The 2012 Campaign’s Vice Presidential Debate — Cruel and Unusual Punishment for the Participants and the Nation — Vice President Joe Biden versus Congressman Paul Ryan

© 2012 Peter Free

 

12 October 2012

 

 

If it weren’t for “us,” politics wouldn’t be so self-destructively silly

 

Last night’s vice presidential debate reminded me of a couple of things:

 

(a) our debate system is ritualized stupidity

 

and

 

(b) the debate format subjects our political candidates to inhumane treatment that no sane person should have to tolerate.

 

 

Ritualized stupidity

 

I am perennially struck by the overwhelming number of pundits and audience members who miss the most essential point, after these debates have mercifully expired:

 

The basic structure of the debate system forces participants to lie, evade, and act like no sensible person would ever behave in similarly crucial situations.

 

The system is structured purely to entertain, preferably in a completely altered and nonsensical reality.

 

Can you imagine, for example, a competent business executive or military general subjecting herself to such irrelevant, meaningless, and essentially unproductive nonsense?  In effect, our debate system selects exactly those candidates, who are least likely to exhibit interpersonal competence in the business of productive government.

 

 

For example, the other worldly importance of debate facial expressions

 

Did you notice how both candidates had to strain to maintain completely unnatural facial expressions?

 

In the real world, you don’t feign interest (or calm) in some other cretin’s parade of lies, evasions, distortions, or nonsense.  And, outside of date situations, none of us sit at a table and gaze, enraptured, at someone else, while they babble things that we disagree with.

 

The American public seems to think that “looking presidential” means:

 

not displaying the temper that every effective leader I have ever met possesses

 

not calling someone who is an imbecile, “imbecile”

 

feigning interest in irrelevant nonsense

 

being “commanding,” even while uninterruptedly lying and maliciously misdirecting out the wazoo

 

and

 

smiling graciously, even in the face of someone who is acting like a run amuck turd.

 

In other words, debates select for people who can do the Hollywood routine.  Which says absolutely nothing about their actual ability to lead and manage.

 

 

An example of what I mean — why Vice President Biden “had” to act like a demented loon

 

Let’s take Vice President Biden’s demented grinning and contempt-spinning last night.

 

I am pretty darn sure that the Vice President does not act similarly, while pursuing his professional duties.  Simply so, because no one would put up with such obnoxious lunacy.

 

Yet, the Vice President’s determined debate abrasiveness was (very arguably) necessitated by the combination of:

 

(a) President Obama’s somnolent performance during the first presidential debate

 

and

 

(b) a debate system that permits participants to lie and evade without limit.

 

We knew going in that, given President Obama’s inexplicably soporific performance at the first debate, the Vice President had to be visibly “combative.”

 

In order to penetrate Congressman Ryan’s parade of nearly non-stop untruths, irrelevancies, and evasions — Vice President Biden had to register his protest with unsubtle (clownish) facial expressions, conversationally rude interruptions, and occasionally near sneering retorts.

 

In response, Congressman Ryan, arguably too young to avail himself of the privileges of aged obnoxiousness, had to rely on the appearance of respectful and intelligent angelitude.

 

Lost in the resulting low-brow entertainment was any semblance of real issues, verifiable data, legitimate context, or workable alternatives.

 

Instead, the candidates had to pretend to be talking about substance, all the while maintaining the theatrical demeanor that these particular debate circumstances seem to call for.

 

It’s all about bread and circuses.  Right?

 

 

Feeling bad for the poor guys

 

I felt the strain underlying the Vice President’s unnatural grimacing.

 

I felt bad for Congressman Ryan, who struggled to maintain an interested and un-hostile facial expression, under circumstances that physiologically should have forced both away.

 

We are not hiring these guys to act.  So why this form of contest?

 

 

How debates should be run, so as to avoid nonsensical theater

 

The obvious cure to this ridiculous system is to make it about substance and not Broadway.

 

Debates could include a fact check panel that immediately calls out liars as such.  Time subtraction would be the immediately imposed penalty.

 

Evasions would be treated the same way.

 

Under such a system, Untruth Champions (like Governor Romney) would quickly run out of time.  And Vice President Biden would not have to act like a version of Mr. Everyone’s demented, attic-living uncle.

 

Similarly, on the relatively infrequent occasions that Congressman Ryan was not lying, he would not need to be flummoxed by Joe Biden’s determined evasion of accepting Administration responsibility for its failure to provide appropriate consulate security in Benghazi.  Nor would the Congressman have to tolerate the Vice President’s untruthfully minimizing characterization of the need for entitlement reform.

 

 

The core debate problem is overdone respect for the candidates

 

Just because the Commander in Chief is such should not mean that he should be allowed to evade and lie at will.

 

The debates are, after all, voluntary.

 

Indeed, there is no reason that moderators not have access to air horns that override candidates’ irrelevant chatter.

 

That would be a fun circus.  No?

 

 

The moral? — An asinine system breeds asinine performances

 

In the name of loyalty, Vice President Biden did what he had to, but he (arguably) diminished himself in the process.

 

Similarly a team player, Congressman Ryan did what he was expected to do, but he looked like he was sometimes struggling to carry a foolishness ball that he should not have agreed to carry.

 

Admirable loyalty aside, neither of the debate’s more negative character discoveries (meaning Biden’s theatrically necessary abrasiveness and Ryan’s corresponding choir boy empty-headedness) has anything at all to do with either man’s ability to lead in the Real World.

 

So — how did the nation win from last night’s artificially imposed and irrelevant confrontation?