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Music Cues: Who Wants to Elect a Millionaire?
February 19, 2000
I would rather watch another rerun of CHEERS than see another presidential
primary candidates debate. There, I've said it out-loud. No, wait. I like
CHEERS. Sometimes I think I would almost rather watch a rerun of MY MOTHER
THE CAR than another presidential primary candidates' debate.
It's not that the debates have been especially vituperative, uninformed, or
outrageous. On the contrary. Most of them have seemed civil, informative,
and issue-oriented--all the values that editorialists and pundits claim to
want to encourage.
But the debates have become so routinized and rehearsed--filled with
pre-scripted soliloquies and practiced outrage--they have lost much of their
sense of moment; and the power to surprise.
The first time I saw Alan Keyes ask John McCain what counsel he would give
his own daughter about abortion, I was struck by Mr. Keye's debating logic,
and moved by Senator McCain's constrained response: "Alan, please don't
bring my daughter into this."
That was in New Hampshire, wasn't it? This week, I saw them strike up this
attack-and-response duet again in South Carolina. Perhaps next week, they'll
stage it again in Michigan, then take the show into Ohio and California.
It's not that the candidates lack sincerity. But Jack Lemmon and Walter
Matthau might be challenged to bring much spontaneity into so rehearsed an
exchange. Each candidate has practiced an answer that tickles the particular
voters they want to reach, and delivers their lines on-cue.
Some truly dedicated C-Span viewers might even be able to move their lips
along with their words.
Debates among presidential candidates used to be occasions. Scores of
millions of people watched Richard Nixon glower against John F. Kennedy, and
Ronald Reagan smilingly confide that perhaps he quoted old Greek
philosophers because he was the only candidate old enough to actually
remember them. The audience for this campaign's debates so far have been a
million here, a million and a half there. Cable broadcasters alone on
television run the entire debate. This reduces the first-run audience to
only those who can afford cable. The major networks, so far, usually feature
only sound-bites--which reduces the debate to an exchange of slogans.
The candidates, and even the networks, are scarcely to blame. Holding
debates from state-to-state seems an unassailably good idea.
But staging so many debates that the audience shrinks to just a few hundred
thousand people with an unusual, almost pathological interest in the federal
tax code doesn't do much to kindle wide voter interest. It takes a cast that
should have the appeal of CHEERS--and puts them in MY MOTHER THE CAR.
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