Searching for Substance

In the first televised presidential debate, who seemed to have won depended a lot on who you asked, or rather, whether they listened in on radio or watched on TV. Those who heard the 1960 debate between Kennedy and Nixon on the radio said Nixon had won based on his words and tone, while those who watched on TV saw Nixon visibly weakened by the flu and sweating in an overheavy suit, and hence preferred Kennedy. Unfortunately, in 2004, over forty years later, the media is still excited by issues of style and has yet to create substantive debate on television.

Although there are many possible formats for a debate, any real debate must have an argument or a set of arguments at its center. Given that this one forbade the candidates from cross-examining each other, and hence really exposing their logic and beliefs, we were forced to depend on the quality of an outside moderator for interesting questions. Jim Lehrer, of the “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” on PBS, is one of the most respected TV journalists in America, and hence a seemingly good choice as moderator.

The questions Lehrer asked, however, can only be characterized as weak, especially in how they failed to challenge either candidate to depart from the cue-card platform running through their head. Questions like (to Senator Kerry), “Do you believe you could do a better job than President Bush in preventing another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States?” will never receive anything more than a superficial, and obvious, answer. What is the point of a debate unless it forces candidates to say more than what we can read on their Web sites? The obvious consequence is that style will be called in to replace the missing substance. Moreover, hard questions are not difficult to come by: Asking Kerry whether he would allocate more money to the war in Iraq, given that we are currently forced to choose between security and reconstruction, or asking Bush how he can justify using overwhelming force to protect soldiers’ lives when the war’s success depends on the cooperation and goodwill of Iraqis, would each lead to more interesting answers than Kerry’s “Yes, I do” believe I can do a better job.

Ultimately, in any debate with a moderator, whether we learn anything substantive about the candidates depends on the quality of the questions. The argument that somehow asking hard questions would make the debate unfair or biased is simply false, because both candidates have gaping flaws, and asking questions culled from the last three months of media coverage is no more fair or unbiased. Perhaps the greatest challenge to asking difficult questions is the two minute time limit imposed on any response. However, the key to developing any detailed line of thought is to ask follow-up questions, something Lehrer rarely did in the debate. Only by sticking with a particular issue will a moderator force the candidates to speak substance and not platitudes.

In the end, we are still waiting for the national press to step up and challenge politicians to have more than just style. It is unacceptable to be obsessed about things like choice of tie color when we are considering the election of the person who will command our army and set domestic and foreign policy.