Watching political 'debates'

Oct. 16, 1988

Debates are important, right?  They let us see the combatants think on their feet, right?  They show us how the key members of our future administration react under pressure, right?

Wrong.

All we've seen so far is that Bush and Dukakis can memorize zingers, that Bentsen "Looks more presidential" than Quayle, whatever that means, that all four can evade tough (or in many cases, nonsensical) questions, and that anybody can be briefed with generic responses to most inquiries.

We see that all four candidates either lack, (in Quayle's case to an appalling degree) imagination under these artificial conditions, or that if they have imagination or originality, they are afraid to use it, for fear that they may blunder.  Apparently each debate is approached as a young football team approaches a first-time championship game.  The candidates' mind-set is not on the offense, not on blowing the other team out with chancy, original plays, but on avoiding mistakes, on defensive action, with conservative reciting of the party line that in the case of the two debates so far, leads not to insight, but to memorized repetition.

Not that these debates mean much anyway, no matter who "scores points."  A National Public Radio commentator remarked that the vice-presidential debate would have no effect on the election unless "Quayle falls off the podium or Bentsen falls asleep," and he's dead on.  This artificial nonsense achieves little more than to give us a 90 minute look at candidates acting like performing seals.

It's tough to assess a candidate in these days of speechwriters, public relations advisers, makeup artists and lying press secretaries.  The latest overlay in the public relations field is "spin" people whose job, believe it or not, is to talk up their candidate's performance in an attempt to influence the attending journalists. 

And the irony is that we cannot judge how a president will act in a crisis or in the long term on the basis of "debate" performance anyway, because the qualities that make for a good public relations dream do not necessarily make for a good president.

A good president (or vice president) needs the following attributes to be effective:

He has to be a diplomat - if he's not, Congress will geld him. 

He has to be willing to settle for short-range compromise to achieve long-range goals. 

He has to make the difficult policy decisions and convince us that though we need to sacrifice, we or our children will benefit in the long run.

He has to choose qualified experts who can advise him quickly and accurately on matters that may require instant decisions (whether to push the "red button" or not, for example).

And most of all, he must have a vision of what this country and the world should be, and he must let us know what that vision is, so that we may choose to vote for him or not.  We must not get lost in the minutia of detail; we must see if the candidate's vision, his goals, are ones we share.

Beauty does not a president make:  Lincoln was so ugly, he was characterized as an ape in contemporary cartoons.  Personality is not always the key:  Reagan is extremely personable, with the best sense of humor of any president I've ever seen, yet that humor does not give him insight into the world of the suffering and the distressed.

And the ability to "think quickly on your feet" does not mean much except under artificial circumstances.  Kennedy was a quick, attractive, and effective talker on TV but many of his decisions as president showed that this same "quick thinking" revealed in the debates was not appropriate to presidential decision making.  Debates do not show the ability to reflect, to be thoughtful.  They do not show how a man reacts to difficult problems in private or within a small group. 

Kennedy won by being attractive and smooth.  Reagan won by being amiable and likable.  And as much as we like these lovely characteristics in a friend or a con-man, they and the other qualities of people who "perform" well in a debate do not ensure a good president.  Eisenhower was irascible and unpleasant, in spite of that winning grin, and was a fine president.

So how are we going to judge our leaders when there is zero correlation between "TV" ability and presidential leadership?  We have to rely on past achievement, and on how our candidates got to where they are.  It's not easy, not when we are unwilling to do the deep investigation into our candidates' past an understanding of them requires.

And so most of us will rely on personal attractiveness, smooth talk, and the rest of the TV values that have been beaten into us, and we will choose on the basis of impact and impression rather than study and introspection. 

I wish us luck.

Mac Rush works in the Banner's composing room.