This is not about what we saw watching the debates, but about whether they benefited us or not. Did they open up debate? Did they change politics, and if so, for the better or worse?
For instance, I regularly see commentators saying that the US has had Presidential debates for 50 years and that its about time we "caught up". The thing is ... we don;t have a Presidential system. Or we didn't until 'President' Blair got hold of it, anyway.
We are supposed to be electing a local MP, not a Prime Minister. We're supposed to be choosing policy, not personality. And whatever else you can say, these three debates have certainly dominated campaign, largely because the media spends several days chattering about what they anticipate, then afterwards, a few days arguing about who "won", then they go back to anticipating again.
Also, the format of them is so forced. Take the final debate last night. The first question last night was very clearly about the lack of honesty in spending cuts, and while it didn't mention the IFS report, that was very clearly what it was driving at. Not a single one of the candidates addressed the actual question. All they did was spout the drivel they've been spouting for weeks about the tip of the iceberg they have been talking about and ignored that the question was about the submerged bit they've been actively ignoring. Dimbleby did what he could to address it by repeating the question before handing it back for the follow-up, but he's not allowed to editorialise in the way Paxman or Nadrew Neil would by pointing out that the arrogant politicians had ignored the actual question in order to make a policy statement that we've all heard (if we're interested enough to listen) dozens of times already.
In my view, we learn nothing new about policy from these debates, and all they were was a kind-of combined party political broadcast, from all three at the same time. They did not hold any of the candidates to account, and were more about who could present well in that format than about what the parties will do if they gets their backsides on the chairs of power.
Presidential debates might work when you're electing a President, in a system with the checks and balances of a Congress, but we don;t have that system.
Where they did score, big and unexpectedly, was catapulting the LibDems into a credible force and changing the three party system. while I disagree with much of what they stand for, at least they now have more of a chance to stand for it. But it may be a chance that doesn't hold beyond this election. If the LibDems do well, we may well have seen the system change permanently. If they can't convert poll popularity to votes next Thursday, it'll reinforce the impression that they aren't a credible alternative and it'll probably be a generation or two before they get another chance.
Meantime, we've seen what's been described as X-Factor politics from these debates. Whatever Brown is (and both form=um rules and obscenity laws preclude me from passing my personal opinion on that), I don't think anybody including the man himself would pretend he's a natural at TV slickness. But I want Brown booted out of Downing Street because he's a walking economic disaster area, not because he's out-schmoozed by a pair of slick snake-oil salesmen.
My view .... these debates were about presentation not policy, in a ratio of about 9:1, and were a democratic retrograde step. Sadly, it's one where the genie is now firmly out of the bottle and as is common with genies, we stand little chance of ever getting it back in.
Shame. We see so little of real campaigning these days, getting instead a constant diet of carefully staged photo-ops among the faithful, and TV drivel. Come back John Major standing in a market square on your soapbox, or union leaders rousing the members with a good old impromtu speech. At least they were more sincere, not scripted word by word, even if you disagreed with what they said.


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