The Debates: Slumming Toward Election

The new election stew from determining who will be the Republican and Democratic candidates for president reminds of the slum gullion of my childhood hunting trips with my father and his friends.

Into the stew pot dropped whatever what was hand, fish, fowl, vegetable, a dash of minerals–if it was eatable, in it plopped. A few slugs of whiskey before supping might make it tolerable and maybe nourishing.

November 15's so-called debate among the Democrats in Las Vegas proved itself as silly and formless as those previous and certainly those looming. The three leading candidates–Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards–spent most their time acting like high-school sophomores running for class president: Snipe, countersnipe. The other would-be presidents counted themselves lucky to get to speak at all, thanks to the inept moderation of what is called a debate but really is a made-for-TV show crying out for a good script and director.

Of such intellection the republic is to choose its new leader? Yes. The Republicans offer nothing better.

No candidate of either party has demonstrated a debate skill that would withstand 10 seconds of rhetoric from opponents in a British or French equivalent of our high schools.

Oh, well, speaking and thinking well at your feet in a hurly-burly have never stood out as qualifications to take over the White House, not since James Mason left the premises, Abe Lincoln being the main exception after, with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy in his shadow but better than those they ran against.

What next in our election melange? All look forward to the Iowa caucuses, when a handful of party regulars and some naives–hardly enough to fill a few cars on a Manhattan subway train--gather over coffee and brownies to vote. Whatever these few decide will give our political and reporting classes the heebie-jeebies, just like the jim-jams that tainted meat into the slum gave all of us who partook.

Soothsayers will declare front runners, editorialists will froth, money folks will dump greenbacks into collection baskets, supporters will make reservations in the Hay-Adams across from the White House for the inauguration of the hand that will hold the red button.

Then more slum: More TV extravaganzas advancing human knowledge not an inch, and then primaries–New Hampshire and onward. More auguring. What fun. What a mess.