Debates

Now that my guy seems to have won the latest "debate," I can say what I think about these bizarre exercises. Why do we do this? Here's one of my favorite reporters, Dave Weigel, on one bit from last night:

As firey as that taxes-versus-record exchange was, it was basically two grown men repeating the bullet points from their campaign ads.

Yep. And you know, one thing the U.S. President never does as part of his job is debate. It is possible to defend all the speeches given in a campaign by noting that the President has to give lots of speeches, and he is going to be on television every time something important happens, so you are going to have to listen to him a lot. But Presidents never, ever debate.

I suppose some people think these events give them some insight into the President's "character." I've read this morning that Romney's performance last night shows that he is strong on issues where he has had time to prepare himself but easily flustered when taken by surprise, and I've read that the President's performance in the first debate showed that he really thinks he is just above it all and shouldn't have to defend his record to mere mortals like us. Sure. Whatever.

This morning there was a lot of chatter about an exchange over the Benghazi incident, in which Romney made a small mistake and Obama called him on it and this is supposed to mean something major, as if whatever happened in Benghazi is even worth discussing compared to issues like whether we should have intervened in Libya in the first place, whether to intervene in Syria, whether to pull out of Afghanistan, and so on. Anyone who takes these events seriously is trying to shortcut the process voters should go through, of learning about these men and their policies and their friends and deciding if that is the kind of leadership we want. If you want to cast your vote based on how people look in their best suits when somebody throws an "unexpected" question at them, go ahead. It's your vote to throw away.