Stop the Debates Now

I watched all of last night's "debate" between Obama and Clinton on ABC. It was a travesty. The co-hosts were Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous. Both were ill-prepared and interested only in trying to needle and embarrass the candidates with scandal-o'-the-week. Charlie Gibson said, in a preface to a question, that every time the capital gains tax is lowered, the government gets more money from the tax, and when it is raised, the government gets less. He said this was a historical fact, and twice threw it at Obama. You could see Obama seconds away from rolling his eyes or lashing out, something like "well, then, let's lower it all the way to zero and let the cash roll in." I thought Tim Russert was bad, but Charlie Gibson's "fact" that lowering capgains tax rates always and necessarily increases revenue was so idiotic. It was based on three tax cuts. Hillary Clinton was spared the brunt of that stupid question. Stephanopolous dug through the last few weeks of "scandals" and kept throwing them out. This all took the first half of the debate. No substance. They also tried to get a 'pledge' out of each candidate not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $200,000/year. They each said yes, then got confronted with the fact that any plan to fix social security probably means fiddling with the payroll tax or (Obama) raising the cap above $100,000. That was the closest we got to substance, but the moderators seemed more interested in trying to create a youtube moment than teasing out the diferences between them. Stephanopolous proved to be such a hack with his whiny little "gotcha" questions.

The audience was also ordered to be quiet, which begs the question of why there was an audience at all. The interaction works better with an audience. If they laugh at an answer, the candidate instantly knows he or she has to follow up. If they clap, the other one can respond on the fly. It's much better.

Now, I think Clinton did "better" than Obama in the debate. She's more sure on her feet in such settings. You can tell, basically, that she's the challenger. He knows he has more to lose than she does. Fortunately for Obama, I don't think anyone was interested in the debate after the first few minutes. I hope they just ditch these events in the future. A good interview would be much better.