By the New York Media Circle
Jay Rosen introduces this round:
If spreadsheets could talk issues, they might sound like Al Gore and George
W. Bush did during their debates this past month. The contests between
American presidential contenders have become an ordeal for almost anyone
minimally attached to politics. Said to be crucial for the candidates, they
do not seem like crucial events in the life of the country.
Tested in weekly polling, vetted by cautious advisors, the words of the
contenders seem barely human at times. Little gets said that is memorable,
let alone inspiring. "Will there be a gaffe?" is the only real suspense.
Expectations are set low, so they can be exceeded and "expectors" will have
something to say. Pre-debate, they ask each other: What does Jones have to
do tonight to do well? After the debate, they ask each other: How well did
Jones do tonight in doing what he had to do? For the privilege of watching a
contest framed in this way, American audiences have shrunk.
And that is called a "crucial test" for the major party candidates. In a
narrow sense, it may be so. Blow the debate, and you've blown your chances.
But the big candidates can easily past their test, while the debates
themselves fail the rest of us — fail Democracy 101. "They aren't
debates," say those who would "de-illusion" the public, "they're joint
television appearances." Dan Rather, the longtime anchorman for CBS News,
said this very thing recently. It's good to know that Rather isn't fooled.
But neither are the great majority of Americans who are not watching him and
his colleagues on debate night. They know that no matter who "does well" in
the judgment of journalists, their own judgment is truer: these guys aren't
speaking to me.
Other than professionals paid to tip the race for their man, who really
cares whether Governor Bush, in that answer on education, might have helped
himself with Likely Swing Voters In Key Battleground States Like Michigan
And Pennsylvania? Did his words educate the debate at all? Did they edify
the country, or mean something to the remainder of the civilized world? Did
they reveal a human being in command of anything deeper than tonight's
script?
Now that they're over we can see: What's so dispiriting and scandalous about
the presidential debates goes further than the vapid performance of
candidates who've been drilled for weeks, the questions from a chosen
moderator who doesn't drill deeply enough, or such technical matters as
format and rules.
It's the gap between the election ritual we have and the one we deserve as
citizens of what Todd Gitlin calls "a grown-up democracy." It's the poverty
of press analysis, a depressed culture of expectations for politics
generally, and televised politics especially, the listless and routinized
feel of these events, the lack of genuine surprise, political daring, human
imagination — and our many accommodations to all this.
"De-illusioned" we no doubt are. But that doesn't tell us how we can get
democratic again.
The New York Media Circle put to itself these questions: What forces have
given Americans the presidential debates they now have? Can anything better
be expected? What would have to change for the debates to change? And why
should anyone give a damn? Writers for this round: Todd Gitlin, Susie
Linfield, Ellen Willis, Mitchell Stephens and Siva Vaidhyanathan.
- Jay Rosen is a press critic, chair of the Journalism Department at New York
University, and the author of "What Are Journalists For?" (Yale University
Press, 1999). E-mail: jr3@is2.nyu.edu.
