By Joe Lane
We are now fewer than two weeks away from one of the most anticipated presidential elections in U.S. history. Whether that anticipation stems from a complete disgust for the current campaign or a true interest in seeing who will be the next president likely varies from voter to voter.
But one of the common threads running throughout this presidential campaign season is the way the debates have unfolded — stretching back to the primaries. While the debates of this presidential election may have been extremely high in entertainment value, they lacked substance to a sad extent.
Gone are the days of debates that focus on two candidates, vying for moderate votes, expressing their positions and platform tenants that they believe address the issues. Instead, today we have debates based not in facts but in punchy one-liners that can be picked up by the audience and shared with the masses across social media.
“Nasty woman,” “Bad hombres,” Hillary’s shimmy, “Binders full of women,” and, of course, Ken Bone. These are but a small sampling of the debate moments in the past four years that have gone “internet famous.”
Debates are now entertainment. They have very little to do with the issues and this is a real shame. As long as a reality-TV-show host is in the election, change will be difficult to achieve, of course. But debates are seemingly unrelated to the issues for many reasons beyond Donald Trump’s bravado. The perfect example is Bone.
Bone, an undecided voter who asked a question in the second debate, became famous within an hour of his television appearance for a variety of reasons: his name, his appearance, and his mannerisms. As his fame grew overnight, and people continued to mock him (a situation that he quickly took advantage of, by becoming a spokesman for IZOD — the makers of his famous red sweater — and Uber), his question faded into the distance.
Although the majority of debate watchers could easily identify Bone, I’d be willing to bet that few will recall his question. In fact, virtually none of the social-media posts about the man actually featured his question. Worse, however, is that while few to no people recall Bone’s question, even fewer may remember the candidates’ answers.
Bone’s question was actually a very important one: “What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil-power-plant workers?”
Trump argued that he will do so much to make us win again, and Hillary Clinton explained that there has to be change and that viewers can go to hillaryclinton.com to see her plan.
Not exactly awe-inspiring answers on either front. So it should come as no surprise that the next — and final — question was squeezed into the second debate because it was request for each candidate to say one thing positive about the other, was a far more interesting way to end a television broadcast.
Moderators have lost control, candidates don’t express legitimate thoughts on the issues, and the audience is just looking for a laugh.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution proposal yet. But I believe that admitting there is a problem with the debates in this country is the first step.