When an electorate is not sufficiently informed about the issues and the candidates positions and ideas related to those issues, presidential elections can be won based on the quality of performances during debates (on how well the speaker spoke and how convincing and presidential the speaker looked) rather than the quality of the candidate's ideas and veracity of his/her assertions.
Because I had concluded how useless and maybe even counter-productive debates might be, I considered not listening to this year's Obama-Romney debates. The media were communicating that positions and ideas expressed by candidates during the debates could nullify things already said either prior to or during the campaigns. It was as if voters are being told to treat the pre-campaign dialogues as only training for the championship match, where the championship is unrelated to anything that transpired prior to the big match. Past lies, inconsistencies and condescending remarks about fellow Americans no longer matter. Everything needed to select a winner rests on what happens during the debates, making an etch-a-sketch strategy possibly a winning strategy when enough voters who are undecided because they are uninformed use the debates are their primary source of information.
Expressions such as convictions, passion, determination and sincerity can be inferred from a candidate's jesters or manners of speech, but they cannot be properly evaluated in the absence of the candidate's history because they can be learned performances. Even such things as shaking one's head when the opponent says something that is persuasive but not true or conflicts with previous positions can arouse suspicion in the minds of less informed viewers about the opponent's veracity. And because no fact-checker is present during the debates, skeptical viewers might have reasons to seek out fact-checks in the future.
Unfortunately, many viewers will have already voted or will not seek any harder to become informed about the candidates after the debates than they did before the debates. Debates especially don't equip voters to make wise decisions in choosing the candidate more likely to respond properly to that "3:00 call in the morning" and which one is more likely to keep promises.
A better debate formate might be one which allows candidates to question each other on a list of predetermined issues. All questions that need to be asked, especially the toughest ones, are more likely asked by the opposition. Partisan interviewers, one or two from each party might be even better. Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow vs Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity would be a perfect contest.
Despite everything that I thought was wrong about these debates, I decided to listen to the first one. And at first, I thought Romney had won. Romney threw a lot of punches. But most of them missed. Known lies and flip-flops are misses--unless the opponent gives good reasons for changing positions. So I changed my mind: The debate was a draw. The fact that Romney lied and flip-flopped so skillfully, allowed him to get points that he did not deserve. But he gains points not only with style but by twice pointing out instances of wasteful investments by the President on failed clean-energy projects. The result was consensus opinion that, despite lost points for lying and inconsistencies, Romney was the winner.
Obama got points for consistency and truthfulness, but he lost points for failing to challenge Romney's lies and flip-flops. He also lost points for failing to criticize Romney about the reasons that caused Romney's falling polling numbers prior to the debates: Bain Capital, the "47%", refusing to submit more than two tax returns, lying about certain components of his health plan. Romney was even allowed to pass himself off as the champion of the middle class, teachers and the poor. But when Obama lost points for failing to take advantage of the many opportunities to challenge Romney, those challengeable events also count against Romney. So, in conclusion, Obama wins the overall debate--by a point. Integrity counts, and flip-flops and lies are low blows.
Responses by potential voters in several groups of undecided voters suggest that many people who are responding to the various polls after the debates are as uninformed about the positions and opinions of the candidates prior to the debate as are many of those in the focus groups. The media have convinced voters that what candidates say during debates should tell more about who a candidate is than the candidate's history. Even Obama supporters were caught up in Romney's performance, giving it more weight than Obama's honesty.
What and who a man is and what he believes are reflected in how he behaves and what he says when he is in the company of like-minded people, not in the impressions he rehearses in order to change public perceptions and expectations. If a candidate changes his/her mind about his beliefs or positions on issues several times during a campaign or during his political career and is loose with the truth, how can voters believe anything he claims to believes and promises to do? A Romney election would strongly suggest that America, by placing it faith in liars and flip-floppers, is becoming an increasingly dysfunctional government, with a decreasing ability to solve problems, provide creditable world leadership both toward effecting a world economic recovery and continuing to hinder terrorists ability to terrorize.
Truthful or not, flip-flopper or not, undeserving or not, Mitt Romney may have convinced enough independents and borderline Republicans and Democrats that he has moved toward the ideological middle, enough to elect him president, regardless of how well the President and Vice President Biden perform in the next debates. Romney's base won't mind; all they want is for Obama to be defeated.
This last debate, of course, was only round one of a four-round contest. But the etch-a-sketch strategy, which we Democrats thought to be folly, is now being implemented, and it's no longer a laughing matter.
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