Reading the Debate

For some reason, in the past two elections, it seemed as though the presidential debates were further from election day than in this one. Perhaps that’s why everyone is up in arms about Obama’s shaky debate performance, Biden’s resolute one, and the character of the moderators. No, I know that isn’t true. The media is set to dramatize whatever happens in this election season in order to create a compelling storyline for us to follow–and it is working. That fatalistic sentiment in mind, what does one make of the debate that is to take place in a few hours? How should one read it?

The debates are an exercise in judgment of the utterly un-academic nature. 60% of the information passes through the mind of the viewer and flows into the ether. At least, that’s what happened to me in the first debate. I am an international relations major, and I care about this election, but when it became clear that my utility would not be maximized by rigorously following the lines of argument and counterargument, save as an exercise in transforming spoken discourse into symbolic logic (and that’s how this debate will go once they start bs-ing), I immediately zeroed in on the tone of each debater. I began to root for Obama to settle in and pull some punches, like I rooted for the Celtics to get past their initial intimidation and come through to defeat the Heat in May. Neither event transpired.

The post-debate rationalization was simple: Obama couldn’t pull any traditional punches at Romney’s weak points, allowing him to use simplistic phrases and cop a condescending smile and, essentially, drop the hammer on the President of the United States. As a result, Obama was left defending his policies and his approach, using nuance not suited to the quick-fire, 5-second attention span climate of a presidential debate.

I realized throughout the debate that the content scarcely mattered, but it was not until well after the debate had ended that the sadness of that fact crept in. We take it for granted that these theatrical showings are bound to be about 35-40% inaccurate (look at any post-debate fact check to see how depressingly nonchalant the candidates are about exaggerating the truth–and even more sadly, who can blame them?). We note who won based on confidence and clarity alone, even if we know who should have come out stronger or who should have performed better.

In this debate, I suggest reading in terms of tone alone, unabashedly. Reading for facts and for competing proposals will most likely get you nowhere or leave you depressed. Why throw your brain for a loop when you could use the debate as a climactic point in a shallow storyline that means very little, like a show on television?

Because it is part of the election of the most powerful head of state in the world. Would that the election were not stolen by the forces of evil already.