Wednesday, September 28, 2011
George Soros gives $20 million to improve debate skills ... by gimleteye
It is too late to rescue this generation of American politics, judging from the debate skills of the GOP presidential candidates. Of course it is wrong to judge what passes for television "debates" as the fault of candidates alone. Television executives and party leaders are the culpable ones. The TV execs don't want to give away their air time. The party leaders don't want to expose audiences to how brain-dead our politics are. But watching the "75th Republican debate" (credit to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show), one couldn't help feeling that the field of candidates would winnow out lickety split if formal rules of debate were followed. Of course, this would require some capacity to understand rules of debate by American audiences, too. And that may be too much to expect. On the other hand, we can only improve from here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
George Soros is the Darth Vader of the Democratic Party Death Star.
Glenn Beck reads Eyeonmiami!
Do you remember the Bush-Gore debates? In particular, the one where Bush had a bulge in his suitcoat, people thought it might be a high tech hidden prompter... anyway, Gore addressed the points well, made persuasive arguments, spoke in full,grammatically correct sentences, and showed he knew the facts and nuances of policy. Dubya stuck with sound bites, and looked like an eighth grader doing a bad book report, but had an angaging twinkle in his eyes(he would wink at audience). I thought it was a blow out, that the media would report on the mismatch and what a joke Bush was. Surprisingly, they said it was CLOSE. That's when I learned that debating skills mean nothing, the pundits know nothing, and Bush lowered the communication standard so far that it is no surprise that we have half-baked candidates than cannot debate like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and (shiver) Sarh Palin.
Post a Comment