Campaign down day: debating debates
Debatably.
It's Sunday down day, and the political parties are starting to prep their leaders for this week’s debates. So, here, are my previously-published five tips on what they should be doing.
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One, they’re not debates. Not in the way that the Nerdling Club held debate contests at your high school, anyway. The televised leaders debates are a different beast.
No one — and I mean no one — watches the debates with an open mind. They don’t watch it to see the participants actually debate, deploy facts and arguments, and then get to decide who wins at the end.
Nope. The vast majority of voters watch debates only to have the choice they’ve already made ratified. They’re not watching to have their minds changed.
If a voter already thinks that Justin Trudeau is a duplicitous, mendacious, baby-faced crook — and there is some evidence that an increasing number of Canadians lean that way — that’s what they are tuning in to see. They want their biases confirmed, not contradicted.
Second truth: TV is pictures. TV IS PICTURES. TV (and its illegitimate progeny, the internet) is not about words or information. It’s about emotion. Pictures are emotional — words (I say, sadly) often aren’t.
The old bromide about a picture being worth a thousand words? It’s true, true, true.
The purpose of a leaders’ debate is to look and sound the most prime ministerial (or presidential). It’s not really what comes out of your mouth. As former B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell once said to me as we prepped him for a TV debate: It’s 70% how you look, it’s 20% how you say it, and it’s only 10% what you say. Me: “Yep.”
Want to know who has “won” a debate? Watch it for a while with the sound off. You’ll know.
Third truth: Get our your watch (you know — that round thing you used to wear before you got an iPhone). Then count the number of seconds and minutes a debate participant speaks. Whoever racks up the most minutes is usually the winner.
That’s because the purpose of a debate is to use the debate to get your issues to dominate.
So, in 2000 when my boss Jean Chretien was facing off against Stockwell Day, it didn’t matter that Day could string words together into sentences, and could speak both official languages. Didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter because HE KEPT TALKING ABOUT OUR ISSUES. If he’d been smart or strategic, he would’ve kept turning the conversation back to conservative stuff, like law and order and taxes and the economy.
He didn’t. He kept going on and on and on — and on — about health care, which was the issue we dastardly Liberals owned.
Chretien killed him.
Fourth truth, free of charge: The media are always looking for “defining moments,” which don’t really exist. You know: Some dramatic, shocking, unexpected Hollywood-style plot twist that will determine the outcome of the election, in 10 seconds or less.
They don’t happen. What happens, instead, is clips. That is, the clips that will be played on the newscasts later on, ad infinitum, with inexperienced journalists pronouncing on them. Clips matter.
Which brings us to the final truth, referred to at the outset. You probably don’t plan to watch the first debate. Don’t feel bad: More and more people don’t.
Instead, they watch the clips (see Truth Four). They pay attention to who dominated the proceedings (see Truth Three). They are captivated by who looks like a prime minister (see Truth Two). They only want to see their guy or gal win, and the other guy or gal look unfit for dog catching (see Truth One).
That’s what “debates” are really about it. Trust me on this.
You’re welcome.
will watch the debates if they stay Interesting with a bit if humor thrown in. Friendly banter i guess.
Both Chretian and Mulroney were dominate people.. from what i remember of them.
I know who I'm voting for. I want to see how he interacts with Carney and vice versa.
The dark horse here for me is Singh.
He gets fired up. Young people like that.
Promising the sun the moon and the sky.
The last debate i watched was Biden and Trump. Shinning examples of...not sure!
Yes, i will still watch clips.. and compare what i watched..just for entertainment and maybe checking for lies and insults.
Let the games begin. Lol
Sad but true. But I take issue with your comment that "nobody" watches the debates to hear the arguments and decide. I'm the guy... 😄. er' yeah, "the" guy. ... and in all fairness I'm just a nobody, so I guess technically you are correct.
Actually since I vote on accumulated evidence -- party track record both ruling and in opposition, I guess yeah, by the time a debate rolls around it's a done deal. But I'm still curious to see who has his of her act together and who doesn't. Far from looking at the pictures, I could just listen to the words on a radio. Then again politics has gotten to be so much duplicitous blather that the debates are usually a disappointment anyway. Case in point, after taking in every minute of the clinton trump debates back back in 2016 all I wished for them was a pox on both their houses. The memorable poigniant moment came when one of the audience asked those two nasty arrogant combatants if either of them had a single positive thing to say about the other. The sigh of release was audible and speaks for the vast majority of us ordinary spectators. Had I been a US voter, I think my "decision" would have been to abstain; spend my time better in a nice pub somewhere.
It's better in the US, on one major count: They choose their noble CEO separately from their ruling houses of legislation. At least if they make a big mistake and choose a whackjob for President it can be offset by some rebalancing in the mid terms. Here I rather expect to be disappointed by Mr Poilievre's performance, since the warning signs have been showing for some time now. Carney will be "prime ministerial" but shallow and duplicitlous. And yeah, good point, only the video bites the campaigns can take away from the face-off will have any effecf on the vote.
Still it will be intellectually interesting, as I once remarked about hearing one of the Nixon tapes, and the disgusting trump Vance Zelenskyy television clip. One llive moment can give you a glimpse into a person's soul.
Oh and I once changed my vote because of a debate. But I'd been planning to flip a coin anyway, so it could hardly have been called a pivotal moment. Had to happen at least once in my 70 plus years.