So tonight is going to be the third U.S. executive branch debate, this time pitting John McCain and Barack Obama in the TV-friendly "town hall" setting. The debate will undoubtedly get better ratings than the first McCain-Obama encounter, for no other reason than it's Tuesday night, and people stay home and watch TV on Tuesdays. (The first debate was held Friday, when "HUT levels," households using television, are at their lowest.)
I'm just back from Canada. While on "vacation" I covered the first debate for TV Barn. Since I was on a train last Thursday, I watched most of the VP debate in cud form (i.e., chewed up and regurgitated) over the weekend on CNN. I also watched pieces of the English language debate between Canada's five candidates for prime minister, held the same night as Biden-Palin.
Shari Elliker of WBAL Radio asked me this morning to compare the two countries, and that resulted in this cultural exchange:
(or download it)
Now, as for tonight's debate, in my "Five Myths" essay I made the case that John McCain may have excelled in previous town halls, but should not be considered the favorite by any means here. For one thing, the audience won't necessarily be eating out of his hand. For another, his opponent will be right there making eye contact with him. And third, McCain is likely to face some of the hardest "citizen questions" he's ever faced, such as why his people have ordered Sarah Palin to recommence with the Jeremiah Wright-Bill Ayers rap and why his much cozier association with Charles Keating shouldn't now be considered fair game. Not to mention actual issues like the economy. With 50 million people watching him answer, McCain had better be perfect in his answers, or he's likely to fall even further behind Obama in the polls.
John McCain is used to force the election of Barack Obama.
Barack Obama forced you to pay for Wall Street's bailout.
Stop the extortion, blackmail, bribery, and division;
Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, and Cynthia McKinney.
"The two parties should be
almost identical, so that
the American people can
'throw the rascals out'
at any election without
leading to any profound or
extensive shifts in policy."
- Carol Quigley
Posted by: sham debate | October 07, 2008 at 01:26 PM
In all of the past debates in Canada that I can remember we have had the typical everybody standing at a podium style. But with 3 to 5 people (depending on how many parties there were at the time) a lot of the time it degraded to a shouting match with the person who was shouting the loudest getting heard.
I really liked what they did this year with the leaders all around a table having a good talk about the issues. Both the french and english moderators were also very good at making sure that everybody was able to get their points across and having pretty much equal time (I didn't exactly have a stopwatch for each person but it seemed pretty even).
The best line during the english debate was NDP leader Jack Layton asking Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper if "his plan was under his vest". This was a reference to the fact that unlike all recent elections where each party puts out its platform in one document, the conservative at that point had not put one out (although they did it today a week before the election). And the fact that in order to make Mr. Harper appear more warm and cuddly his first TV ads of the campaign always had him wearing a sweater rather than a suit.
For anybody really interested in Canadian political debates the CBC has them archived going back to 1968 (where the moderators were actually smoking during the debate):
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/elections/topics/3601/
One thing I can't get over in American politics is the length of the campaign. I know you have 10 times our population, but our election was called the first week of September and it will happen on Oct. 14. Then whoever wins gets back to the task of actually running the country.
Posted by: Frank from Canada | October 07, 2008 at 05:35 PM
In all of the past debates in Canada that I can remember we have had the typical everybody standing at a podium style. But with 3 to 5 people (depending on how many parties there were at the time) a lot of the time it degraded to a shouting match with the person who was shouting the loudest getting heard.
I really liked what they did this year with the leaders all around a table having a good talk about the issues. Both the french and english moderators were also very good at making sure that everybody was able to get their points across and having pretty much equal time (I didn't exactly have a stopwatch for each person but it seemed pretty even).
The best line during the english debate was NDP leader Jack Layton asking Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper if "his plan was under his vest". This was a reference to the fact that unlike all recent elections where each party puts out its platform in one document, the conservative at that point had not put one out (although they did it today a week before the election). And the fact that in order to make Mr. Harper appear more warm and cuddly his first TV ads of the campaign always had him wearing a sweater rather than a suit.
For anybody really interested in Canadian political debates the CBC has them archived going back to 1968 (where the moderators were actually smoking during the debate):
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/elections/topics/3601/
One thing I can't get over in American politics is the length of the campaign. I know you have 10 times our population, but our election was called the first week of September and it will happen on Oct. 14. Then whoever wins gets back to the task of actually running the country.
Posted by: Frank from Canada | October 07, 2008 at 05:37 PM
As a political science professor at a Canadian University, I want to thank you for the comparison and the podcast. It was interesting to hear an American perspective on our politics; we usually get Canadian perspectives on the comparison. The main complaint with ours is that it's hard to sort out five leaders' and parties' positions. Debates between two people can be a bit more focused. The grass is always greener, I guess....
Posted by: Harold Jansen | October 07, 2008 at 07:44 PM