The (not so) Great Debates

Watching the candidates’ debates is like attending a performance of the old musical A Chorus Line. In the musical a bunch of dancers are brought up on stage to show their stuff to the director—an unseen but heard presence who sits in judgment of them and decides who is dismissed, who gets a callback and who eventually may star. The audience doesn’t really understand the criteria, but simply attaches to various characters and their stories. There are has-beens, potential stars and wannabees. Even those of us unschooled in dance can predict who won’t make it, but we can’t know who will.

A Chorus Line is a musical that pretends it’s an audition. The candidates’ debates are auditions that pretend to be shows. These are not actually debates. Some observers have characterized them as side by side by side press conferences. This is closer to the truth. The best way to understand these cable shows is as an audition. But they are not auditioning for us, “We the People.” They are auditioning for the unseen, yet clearly heard, directors: The guys with checkbooks.

Our current candidates’ debates seem, on the surface, to answer the philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? Since fewer than 2 million people watched any portion of the Republican or Democratic candidates’ debate, we may ask if it makes any noise at all? Save for the lightening strike during Giuliani’s abortion response, the clear answer is: It depends.

The public is not paying attention. The news media are only looking for sound bites of either attacks or gaffs. However, there is noise in the forest. It is the rustle of big money.

Some pundits get upset that the media is covering the horse race instead of the substance. This would be an understandable criticism if there were, in fact, any substance to cover. All the candidates are all following the example of Mohammad Ali and trying to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” They are trying to stay out of harms way while peppering their opponents with light, and mostly harmless, jabs.

Pundits get even more upset when the media covers the dollar race and gauges the candidates by how much they are raising. But this is at exactly the heart of the story. Those who attract money will survive to the next round. Those who don’t will fade.

Who will live and who will die (politically) is not a function of what the few civilians who watch these cattle call auditions think. It is what the checkbooks think. That is the story, and it has important, if distressing, ramifications to our nation and the world.