As much of the nation mourns Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Mitch Mob giddily tees up a successor, on we move toward the debates that aren’t really debates.
The media love these pointless, shallow exercises because they deliver juicy sound bites, and America tunes in believing, it seems, that having command of scripted snarky putdowns and cheap one-liners is a prerequisite for leadership.
Unlike the Nov. 3 election, you won’t have to wait around for the results. In a blink will come a conveyor belt of pundits and other chin strokers informing you what you saw and who “won.”
It won’t be the electorate.
Bloated in prominence since the pivotal Kennedy-Nixon face-offs of 1960, the so-called debates endure as popular currency, the Holy Grail of electioneering. They’re at times entertaining, sometimes even suspenseful or memorable, as in 1980 when Ronald Reagan tsk-tsked Jimmy Carter: “There you go again.”
What does all this have to do with the presidency. The short answer is nothing, the longer absolutely nothing.
Yet on Sept. 29 comes the first of three planned Trump-Biden encounters surrounding a one-time Pence-Harris match. The launch location: Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University, a leafy academic setting sharply incongruous with what will occur. My God, you might as well hold it in an opera house with Trump as Falstaff.
Picture it, not a crush of presidential wannabes squeezed into ninety minutes like hoboes in a boxcar, just Trump and Biden opposite no-nonsense moderator Chris Wallace of Fox. The Evil Twit’s cosmic unpredictability will surely swell the audience of curious voyeurs to obese largeness, for which he’ll take credit. For once he’ll be right.
C’mon now, you’re not wondering how the Loose Cannon-in-Chief will behave or if he will behave? Not the lying; that’s a given, lies are what he exhales. But will he bully and try to intimidate? Will he invade Biden as he did Hillary Clinton? Will he hemorrhage paranoia and dismiss Wallace as “nasty?” Will he award himself the Nobel and pitch his clenched-jaw Mussolini mug for Mount Rushmore? Will he announce a virus vaccine that we sprinkle on like talcum powder? Ever the showman, maybe he’ll go slapstick and get his tie caught in his fly. Or if he can’t get under Biden’s skin, will he be frustrated, lose it completely and pull a Capt. Queeg with ball bearings?
And what of Biden? Given Trump’s lagging poll numbers, some of Biden’s crowd say only a debate dud can cost him the election. Will he wither and whiff? Will he remember his spontaneous ad libs? Will he flub his lines or speak them trippingly on the tongue, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee? Will he project strength but empathy, though not so much empathy that he looks weak? Will he be presidential while also coming across as plain folks but not so plain folks he can’t stand up to Bernie and AOC? Will he appear smart but not so smart that he looks elitist? Will he go young and vigorous but not so young and vigorous that he’s fake as news? And if he wobbles on Covid face coverings, you just know Trump, ever the flailing, predatory opportunist, will say he’s masky, maybe costing him Pennsylvania.
Please, oh please, give us all a break.
So-called candidate debates yield few insights, celebrate the wrong qualities and, in fact, are often misleading. They stress flashy camera skills and speedy answers and speedier BS. If Biden weighs a question thoughtfully (a desired trait in a president), he’ll appear indecisive, out of touch, flat-out musty, even, well, sleepy. And heaven forbid, Joe, don’t be weepy.
Bottom line, these TV shows resolve nothing except which candidate looks best for the cameras on a given night. As if that will make us safer, healthier and wealthier in the next four years.
But here they go again.
Rosenbeast 