Anyway, I think that the general idea of why it felt “undignified” was… first, as you said, there were way too many candidates, and none of these guys would get any airtime without trying to appeal to sensationalist branches of their parties.

But, specifically, regarding the MSNBC debate. It began with Chris Matthews holding the debate, he talked more than most of the candidates talked, and he spent more time cracking jokes about answers than really asking serious questions. The “Show of Hands” questions were stupid because, first, you couldn’t see the candidates hands, and second, you can’t answer a question with a show of hands. If this is a “debate,” the candidates should be debating points not answering with a show of hands — it’s like if two politicians were going to have a debate on, say, the Iraq War or something, and the moderator asked questions and had them just raise their hands “yes / no” for the answer, it’s not really an exchange of ideas.

Another problem with debates in general, but the first two especially, were that the questions made political points themselves, rather than simply asking a question. The best example was in the first DNC debate where Joe Biden was given a question about his wordiness, which is a stupid question to ask anyway, and the question was soooo needlessly wordy and verbose. Biden cleverly just answered the question with “Yes” and everybody laughed. On the opposite side of this spectrum, in the GOP debate when Guiliani was asked “What’s the difference between a Sunni and Shia Muslim.” As somebody who has studied Islamic history, you can’t answer that in 30 seconds… I mean, you could talk about the 4th caliphate, about the ascension of caliphates from the prophert, sevener and twelver shi’ites, but it’s got no place in a debate just to try to “one up” a candidate. Interestingly, Guiliani answered it correctly, but he was so thrown off guard by the Trivial Pursuit character of the question that he had to pause for 5 or so seconds to gather himself to answer it.

The largest problem with a television debate like this is that you’re given 45 seconds to answer a very complex situation. If somebody says to me, or you, or a presidential candidate, “How are you going to reform taxes?” you could write a book about it, but answering it in 30 seconds, all you can do is use buzz words and catch phrases.

Finally, the MSNBC debate really suffered from Chris Matthews… the guy is a strong left-leaner who does not make any attempt to be moderate, he’s a great personality on TV and does his show better than most other shows, but I think that he forgot that this debate wasn’t another episode of Hardball. He was trying to steal the show from the candidates, cracking jokes, cutting them off, and answering for them. The thing that angered me the most was when he would ask a question down the line and ask for a “yes” or “No” answer, but the questions weren’t simple yes / no questions… and so when a candidate would answer, he would summarize them, often incorrectly, with “that’s a yes…” or “that’s a no…”

Anyway … enjoying your blog, best wishes yet again,
Mike