This is what democracy looks like.
Brent Budowsky, on repairing
the GOP debate fiasco.
Let’s consider a dramatic alternative. Let’s revive the notion that the free press of a great nation should treat the airwaves of democracy and the printing presses of serious newspapers as a public trust, not as a ludicrous spectacle of banana republic politics that insults citizens, who then tune out the candidates and turn off the television.
I propose three separate 90-minute GOP debates occurring in prime time on three successive evenings. Each debate would include five candidates chosen by lot. This would be fair to all candidates and provide each with a serious opportunity to offer — and provide every voter an intelligent opportunity to evaluate — his or her plans for the presidency and vision for America.
Under the current format, with an unmanageable gaggle of candidates dividing an inadequate amount of time, no one will have an opportunity to say anything serious, substantive or thoughtful. Most likely Trump will briefly make outrageous statements. The other candidates will briefly respond. After the freak show debate is over, it will be followed by a gaggle of talking heads offering freak show commentary, long after most in the audience have already tuned out.
While I am not a Republican, I am very concerned about the state of our democracy and the declining quality of mainstream media.
Much of modern campaigning is crafted to present the candidates not as they are, but as ultra-polished caricatures of what they believe a more electable candidate might look like. National moments are scripted, and tested, and re-scripted, over months that test the mettle of the strategists in each camp but offer little insight into how each candidate handles themselves spontaneously or might work through a new problem newly presented. We seek to elect those who would respond best to the 3am phone call warning of disaster, but have little patience for probing potential leaders with more nuanced questions than those that can be answered in a single phrase or sentence.
Debates are one of the few moments that provide voters with a reasonable facsimile of how this or that person might handle the levers of power. Given an unexpected issue, can they collect and present their thoughts, or do they stumble at the intrusion? Challenged by their competitors directly, can they defend their positions with a finer understanding of the facts, or do they react with condescension, or hostility? A reporter must balance his questions carefully, weighing the value of each probing question against the damage it may do to future access to the candidates. A direct competitor will generally have no such qualms.
It is a shame that the requirement for public debates, and for many hours of them, depending on the office sought, is not enshrined in the Constitution as a fundamental requirement for office-seekers. True, they can be boring—usually when the candidates repeatedly dodge the questions in order to return quickly to the more-welcoming confines of their scripted campaigns. But they also represent one of the few available means to judge the finer reflexes required of sensible leaders: the ability to speak to the nation, and persuade; the willingness to confront the unexpected, and respond with both knowledge and grace; the ability to recover from stumbles, rather than be consumed by them. That is far more a test of leadership than whether your staff can properly target a given sub-demographic with your latest glossy flyer.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Coalition of the Shrinking:
Bush started with 32 nations in his 'coalition"—the vast majority which failed to provide anything more than moral support. (Only the UK and Australia provided forces for the invasion.)
But of those 32, four have already left. Spain, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Four more are in the process of leaving—Philippines, Thailand, Norway and New Zealand. Several other nations have pledged to increase their troop levels—South Korea, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
Through it all, the US is struggling to keep the whole effort from falling apart.
Australia's pledge to increase its commitment will bring its troop strength to 880 -- fewer than half the 2,000 troops it had during the war. And only about 250 are in Iraq, with the rest in air and naval support positions nearby, Australian envoys say. For Australia and some other countries, increases are mainly meant to enhance security for their own troops, embassies and personnel.
Tweet of the Day
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: a handful of wacky Oklahomans greet the president with Confederate flags; by our #GunFAIL count, a 3yo KC girl is the 49th child under 15 accidentally shot to death this year, the 250th child accidentally shot overall, and the 450th to accidentally shoot themselves.
Greg Dworkin rounds up Pluto news, Bernie polling, the president's Iran presser, and procedure for the deal. Big gov't haters' favorite university lives, indirectly, on big gov't money. LePage's veto gambit explained. That flag will cause more problems in Congress. Anybody can get outflanked and be called a sellout, if you're annoying enough.
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