relying on Captain McCain to showcase his command of the issues.
But watching McCain try to explain his plan to make healthcare accessible to more Americans (an interstate insurance market?) and fail to address the massive deficit his tax policies would create ($4 billion!) made it painfully clear to me that even the best Republicans had lost touch.
I voted against my hero that November.
There have been a lot of memorable debate moments over the years. Nixon sweating while he faced off against Kennedy. Ford claiming the Soviets were not dominating Eastern Europe. Reagan quipping that he would not exploit Mondale’s youth and inexperience. Obama helping Romney climb deeper into the hole he was digging with a simple, “Proceed, Senator.”
And who could forget kindergartner Donald Trump spluttering at Hillary Clinton, “No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet!” (Trump later called Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, “Savvy,” and, “Genius.” Who’s the puppet?)
Long ago, debates let us measure the candidates against each other, and to hear them present their differing policy visions and explain why we should believe in them. But if you brush away the cobwebs and dust and try to honestly remember the 2016 GOP debates, it was a circus. Twelve debates with a revolving cast of 17 candidates engaging in schoolyard name-calling, comparisons of shoe and hand sizes, vague promises to lower taxes, cut entitlements, and slash whole unnamed departments from the federal government. (In that moment, not a soul among us believed that Trump would make it into the top sixteen.)
Conversely, Bernie Sanders’ policy proposals forced the Democratic Party to expand their tent further to the left than anyone could have imagined a legitimate party could bear, giving voice to whole new ideas.
But the candidate that impressed me the most over the last two cycles was Elizabeth Warren.
Hear me out.
Remember her catchphrase, “I have a plan for that”? Well, it was true. She did have a plan for that. Her website was full of extremely detailed plans, and she could summarize them quickly and off the cuff.
I loved it. You could agree with her (or you could disagree with her!) because she told us exactly what she wanted to do instead of spouting some hollow soundbite about making America work for the middle class or filling the web with vacuous platitudes and circular, fact-free reasoning. She made her opponents do their homework and could have set debating back decades — to when it was relevant.
This go round, the Democrats seem to be foregoing debates, which is a huge loss for their party and for our country.
On the other side, last week’s debate was as content free as the 2016 versions. Meanwhile, Trump has done everything short of shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and has never proposed a serious policy, yet this has not changed the minds of his core voters. I definitely understand his decision not to debate his GOP peers, and I sincerely hope his Democratic rival won’t debate Trump.
I lament the fact that Presidential debates seem to have become obsolete, but it seems unlikely today that you will learn something about a general election candidate in a debate that will change your vote.
I suppose the only things we can do about it are change the forum or try to elect reasonable people.
Will Wood is a small business owner, veteran, and half-decent runner. He lives, works, and writes in West Chester.
