The Debate Debate

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: Mega-Media Trends

(AP/Mary Ann Chastain)

So, uh: Does anyone else have debate fatigue?

We sure have had a lot of these things so far. And they're early. For a little context, consider this: Bill Clinton didn't even formally enter the race for President until October of 1991; Republican Fred Thompson, expected to be a serious contender for the nomination next year, still isn't in.

And yet we seem to have a new debate just about every week, if not more frequently – this week has brought us two, with the Logo debate about gay and lesbian issues and the AFL-CIO debate on MSNBC, both featuring Democrats. Master of understatement Newt Gingrich, complaining that the campaign season is now much too long, recently said the debates have become "almost unendurable" -- "a cross between 'The Bachelor,' 'American Idol' and 'Who's Smarter than a Fifth-Grader.'"

Is there a better way to do this? The ratings for the debates have been relatively high this time around, but the key word there is "relatively" – even the much-hyped YouTube debate, certainly the most publicized debate thus far, only attracted 2,622,000 viewers, and Tuesday's debate attracted less than a million. There are legitimate concerns emerging that we may be getting too an overkill point: As Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told the Times: "Most of us worry that doing all this so early on will wear out the electorate."

Count me among those getting worn out – and I'm a political junkie, for heaven's sake. Part of the problem is that the debates generally don't allow candidates to get much past their sound bites; when you've got 10 candidates onstage, a whole host of topics to get to, and an hour and a half to work with, it's simply not possible. This week's debates were actually somewhat better because they were focused on specific issues. Structuring these early debates this way – which allows viewers to selectively tune in to get a detailed discussion of the issues they are interested in – actually makes a lot more sense than keeping things general.

On Wednesday night's "Daily Show," in fact, Democratic candidate Joe Biden made that very case. "We should have a 90-minute debate on nothing but Iraq, and a 90-minute debate on nothing but what's going on with our energy problem," he said. Biden then made a joke about the fact that he -- known to many as "long-talking Biden" -- actually stays within the 1-minute time limit for debate responses. The reason? "I realize nobody's listening."

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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by marie2233 August 10, 2007 8:15 PM EDT: The ratings on the debates are high because the public is waiting to hear some solutions, but have not heard any yet..; Reply to this comment


by joycewest August 10, 2007 7:12 PM EDT: Just because we are tired of debates and they don't get blockbuster ratings, does that mean we shouldn't have them? I don't think so. Even if only a couple of million people watch them, the talk about them afterwards filters down among the rest of the concerned populace and I think it may further the getting-to-know-you process. It would definitely be better to focus on one topic per debate to get deeper into the issue. Start with the Iraq war.
What concerns me is not the early debates, but the early primaries. What is the point of voting in state like, let's say Kentucky, where you don't have a primary until May 20 and it's all over by then? Am I not effectively disenfranchised due to a tardy primary? The only option is to vote with dollars instead of ballots in hopes of having some influence on the outcome.
If the rush to early primaries reaches its logical conclusion, everyone would vote this January and then just wait for the two contenders to square off in November. Something is wrong with the primary system.; Reply to this comment