I am a very reluctant debater. I definitely don’t think I’m the best debater around, and I also don’t think that debates are very good at resolving differences or even necessarily clarifying ideas. I’ve put together a set of my personal debate requirements that are just as much intended to discourage casually drafting me into debates as they are to making it as productive and informative a process as possible.
But I am lackadaisical and encouraging compared to the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. Take a look at their demands.
- Will there be questions from the audience or social media? How many? How will they be presented to the candidates? Will you acknowledge that you, as the sponsor, take responsibilities for all questions asked, even if not asked by your personnel?
- Will there be a gong/buzzer/bell when time is up? How will the moderator enforce the time limits?
- Will you commit that you will not:
- Ask the candidate to raise their hands to answer a question
- Ask yes/no questions without time to provide a substantive answer
- Allow candidate-to-candidate questioning
- Allow props or pledges by the candidates
- Have reaction shots of members of the audience or moderators during debates
- Show an empty podium after a break (describe how far away the bathrooms are)
- Use behind shots of the candidates showing their notes
- Leave microphones on during the breaks
- Allow members of the audience to wear political messages (shirts, buttons, signs, etc.). Who enforces?
- What is the size of the audience? Who is receiving tickets in addition to the candidates? Who’s in charge of distributing those tickets and filling the seats?
- What instructions will you provide the audience about cheering during the debate?
- What are your plans for the lead-in to the debate (Pre-shot video? Announcer to moderator? Director to Moderator?) and how long is it?
- What type of microphones (lavs or podium)?
- Can you pledge that the temperature in the hall be kept below 67 degrees?
Let’s be honest. That isn’t a set of requests to set the stage for a debate: it’s a bunch of pointless demands to a) completely discourage any kind of debate and give candidates an out to run away, and b) defining a different kind of event that doesn’t involve anyone asking questions, but gives candidates an opportunity to recite their stump speeches.
I know. Like I said, I try to discourage people from inviting me to debates (get Matt Dillahunty or Aron Ra instead), so I recognize exactly what they’re doing here.
I like the temperature demand. It’s like they’re still reeling from Nixon/Kennedy.
Republican presidential candidates are running into all kinds of trouble with their attempt to take over debate planning, debate formats, venues and every other damned thing they would like to control.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whiner-syndicate-in-crisis
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
The bottom line is that the candidates need TV exposure more than TV needs them. As for the Republican plans to make every debate into an infomercial, I think they can try but they will reduce their audience size if they do.
Cross-posted from the Moments of Political Madness thread.
It looks like the Dems are going to take full advantage of the Republican candidates throwing a tantrum after their latest debate.
Washington Post link
President Obama spoke at a Democratic fundraiser in Manhattan yesterday:
“Have you noticed that every one of these candidates says, ‘Obama’s weak. Putin’s kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin, he’s going to straighten out’?” Mr. Obama asked a crowd of Democratic donors in New York, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“And then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at a debate,” he added to huge applause from his partisan audience. “I mean, let me tell you,” he added with gleeful scorn, “if you can’t handle those guys, you know, then I don’t think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you.”
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/02/obama-chides-republican-field-saying-cnbc-is-no-putin/
This is an excerpt from a comment by blf, the text is from a Guardian article.
I’m such a master debater that I’ve developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Well……… that happens when arguing against GOPers.
once again the “satire” news, The Daily Show, explored (with no snark) the Repubs whine about the Dem Debate questions all being “softballs” while the Repubs were axed all gotcha questions. The clips, of the Dem debate, showed all those ‘softballs’ were more like iceballs rather than fluffy snowballs. The “gotcha” questions the Repubs were asked, were simply requesting details about their complicated proposals, and asking for corrections for possible math errors the moderator might have made.
I volunteer to bang the timer gong, assuming the position of manning the “you lied or aren’t answering the question” shock collar is taken.
We are concerned our pet politicians will be unable to waffle on about freedom and democracy to avoid a question.
Yes/No questions are tricky since it’s impossible to weasle out and / or disguise blatantly contradictory or hypocritical answers.
We prefer our candidates snipe at each other by means of other media. While we’re here we’re going to be pretending to be on the same team. We would also like to avoid a fistfight.
Are we not merciful? Those poor souls are suffering enough as it is.
We don’t like the symbolism of the empty podium. Not at all.
We all know what horrid and awful things our candidates tend to say when they think the public isn’t listening. We’d still prefer it if you didn’t.
Honesty has a very low boiling point; its thin veneer might come off too quickly.
They are the same position. This means you’ll be banging the gong constantly, repeatedly activating the shock collars. I would suggest multiple assistants and several spare gongs (installed and ready-to-use), as the work will be quite tiring and you’ll probably break a few gongs with frustrated hammering.
What if the RNC held a debate, and no one came?
Calling these events “debates” seems like false advertising to me. They’re more like episodes of the Apprentice with lots of posturing, dark settings, dramatic camera angles, quick cuts, bad acting, and phony angst. Like professional wrestling, they should be called Kayfabe.
@Robro(#11) said:
Then the RNC will cave as it already did once the republican candidates started going not just after (C)NBC but the RNC as well for even allowing a debate where the candidates had to answer actual questions.
The people on the stage are so full of themselves, and disinclined to reality, they would not even notice. And all would declare “victory”, probably pointing to the massive cheers and applause she/he got, plus a dose of great magic sky faeries and the turtles all the way down.
I can understand this, because politics does generally deal with complex issues. However it shouldn’t be used as an excuse to get out of giving a clear answer to a simple, factual question, which I’m sure is something few politicians have the integrity to cope with.
They put mics in the toilets?!
@14
Well, they do talk out of their asses a lot.
Tabby Lavalamp:
That’s a surprising leap of progress from a party full of people still reeling from the Civil War.
But which one has to wear the bag over his head?
What, no demands for special snacks? Where are the specific lists of colors of M&Ms, flavors of designer water, mixed nuts with all the (whatever) removed? Some primadonnas they are.
I’m having a hard time understanding that one.
Are they asking that the moderator not describe how far away the bathrooms are so that if a candidate ducks a question by going to the bathroom, we won’t know if they’re just stalling (:D) in there or if the bathroom is really far away?
Both of these are entirely sensible. I wonder how they snuck in there.
Dearest adult children vying for access to the launch codes for enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet twice over:
I have recently acquired your latest set of demands. After about fifteen minutes of laughing, and asking my boss if I really needed to do this, I eagerly composed this response, without hesitation, and with no more than two hours of heavy drinking to numb the pain beforehand. I take very seriously your concerns. Your various, various concerns. The media is certainly not kind to wealthy businesspeople and/or politicians using millions of dollars to attempt to hold the most powerful and honored position in the country. It really is the smallest and most persecuted minority. I feel your pain. Why, if I were in your position, I would be having my manservant constantly wiping away my tears, with $20 bills. The media is just so, so cruel. I could imagine myself in your positions: on stage, the moderator asking me questions about my policies, even daring to present a question they found from someone on Twitter. I gasp, offended at the gall of being exposed, unsolicited, to the words of a mere peasant. But I would attempt to keep my calm, I would merely say 9/11, and then spend twelve minutes talking about that time JEB accidentally insulted a group of war veterans at a Denny’s. And then the liberal media would go on for days about how somehow I was the bad guy on that stage. That is not the America I believe in.
Anyway, let me answer your questions.
” Will there be questions from the audience or social media? How many?”
No, the people will not be allowed to speak and if any of them attempts to open their filthy mouths, they will be chased into the straight by wild dogs and their corpses mulched and used to fertilize the gardens of the candidates, to be divided as evenly as possible.
There may be some tweets, because we don’t know how to run a news show without Twitter anymore. There will be no more than 9 tweets, however, because a number above that is too confusing and frustrating and will alienate the most avid fans viewing the debate.
“How will they be presented to the candidates?”
Via the preferred means of any Republican politician: Taken fresh from the telegraph, carried on a silver platter by the maid, read by the butler, and then promptly attached to a missile launched in the general direction of Iran.
“Will you acknowledge that you, as the sponsor, take responsibilities for all questions asked, even if not asked by your personnel?”
I take responsibility for everything, because that is my duty as an American. I however do not accept responsibility for my own personal failed debate performances. If I were to join one of the debates at some point, I will hope you will find someone else who will accept responsibility for that failure on my behalf, as I am doing for you. As long as we all agree that responsibility for bad stuff always trickles down, much like we all claim money does, then I believe we are all set for this point.
“Will there be a gong/buzzer/bell when time is up?”
We will invent the gong/buzzer/bell just for you, champs.
“How will the moderator enforce the time limits?”
Well, the moderator will gloomily tell someone to stop talking, watch in dismay when they don’t, repeat that about two more times until they finally shut up, do this about seventeen times per debate, and then have people complain about how awful they were as moderator afterwards, with half saying that the moderator interfered too much and the other half saying that they needed to bring more order and lay down the law more.
“Will you commit that you will not:
Ask the candidate to raise their hands to answer a question”
I am quite certain that no candidate will volunteer to answer a question anyway. I can make this promise. I however cannot promise that we will not ask a candidate to raise their hands in order to be called upon to present one of their canned responses or off-topic speeches. I am sorry if doing so makes you look like schoolchildren. We are all aware that it is a grave and offensive insult to schoolchildren.
“Ask yes/no questions without time to provide a substantive answer”
My answer to this question is entirely dependent on how many candidates are willing to pledge to actually give substantive answers. I want that pledge notarized and want clear definitions of “substantive” and “answer” on that document. I am not falling for this one again. Last time we went down this road, Donald Trump kept making increasingly awkward sexual remarks about the audience, Ben Carson talked about the similarity between the Biblical plagues and Medicaid, and Carly Fiorina summoned silent assassins to take out the audience member who mumbled something about Hewlett Packard.
“Allow candidate-to-candidate questioning”
We would never allow such a thing. But since we promptly get whines whenever we attempt to stop it as well, let’s just say whatever happens, happens.
“Allow props or pledges by the candidates”
No deal. Cannot be done. Without nonsensical theater, the debate would be two or more hours of people standing at podiums, twiddling their thumbs, straining themselves to not check their phone to see if they had gotten any notifications from Facebook.
“Have reaction shots of members of the audience or moderators during debates”
In lieu of traditional reaction shots, we will instead just continually use this clip .
“Show an empty podium after a break (describe how far away the bathrooms are)”
We will absolutely agree to not describe how far away the bathrooms are. We will try to not show an empty podium. We will use state of the art technology to photoshop the candidate in behind the podium. The illusory candidate may or may not be doing any of the following:
– Staring blankly.
– Flipping off the audience.
– Taking a dump on the stage.
– Playing a guitar.
– Turning into a dragon.
– Mouthing obscenities.
– Reacting in horror at random things.
– Exploding when coming into contact with the real candidate when they return from the bathroom.
– Randomly flickering on and off.
– Devouring souls of the innocent.
– Smoking one cigar per second.
– Drinking motor oil.
– Shooting at other candidates with a rocket launcher.
“Use behind shots of the candidates showing their notes”
We will only use behind shots to show candidate behinds. Dat ass. We will only show their notes using overhead drone copter footage. Only if there is enough time and the notes are hilarious enough.
“Leave microphones on during the breaks”
We appreciate your desire to conserve electricity.
“Allow members of the audience to wear political messages (shirts, buttons, signs, etc.).”
Political messages, at a political debate!? What horrid, dystopian future is this? No, we will promptly gather up all people wearing any message that is even slightly political, within a three mile radius of the debate, and we will round them into police vans, and we will bring them onto an aircraft carrier, and we will ship them all to Antarctica, where they will live the rest of their short, pathetic lives, despairing the day that they wore a T-shirt with the word “Hope” on it on the most sacred of Debate Days, near the most sacred of Debate Sites. They will weep for their error, but we will not hear their cries. Their pleas will fall upon deaf ears. They know what they did wrong, and they will pay for it. Because that is American justice.
” Who enforces?”
Whoever watches the watchmen. Those guys.
“What is the size of the audience?”
Is “depressing” a size?
“Who is receiving tickets in addition to the candidates?”
We are giving tickets to a group of the loudest people we can find in the country, and are paying them $120 to cheer as loud as they can for two straight hours. As long as we do that, we get free catering from Chick-fil-A and I believe Fox News promised to send us “the heads of our enemies on pikes” but I imagine the person that left that message misheard.
“Who’s in charge of distributing those tickets and filling the seats?”
I believe we outsourced that job to the mafia. Ticket distribution is a very serious and dangerous game. It is dirty work. We can’t have just anybody doing it.
“What instructions will you provide the audience about cheering during the debate?”
We will tell them to do it constantly, or else. We have not planned what “or else” will actually be, because we are leaving that for our candidates to decide. We imagine it will be some fucking sick shit, and have installed vomit buckets in our studio for that occasion.
“What are your plans for the lead-in to the debate (Pre-shot video? Announcer to moderator? Director to Moderator?)”
We will be showing the entire opening sequence of Team America: World Police.
“and how long is it?”
That is a very rude question to ask a man that you barely know. Ask after the debate.
“What type of microphones (lavs or podium)?”
Well, part of our process is we go find microphones that look incredibly good. State of the art. Impeccable stuff. And we make sure to get them cheap, by finding ones that are very high quality but also do not actually work anymore. And then we proceed to put them onto your podiums and to not actually fix them. They must not function properly but must look like they should, that is imperative to our process. Everything else is inconsequential. And then we can just overdub whatever we want over your voices, and before you know it, a humble “seventh Republican debate out of 264” becomes the internet sensation of a decade or three.
“Can you pledge that the temperature in the hall be kept below 67 degrees?”
If Celsius, then definitely.
Thank you for all your questions and I sincerely hope you are satisfied with the answers. Hope to meet you all soon. I am truly the biggest fan for all 39 of you, or however many are left. Is Rick Perry still around? No?
Best of luck with nuking the entire Eastern Hemisphere, and I hope that your envisioned patriarchal military theocracy is everything you dreamed it would be.
Happy debating.
Sincerely love,
Alan Smithee
Certainly. *Cheshire Cat grin*
It’s like they’ve never heard of the Celsius system. Or even more hilariously, the Rankine system. They don’t want to sweat? Fine, below 67 degrees Rankine* it is.
*Approximately -393 degrees Fahrenheit.
I wish debates were hosted by a well informed comedian with an acid tongue and seething hatred for all politicians. A George Carlin or Bill Hicks type that will be downright mean when calling out bullshit. Even better if they can be backed by a squad of interns on google to do real time fact checking. Extra bonus points if the podium is rigged to shock the pols whenever they fail a fact check.
I would watch the hell out of those debates.
Christopher:
Automate that shit. I am imagining some kind of evil, snarky, auto-googling political Siri. Like if HAL 9000 and GLaDOS had a policy wonk baby. And locked all of the candidates into a room with no exits until they finally pass a simple fact-checking. Just thinking about it has caused popcorn to start popping in the adjacent room. Must-see TV.
@anteprepro:
Oh my god that would be amazing.
GLADos: Thank you for attending the Republican Presidential Candidate Debates featuring the Republican Presidential Candidates. The ones that matter anyway… The Debate will begin in 5… 4… 3…
*static*
GLADos: First question: Jeb Bush. Nobody loves you. Oh, wait, I’m sorry. That was from your personnel file. Just here, underneath your failing poll numbers. Nobody. Loves. You. My mistake.
Chris Christie: Now this is exactly the sort of questioning we took issue with in the last debate…
GLADos: Oh, look, someone with even worse poll results than Jeb. How quaint. Dr. Carson; I too have looked at your tax plan. I have run three-hundred-and-twenty-two thousand, seven-hundred-and-forty-three different simulations of your tax plan, and in three-hundred-and-twenty-two-thousand, seven-hundred-and-forty-two of them, your tax plan lead to another Great Recession. How do you defend this tax plan?
Dr. Carson: Well, you see… when… you look, at… the numbers, you’ll see that… on… paper, they work… out.
GLADos: … As you are aware, Dr. Carson, I am a computer. I have no need for paper, and numbers are my speciality, just like brains are yours. Well, operating on them, in any case.
@14:
“What type of microphones (lavs or podium)?”
While I get the joke you’re making, “lavs” refers to a “lavalier” type microphone. That is, a body mike as opposed to a mike on the podium.
I like the way the “[don’t] Allow candidate-to-candidate questioning” request implicitly admits that the candidates are a bunch of incredinly petty, squabbling children when they are left to behave without the parents watching.
I suppose it doesn’t matter that this list wasn’t a set of demands, but a proposal drafted by a GOP lawyer preparing for a meeting of most of the Presidential candidates. It’s also mostly questions…I’m not sure how a question can be turned into a demand.
I suppose it also wouldn’t matter that these sound like exactly the same questions a Democratic campaign would be asking of a debate venue. I guess I’m actually not sure what the news is here…that a candidate for President is concerned about how she is going to appear on television?
Oh Penny L. Let me just pretend that you are sincere for one moment.
This is why the Republicans are being mocked and why this is “news”:
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/clayton-morris-asks-if-gop-debate-whining
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/trevor-noah-tells-republicans-toughen-and
All of this is in a context of complaining that the previous debate was unfair and CNBC done them wrong, somehow. It is more than being “concerned about how they are going to appear on television”. It is purely about the candidates inventing a persecution narrative that just does not match reality.
What about my comment could possible convince you that I was insincere? I corrected a mistake in the OP: it was a proposal, not a list of demands, which wouldn’t make sense anyway because half of the things quoted in the OP were questions.
My second point is that these are the types of questions ANY political candidate would ask of a debate venue. If I am a campaign manager or chief of staff, I’m asking every one of those questions. If Sanders’ or Clinton’s campaigns aren’t asking the same questions I would accuse them of malpractice.
If you’re going to mock anything, mock the idea that this proposal address their concerns about the questions asked at the CNBC debate. No matter what side of the isle you fall on, you have to admit the panel was biased – for many of us this is a good thing – but Ted Cruz wasn’t inventing a persecution narrative, even if he was overdoing it a bit. I find it maddening that there are those of us on the left who still refuse to acknowledge the media’s bias toward our side, which I enjoyed watching during that debate.