The no-debate debate

 

 

If anything, the last U.S. presidential debate last Wednesday is a clear sign that the next debates between President Barack Obama and challenger, former Governor Mitt Romney, will end up just the same.

 

No surprises, no clear winner, and the public not any more informed to make their intelligent choice upon Election Day.
 

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will face off three times in person ahead of the 2012
U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6. Click link to view "Presidential Debate 2012: Obama
Warns Against Voucher Programs,"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THry-9wN1_Q  



As one political observer noted, “America doesn’t really have presidential debates.” The candidates are just making joint appearances, as if agreed on beforehand, for them to regurgitate tired talking points and lies. Instead of the debates being enlightening or even transformational, they are “staged-managed to satisfy the demands of power brokers with money and connections rather than the needs of democracy.”

 

The ultimate result of these presidential debates has long been fixed by the so-called bipartisan Commission on Presidential elections. For over a quarter of a century, this commission which relies on big corporations for funding will ensure that the debates work best for the interest of the major parties and also for the networks to boost their ratings.

 

Since Ralph Nader started to run for U.S. President, he had fought hard to have a place in the debates as the Green Party candidate but the organizers never backed down in preserving the status quo. No third-party candidates had ever won a spot in the debates, a sign that the organizers are more concerned with the partisan interests of the two major candidates rather than with the democratic interests of the voting public.

 

The current U.S. presidential debates are under pressure from reformers who want to open the presidential debates to make them more interesting and relevant.

 

For example, there are suggestions to let activists ask questions based on their knowledge and experience. Or allow moderators to challenge the candidates by asking follow-up questions and to encourage candidates to go at each other.

 

But the format of the debates limits the questions to the same ones that have been asked and answered a million times. Naturally, the candidates are expected to respond as coached and prepped by their handlers. With most of the moderators belonging to the same old club of white-media stalwarts, they are not expected to rock the boat or stray outside of what is usually agreed as the sphere of legitimate controversy.

 

A New York Times editorial summed up last Wednesday’s debate as follows:

 

“The Mitt Romney who appeared on the stage at the University of Denver seemed to be fleeing from the one who won the Republican nomination on a hard-right platform of tax cuts, budget slashing and indifference to the suffering of those at the bottom of the economic ladder. And Mr. Obama’s competitive edge from 2008 clearly dulled, as he missed repeated opportunities to challenge Mr. Romney on his falsehoods and turnabouts."

 

“Virtually every time Mr. Romney spoke, he misrepresented the platform on which he and Paul Ryan are actually running. The most prominent example, taking up the first half-hour of the debate, was on taxes. Mr. Romney claimed, against considerable evidence, that he had no intention of cutting taxes on the rich or enacting a tax cut that would increase the deficit.”

 

Viewers of the debate were bombarded with the hollowness of Mitt Romney’s arguments and left baffled by Obama’s unwillingness to expose it when he has the facts on his side. This unfortunate scenario is made worse with the timidity of the moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, to jump in and challenge either candidate on the facts.

 

Do presidential debates really enrich the democratic process?

 

Hardly, says Scott Horton who calls this ritual of presidential debates “The Zero-Calorie Debate” in his article in Harper’s Magazine. He doesn’t see the candidates or the campaigns as the problem, but “the quality of questioning that came from the carefully-selected media questioners. The questions actually asked are remarkably predictable. By and large, the questioning operated to lower, not to raise, the caliber of the political debate.”

 

Last Wednesday’s debate shows how much disinterested Jim Lehrer was with his questioning. Instead of helping the viewers and the voters understand the candidates or their policies, Lehrer simply sat on helplessly while the candidates slugged it out with their recitation of tired talking points. No wonder many must have switched their television channel to a sports broadcast that was being aired at the same time following Detroit Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera in his quest for the triple crown in baseball.

 

There are many questions which should lie in the heart of political debates but have never been asked. An environment has been engendered in which scrutiny of presidential candidates has become superficial, and in which candidates can get away with so much lying and distortion of the facts. False or bogus claims are often made without shame or correction. Little actual debating is done on substantive issues that matter because the debates are packaged to resemble a television game show.

 

Poverty and pressing questions on energy and the environment aren’t the only subject candidates would likely gloss over in the debates.

 

Questions that are likely not to be asked during the debates are: “What will the candidates do to address the growing problem of more than 20 million people in America who have incomes below half the poverty line—less than about $9,000 for a family of three?” or “What will the candidate do as president about the growing hunger crisis in America—especially for young children?

 

As Scott Horton has observed: “Our political culture continues to avoid vital issues. Instead, we are treated to political tragicomedy.” These debates are impoverishing the entire political process, Horton adds.

 

In the Philippines, we have also held televised debates between presidential candidates in our attempt to copy almost everything American. But do these debates make Filipinos more informed about their choices? If the American experience is found to be distracting, how much more can seven or more candidates obfuscate the entire process by telling the viewers their version of lies and bogus claims?

 

Just to win, the biggest liar of them all usually takes the crown especially if the candidate is connected to powerful political clans and business corporations, or if he could bank on the political legacy of his parents, even if he has the reputation for doing nothing.

Sex and the politician

Why is it that the American public is so enamoured with the scandalous liaisons between private life and politics?

This is almost a universal soft spot among Americans, whether the object of ridicule is a public figure or a celluloid superstar.

Sex life, especially outside the marriage or a monogamous relationship, is actually interesting news. Because we allow media to cover and investigate it to the utmost detail. And this is not just true of our politicians and high-ranking government officials or the movie world’s most exciting couples. Even the ordinary or the most private of individuals write about their sexual angst to media advice columnists, disguising themselves in haplessly silly names.

American politicians linked with sexual scandals during their term in office.
Photo courtesy of CBS/AP. Click link to view "10 Biggest Sex Scandals,"
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiypRQ_r3aI

For politicians in particular, public exposé of their shenanigans outside of the conjugal bed could be a career-ender. An incomplete list of some recent offenders includes former U.S. president Bill Clinton, ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former New Jersey gay governor Jim McGreevey, former congressman Mark Foley, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and current California lieutenant governor, former senators David Vitter and Larry Craig, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, and former senator and presidential aspirant John Edwards.

Some in the list survived the constant hounding of the press and trial by publicity like Clinton, Gingrich, Giuliani and Newsom. Their political lives, however, have been forever scarred. Their sexual indiscretions would always be added as more fascinating footnotes to their otherwise waning political careers.

While other advanced democracies such as France and Italy would not place too much weight or attention to their leaders’ private lives, especially to what is happening inside their bedrooms, America, however, is an exceptionally strange place. Here, politics and entertainment intersect. Scandals and sexual innuendoes are normal only in the sense that these are reported, but always frowned upon by both the conservative and liberal segments of American society.

Herman Cain, on top of the leader board among those competing for the Republican Party nomination in the next U.S. presidential election, is the most recent high profile figure to receive public scrutiny for allegations of sexual harassment. This is much different from sexual misadventures outside of marriage. It is almost comparable to the allegations made against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas during his nomination hearing and to the charges levelled against former International Monetary Fund honcho Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Strauss-Kahn had been rumoured to be the next Socialist Party presidential candidate in France until the allegations brought him down, despite being cleared afterwards.

No matter the quick resolution of Herman Cain’s saga of shifting responses to the allegations of sexual harassment, he is still in the thick of the presidential race although almost everyone in the press has already dismissed his candidacy. It seems only a matter of time before Cain would eventually bow out, just like the others whose sexual improprieties have been exposed to public scrutiny.

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain answers questions about sexual
 harassment  allegations. (AP/Photo) Pablo Martinez Monsivais. Click link to
http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_eb2rg4bg to view "Herman Cain Accuser - He
tried to grab my genitals."

According to a study conducted by a Dutch professor of psychology, the likelihood of infidelity increases the more powerful someone is. From an analysis of respondents from low-level management positions to top level executives, the study confirmed that the higher someone was in the hierarchy, the greater the chances of cheating with another partner.

This runs in contrast with the amateurish psychoanalytic rumbling of Rush Limbaugh on radio about the probable causes that led former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner to show on the Internet how sexually endowed he was. Limbaugh has even suggested that liberal women are to be held at fault for political sex scandals, specifically blaming their supposed efforts to suppress testosterone in men.

Limbaugh said Weiner had been hanging around too much with a bunch of liberal women who have been attacking testosterone and traditional male roles. Weiner has been “kitty-whipped,” Limbaugh said. “He was no longer a real guy,” Limbaugh added.

During the radio show, Limbaugh said that liberal women have "neutered the business of politics," by suppressing testosterone in men.

Sadly for Limbaugh, his theory wasn’t merely ludicrous, degrading and utterly disconnected to feminism. It is simply illogical and nonsensical as well. It fails to explain the numerous sex scandals involving conservative men, like Herman Cain, for instance.

Perhaps, America does not want its president or any of its political leaders to exploit their influence and power to exact sexual favours even if these have nothing to do with the jobs they have sworn to do. Sexually harassing women, however, is not the same as currying for sexual advantages. Here lies Herman Cain’s greater misdeed, whether the allegations against him prove to be true, or settled, thus absolving him of any liability or guilt.

As there is no speculation about his sexual secrets, would Barack Obama cut the figure of robust integrity then?

Michael Wolf wrote in Vanity Fair that his friend, a middle-aged white doctor and Obama supporter, said that Obama would never have the same sex problems these aforementioned politicians have. “Because Michelle would whip his skinny ass,” this friend was alleged to have said.

True to the findings of the Dutch study, here is Obama as a controlled man, not one obsessed with power and hints of sexual desperation. According to Wolf’s friend, his is “our ideal of a good liberal’s sex life ought to be.”