I suppose it's arguable whether it matters that the field of Republican presidential candidates in the coming cycle looks to be unusually large. Personally I don't really see why it matters, since we know perfectly well that only a handful of viable candidates will still have a serious chance once we're past the first few caucuses and primaries. But I can't help but be both amused and a little frustrated by the reason many conservatives are citing for why this is supposedly a problem:
How will they work the debates with so many candidates?
Seriously? This is what you're concerned about? These media-created knockoffs of American Idol disguised as "debates"?
But oh yes, this life-defiining issue is all the rage on the right at the moment, to the point where yesterday's announcements from Fox and CNN about how they will set up the rules is actually being treated as an important news story:
(Fox News) will require contenders to place in the top 10 in an average of the five most recent national polls in the run-up to the event, narrowing what is expected to be a field of 16 or more by the Aug. 6 event in Cleveland.
The rule could trigger an early rush of spending by lower-tier candidates seeking to boost their standing in national surveys before the pivotal first forum.
Meanwhile, CNN laid out a different approach for the second debate on Sept. 16, which will be split into two parts — one featuring the top 10 candidates in public polling and a second that will include lower-tiered candidates who garner at least 1 percent in polls. The forum, being held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., will also require participants to have at least one paid campaign worker in two of the four early voting states.
Determining which contenders will get to participate in the official forums sanctioned by the Republican National Committee has been a challenge for the cable news network and party officials. No GOP primary debate has ever featured more than 10 candidates.
Oh the drama as we waited with bated breath to learn how the news networks will set the rules to determine who is a serious presidential candidate! Oh the intrigue! Imagine the stage! Imagine the candidates! What, oh what, shall they do?
Excuse me while I vomit.
These meat parades are about the silliest spectacles ever to rear their heads in politics, and let us count the reasons this is true:
They are not debates. A debate is an argument between two people who disagree about something, or about many things. These are attention-grabbing contests in which each person on stage is trying to convince you of the same thing - that he/she is the true conservative, the true heir to Reagan, the true believer in small government, the real tax-cutter, whatever. Or they're looking for the opportunity to say that someone else on stage (or maybe everyone else in stage) is not those things. I'm not sure what you call that, but I know what it isn't, and that's a debate.
The media should have no role in this performance theater, and certainly not as the "moderators." Having them there simply makes it a glorified joint press conference, but it's a bizarre press conference in which the people holding the press conference have no idea what they're there to talk about, because the media could ask them about anything from Syria to health care to boxers vs. briefs. (And they will.) When the media rides its hubris for all it's worth, you remember the media more than you remember the candidates. Bernard Shaw. Candy Crowley. Unless they want to run, get them off the stage.
Momentary anomalies come to define candidates in ways that should never happen. Rick Perry was the worst victim of this I ever saw. A momentary mental block kept him from recalling one of the three cabinet-level departments he had proposed eliminating, and the brain freeze was instantly seized upon as the end of his campaign. Which it was. That was crap. Say what you want about whether Perry would make a good president, but anyone can lose their train of thought in a moment, and what usually happens is you say to someone, "Hey, I'm having a mental block, what was that thing?" And they tell you, and you say oh yeah, and that's that. It has nothing to do with your ability to do the job of president, nor does your reaction to someone's zinger or a brief look of surprise that someone decides to call a "deer in the headlights moment." These isolated events are stupid and irrelevant, and yet they are used to define you by people who are stupid and should be irrelevant.
We never learn anything. In fact, we often come away from a debate more ignorant than we were when it started. If you want to know a candidate's position on something, go to his web site. If you want to know the legitimate criticisms of him, research that independently. If you judge anyone - positively or negatively - based on what they can say for themselves in a span of 30 seconds, you should be disqualified from voting.
I am not suggesting we get rid of general election debates. Those are real debates and they're useful, although I absolutely think we should get the media out of them. But "Republican debates" are nothing of the sort. They come to own the candidates' time and focus by forcing them to constantly jet around to one forum after another for fear of not being seen when everyone else is being seen - even though they're getting stuck in a setting where they can't really communicate their message as they want because they have to play by the media's rules.
If you really want to solve this problem, the solution is easy. Set the Republican candidates free by ending the "Republican debates," and let them all fend for themselves in the quest for attention. I can assure you primary voters will still find out what the candidates think and what their qualifications are - and we will still end up with a nominee. We just won't give the media a chance to hold a dog-and-pony show that determines who it is.
I suppose it's arguable whether it matters that the field of Republican presidential candidates in the coming cycle looks to be unusually large. Personally I don't really see why it matters, since we know perfectly well that only a handful of viable candidates will still have a serious chance once we're past the first few caucuses and primaries. But I can't help but be both amused and a little frustrated by the reason many conservatives are citing for why this is supposedly a problem:
