Tag: Debate Formats
The Debating Spirit of 1963
[editor's note, by Ross Smith] promoted to front page and time stamp updated to kick this to the top -- Ross
(co-authored by Kelly Congdon and R. Gordon Mitchell)
As debate scholars, we applaud the June 4th letter from John McCain to Barack Obama proposing an ambitious series of town hall debates prior to the Democratic National Convention. While debates have become routine fixtures in modern presidential campaigns, there are some striking features of the McCain proposal.
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: McCain, Obama, presidential debates, Brett O'Donnell, debate formats
Whose Tube?
Writing after the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, historian Henry Steele Commager lamented that televised debates "submit the greatest elective office in the world to the chances of arbitrary and miscellaneous questions put forward not to elicit information or to illuminate problems, but to provide sensations." Commager, of course, was bemoaning the tendencies of reporter panelists to use a television debate not to enlighten voters on important topics but to produce headlines or make journalistic capital. Yesterday's Republican You Tube Debate certainly did little to demonstrate that questions from "real people" are any less vulnerable to those urges. With an array of potentially provocative questions at their disposal, journalists apparently gain new license for putting candidates on the spot and for testing who's glib under fire.
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: debate, debates, youtube, GOP, questions, debate formats
Equal and adequate time?
Years ago, Jeff Auer commented (after the Kennedy Nixon debates in 1960) that an event called a debate had certain characteristics, one of which was that the participants would need to have equal and adequate time for dealing with the topic(s) of the debate. Seeing the "talk clock" for the Republican primary debate held last evening in New Hampshire tells just part of the story about the usefulness of the format with respect to the criterion of equal and adequate time. It's not just a matter of how much time certain candidates struggle to get in a "gang" debate format; what also matters is when those candidates get to talk, and about what.
One of the most notable differences between the typical general election debate format and the ones that have dominated the early primary campaign debate season is that the current slate of debates makes no pretense about trying to provide equal time to the candidates on the stage, and the extent to which the format has failed in that regard is unquestionable. The moderator spoke almost twice as long as did the candidate who had the most "talk time," and almost four times as long as the candidate who received the fewest opportunities to speak. So we know Wolf Blitzer a lot better now, but what of the others on the stage?
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: debate formats, primary debates, presidential debates
Does the Format Serve Its Purpose?
The question in this title requires us first to ask, "What is the Purpose?" The format, invented and controlled as it was by NBC, should be expected to serve NBC's purposes. Those purposes, typically, are those that best serve commercial media interests in selling news coverage and advertising time. Those purposes include: generating short sound bites, pressuring candidates in the hope they will make notable gaffes, and inducing conflict and controversy that can lead to televised fireworks. For those purposes, the fast-moving format of the South Carolina debate seemed very well designed. A little humor, a little controversy, some awkward pauses, and some incomplete answers gave Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman plenty to talk about for quite some time following the debate. And don't forget the expectations game. With systematic regularity, the questions demanded the candidates to demonstrate not just or even primarily their grasp of policy issues, but rather their ability to meet the expectations laid out for them before the debate by NBC commentator Tim Russert.
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: South Crolina, 2008 Presidential Election, Democratic Primaries, Debate Formats
