What about the meaning of the word “debate” escaped the organizers of today’s farce in Iowa?
Someone should put a stop to cute, clever, inauthentic gimmicks to liven up debates. Debates are not entertainment and when they try to be they are neither helpful nor entertaining.
Let the candidates, without a moderator, go at it in turns. Turn on the camera and let them talk about anything they please. If they break the rules and go over time, flash a red light on the screen until they stop.
No other rules. No holds barred. Let’s hear them talk.
Any time spent listening to moderator is time lost.
Eliminate candidates who cannot demonstrate five percent support in any national poll. If you have not made it yet, then it is over for you.
Eliminate candidates who have gone mad.
There was a day when I liked Mr. Keyes. I met him and he was very smart and very conservative. It was a sheer delight to him give an old-fashioned speech.
There was a day when I had the same fond feelings for Mr. Keyes that I have for another noble loser, William Jennings Bryan. You might not agree with the guy, but it was a pleasure just to hear him talk.
That was before today. Keyes is, for reasons known only to God and his accountant (who may in fact be the same person), running for President.
Why?
Who is backing him? Why was he there?
That was only one problem with a debate so badly run that it would insult Torrey freshman to say that any five of them could have run a better event. Compared to God Blog Convention (which they ran), the Iowa debate was not a debate at all. It took major issues off the table by divine command and gave so little time to candidates that it became amusing.
“Give us your recap of cosmic history by waving your hand and then explaining the wave in thirty seconds . . . ”
It treated the candidates with contempt and the questions were often intellectually contemptible. I have little sympathy for politicians, but was reminded that many of them are better educated, more articulate, and more accomplished than the “journalists” who routinely pronounce on their fitness for office.
If there is anything more juvenile, more like a high school election, than asking about resolutions for the New Year, someone should alert the debate “organizers” since they will want to ask it in the next debate they run. Fortunately the debaters were better than the format and so something might come of it all. . . though how they could keep from mocking the moderator is beyond me. Fred Thompson, God bless him, did succumb to the temptation and proved there is life in the Old Dog yet. Good for him.
So how did they do?
So Hopeless They Could Not Lose:
Tancredo and Hunter should never be invited to another debate. Who cares what they say at this point? Why were they there? Like a man facing his third blue screen of death on a computer in just an hour, they looked lost, frustrated, and impotent.
So Bad that Even Though Hopeless He Still Lost
Keyes reminds me that Plato hated rhetoric. That Plato was pretty wise.
Worst Debate Since the First One
Does Rudy sense that the air is coming out of his campaign? He hardly showed up at all.
Did John McCain come to the debate? Was he so distracted by thinking about what he wished he could say to the debate organizers that he forget to say anything much at all?
Did Well in a Debate Nobody Could Win Because the Format Was Like A Grinch In that It Stinks, Stank, Stunk
(In Order from last to first . . .)
Thompson proved he was alive and attacked the debate format. Well done, but being both conscious and critical of the mainstream media are not enough to make one President of the United States.
Huckabee was smooth AND his apology to Romney is likely the biggest story coming out of the debate. He gets a very serious gaffe behind him and took some pretty good hits without melting down. Huckabee is no fool, but he also does not seem to have done the detailed policy work others have done. This is usually Rudy’s problem, but today it showed up for Huck.
Romney was presidential. Period.
Romney actually seems to know he is running for President of the United States, not “best guest” on talk radio shows. John McCain is the only other candidate who seems to remember that consistently. Sadly for McCain, looking Presidential is all he did today and we require that our Presidents do more than existential competence.
Romney knew his stuff and he has plans for the future. He has never had a bad debate in my opinion, but the more detail he is allowed to give the better off he is. He is the opposite of Al Gore. Gore was cold and wonkish, but Romney is warmest when he is wonkish. Gore was a phony intellectual, but Romney is.
You have to be the big winner when the major story coming out of the debate is the leader in the polls in Iowa apologizing to you.
Bias Alert:
I am planning on voting for Romney.