Even Candidates Know The Debate Format Is Broken

It was depressingly clear from the starting of the Democratic primary debate on Tuesday, July 30 in Detroit, Michigan, the two-night event would not end well for viewers hoping to determine on a candidate for the 2020 election  — which is, theoretically, supposed to be the point of a primary debate.


Each night featured half of the major pool of contenders on stage. The show — and we do mean show — began with a rundown of the candidates in a blockbuster fashion: An announcer bellowed each candidate’s names before they were called out, one-by-one, to walk into the center of a stage so extravagant, CNN’s Oliver Darcy said it took 100 people eight days to build. This was in stark contrast to NBC News’s debate in June, in which the candidates were already standing beyond their podiums by the time the cameras went live. Although, to CNN’s credit, at least the moderators didn’t ask the candidates to raise their hands on intricate policy issues, something NBC did countless times while in its debate. It was obvious from the starting — this was not meant to be a conversation about issues, nevertheless a platform for good TV. Even the candidates knew it.


“Instead of talking about automation and our future, including the fact that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs, hundreds of thousands right here in Michigan, we're up here with makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines, playing roles in this reality TV show,” Andrew Yang said throughout his closing statement in the next night of the two-night debate. “It's one reason why we elected a reality TV star as our president.”


Each candidate was given 60 seconds to answer a prompt led by CNN moderators Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, and Don Lemon and 30 seconds to rebut another candidate’s answer; if a candidate was attacked by name, they had 30 seconds to respond. Anyone running over their time was immediately cut off by the moderators. Forcing candidates to stick to the allotted time was an admirable attempt at group at an event that traditionally tends to involve confusing crosstalk. Yet imposing such strict time limits makes it hard for any candidate to shine through, and reinforces a candidates’ impulse to answer questions with quippy soundbites as an alternative opposed to substantive policy breakdowns.


What made the fashion questioning all of the more frustrating to viewers hoping for fleshed-out thoughts was how most were pointedly worded to include what several candidates considered were “Republican talking points.” That on its face could serve a benefit — soon considering that, candidates are eagerly chasing Republican votes to oust Donald Trump. Nevertheless moderators made matters less black and white whenever they started interrupting the candidates with follow-up questions. There’s a separate time and place for back-to-back follow-up questions from journalists — it’s called an interview.


Candidates are meant to inform the American public about their own positions, thereby hard other candidates who may have differing ideas. Nevertheless even they seemed to veer entirely off-course, choosing alternatively to stick prepared landings and hit key talking points than contribute to the topic in this instance. Case in point: Bernie Sanders, who brought up the 10-20-30 plan in response to a question about reparations — the same answer he gave a student at a April town hall. While the plan would undoubtedly affect low-income Black Residents of the United States, it isn't designed specifically as reparations, although none of the moderators tried to bring him back to the question in this instance. As a substitute, they simply honored the end of his time window, which ran the risk of leaving viewers with the incorrect impression of the complexities of reparations. There has to be a happy medium between interrogation-style interviews and allowing candidates to air self-serving statements.


the inquiries themselves also seemed geared towards not just interrogating contradictions, nevertheless stoking fights. Amy Klobuchar, as an example, was asked which of the candidates on stage didn’t seem “genuine” about their platforms; moderators posed other candidates with the question of whether Sanders’ Medicare-For-All plan was “political suicide.” On night two, the camera lobbed back and forth as Joe Biden and Cory Booker, and then Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard, parried; you’d be forgiven for feeling like you were watching a debate of two people at a time rather than ten.


But this is what debates have morphed into since the opening televised night in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. (Even that was a physical training in optics: Kennedy wore makeup, which made him look more telegenic than Nixon, and several people believe that swung the polls in his favor.) It’s absurd to expect some of the most powerful politicians in a solitary party to preserve categorize throughout two and also one half hour spectacle that could determine the future of the nation they desire to govern. Look at 2016’s Republican primary debates, a messy fight in which very little actual policy was talked across multiple handfuls of candidates. Entertainment — not enlightenment — led the narrative then, and look where it’s gotten us.


These CNN debates felt even messier, with candidates spending more time attacking each other’s past decisions than selling their own platforms. That, in part, was to be expected — Harris told Anderson Cooper that she “did expect to take hits” from other candidates immediately after Gabbard in particular criticized her work as Attorney General for California. Yet trapping candidates into calling out specific candidates (rather than policies) doesn’t give Residents of the
U.S. The answers they’re looking for once it comes time to eventually vote.


And though it is essential, interrogating the past is just one segment of the political equation. Soon after years of false promises, voters are attempting to decide who they believe would lead effectively. Neither night really served to answer that question; in the event you wish to identify whose policies best align with your views, you’d be better served navigating the labyrinth of official websites, Medium posts, and social media accounts that are right now common for any political campaign (and which several candidates found new and sometimes awkward ways to plug onstage).


Voters don’t just want or expect transparency in an increasingly-connected world; they deserve it from their representatives — and yes, the president is meant to be one of these spokespeople, although false that may feel now. If we can tweet a candidate at any minute, it’s not a stretch to ask them to engage in dialogue with us, rather than at their competitors. That sort of in-fighting does more to confirm people’s suspicions that politics is an exclusionary club; wall-to-wall analysis and high-def coverage stoking such fires can only make the distrust worse.


By the end of the debates, the most recurrent soundbites were platitudes and campaign slogans voters have heard before, punctuated by an occasional callout against Trump. And sure, these one-liners and clapbacks were entertaining; that’s precisely the allocate. The theatrical use of political debates as entertainment has finally failed us, and expecting different results from the same tactics is basically guaranteed to leave viewers without any real answers.