Stop the Bloviating

There are several wise rules which will prevail at the debate between vice presidential nominees Tim Walz and J.D. Vance, to be held on October 1 and moderated by Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan of CBS News.

As with the presidential debate between Harris and Trump, each candidate will be standing at a lectern. Thankfully, there will be no opening statements and most importantly, no live audience.

There also will be no real-time fact-checking by the moderators. Instead, as Chris Cillizza explains on substack, CBS will offer viewers the opportunity to use an on-screen QR code which can take viewers to a live fact-checking site staffed by CBS journalists. Cillizza explains why this will be little utilized, and hence very nearly worthless. However, as to the more general issue of fact-checking in a debate, the veteran journalist explains

I believe, deeply, that there are objective facts. Like, say, the 2020 election was not stolen.

But, I also know that ALL politicians shade and shape facts and figures to work for them. And that these “facts” aren’t necessarily outright false but absolutely need more context in order to give a viewer or reader the full picture.

(To be clear: Trump does this sort of shaping and shading — and outright lying — more than any other politician I have ever encountered. But, they all do at least some of it.)

Given that, I think moderators wading into the fact-checking waters is a very slippery slope. If moderators stopped the debate to fact check everything a candidate says that is not objectively and unquestionably true, they would be interjecting on nearly every answer.

Which would make the moderators the focus of the debate. And the arbiters of who won and who lost. Which is a bad thing.

With or without live fact-checking, which Cillizza obviously recognizes as misleading, there is a rule ubiquitous to political debates which turn them into spectacles with a premium on empty rhetoric and showmanship, a rule so unquestioned it practically takes on the status of law. TIME reports that when the moderators ask the candidates a question, he will be

allotted two minutes to respond. This will be followed by one-minute rebuttals and responses to the rebuttals. CBX News said that the moderators may at their discretion give the candidates an additional minute to continue a discussion. Lights will appear in front of the candidates to alert them to their remaining speaking time.

At the presidential debate in early September, Harris and Trump were allotted two minutes to answer a question, followed by "two minutes for rebuttals and one minute for follow-ups, clarifications or responses."

This is how it always goes, with a substantial period offered a candidate to respond to a question. In the case of the two debates this cycle, the period is two minutes. 

This is far two long, by approximately one-and-a-half minutes. It shouldn't take candidates more than 30 seconds to answer a question. Were they tempted to give a complete, thorough response, it would take longer.

But they are never so tempted, for fear it might enlighten voters and/or give an opening to their opponent.. Instead, at some point during the two minutes, they will address the issue posed in some broad manner., yet spend the remaining time saying nothing which reveals what they really believe. In the presidential debate, it was Donald Trump using most of the two minutes to ramble belligerently with a string of lies and other baseless claims, occasionally interrupted with a half-truth.   With Kamala Harris, it was a slick repetition of her talking points interspersed with a precious few moments of near-candor.

This sort of thing, which in some form or another will be repeated when Tim Walz and J.D. Vance square off against each other tonight, serves the interests of no one- except the politicians themselves.  And so Americans are subjected to 90 minutes in which the individuals compete in a contest to be the more cunning, deceptive candidate and thereby be declared the winner.

   

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