If last night’s GOP debate could be summed up in one word, it would almost certainly be “utter disaster.” Well, that’s two words, but in true debate form I will take some liberty with the constraints. In close second, the debate could be described as “entertaining” but unfortunately, substantive political discourse is rarely entertaining. Due to the media’s obsession with sensationalizing politics, and the candidates’ (somewhat forced) decision to play into this atmosphere, last night’s debate highlighted the growing issues with modern politics.
The debate was a disaster for a number of reasons, the primary one being the odd and, at times, incompetent moderating. Very little time was spent discussing substantive issues, which is crucial at this point in the race for allowing candidates to differentiate themselves. Moderators asked peculiar questions that seemed to be designed to embarrass candidates instead of revealing their policy ideas. This included attacking Marco Rubio’s voting record and asking “why not slow down, get a few more things done first, or at least finish what you start?” calling out Jeb Bush on his falling poll numbers and asking Donald Trump “is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?” Moderators should certainly feel free to ask candidates about reasons they may not be qualified, however, this seemed to be the only goal of the moderators. The candidates noticed this apparent bias and began attacking the moderators, as well as the media at large. The crowd loved it, and the candidates continued these attacks for the rest of the night, even in post-debate interviews. An event that should have helped differentiate candidates mainly resulted in all of the candidates touting their disdain for media.
To make matters worse, the media decided to cover this election, like many other political events, about as horribly as it could. Instead of addressing the nuances of the debate, nearly every media outlet was content with publishing critiques of CNBC’s handling of the event, which while fair, decreases the public’s focus on the true purpose of the debate: hearing what the candidates have to say. The only other coverage of the debate were picks for “winners and losers.” Seriously, Google “GOP Debate” and look at the top results, I’ll wait…
Are these high quality political outlets or an ESPN version of politics? Who knows. At this point, much of our political dialogue has the same sophistication as our dialogue about sports. By manipulating the coverage of this event, the media pushes the public to choose winners and losers instead of strong or sound minded candidates with good ideas. Both the running of the debate and the post-debate coverage emphasized a polarization between the parties, and settled for petty direct attacks between candidates, not their substantive differences.
There were no winners in last night’s debate, except perhaps candidates who will gain polling boosts, but there were a lot of losers. CNBC, Republican voters, and perhaps most importantly, American politics at large. Without some drastic changes in the process and media coverage of political events, the perceived polarization and proliferation of petty political maneuvering will continue.