Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Debates that haven't happened yet aren't news (and vice-presidential debates are seldom news even after they happen)

In case you missed it, over the weekend former president Donald Trump gave a couple of speeches that were filled with racism, lies, violent fantasies, and calls for what would be considered by all but the most technical definitions, fascism. They were bizarre, frightening, and undeniably newsworthy. (They were also newsworthy in other ways such as the questions raised about Trump's mental state, but I think the fascism was enough to prove my point.)





Despite this, they received limited and heavily sane washed coverage from most of the establishment press and went virtually unmentioned by the New York Times.

As of Monday, the big political story was the upcoming vice presidential debate between JD Vance and Tim Walz, which is odd since that is it news at all. Like I said in the title, "Debates that haven't happened yet aren't news."


It is possible that some significant news will come out of the event, though even that is unlikely. The only case that comes to mind of something memorable coming out of the VP debate is "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" and if you remember the context for that one, it certainly did not produce a noticeable boost to the ticket that came out on the top of that exchange.

If it is not news, what exactly does debate coverage consist of? Mostly it is nothing more than horserace journalism played out in miniature you have tons of speculation, pseudo-thoughtful discussions of who the perceived front runner is, historical anecdotes of little to no relevance, and pregame analysis with recaps of old debates and opportunities to trot out the standard narratives. All of which is supposedly intended to answer questions that will be resolved the following evening and which (to reveal a dirty little secret of politics and political journalism) are almost never that damned important to begin with.

Despite the absurd weight put on them, presidential debates are a terrible way for voters to get a sense of who the candidates are and what their administrations and policies are going to look like. Primary debates are more defensible, but by the time you get down to the choice between two or very, very occasionally three choices, the candidates are familiar enough and the differences start enough that these constrained and highly artificial exchanges almost never tell voters anything useful.

Presidential debates are best viewed not in terms of information exchanged or intellectual skill, but as theater. That's why the few moments that people remember are either embarrassingly superficial (Nixon's lack of makeup, Gore's know-it-all attitude) or gotcha moments. That is the level they operate on. As with the conventions, they are fundamentally spectacles and opportunity for journalists to crank out tons of "news" and analysis without having to do very much work.

2024 is a huge outlier in this respect with both debates revealing important information to viewers.

While most of the discussion about Biden's debate performance has been oversimplified and badly thought out, pretty much everyone can agree that serious doubts raised about how rapidly the man was aging, whether he would be able to complete another term, and most consequentially, would he be able to beat Trump in the general election? As the triggering event in an almost unprecedented reshuffling of a presidential ticket, this was unquestionably newsworthy.

The second debate was important on two levels. For Harris, it gave voters a chance to evaluate a candidate who had stepped into the role very recently and get a feel for her resolve and competence. For Trump, a massive audience saw a tired looking erratic, often delusional, easily distracted and manipulated old man. It also gave us an instantly iconic moment in the history of presidential debates, "[T]hey’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Also unquestionably newsworthy.

But none of the extensive coverage leading up either debate was in any real sense informative. Worse yet, there were. Genuinely important stories were pushed out of the news by these empty calories then and now. If the mainstream press wants to regain our trust, they should probably start by not wasting our time.



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