OUR UN-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
Friday, October 28th, 2011- OCTOBER 27, 2011, 4:37 P.M. ET
Michael Vick went to prison for staging dogfights, but for presidential debates, it’s legal.
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By DANIEL HENNINGER
Politics, like any guilty pleasure, breeds nightmares. One of late is that we’ll soon elect an American president based mostly on what people know from reading Yahoo! headlines and the three lines below them.
The nightmare got worse. The Yahoo! headlines started to look like a deep dive after Twitter’s 140-character tweets started to define the political debate.
This being politics, it got worse yet. After watching umpteen debates, it looks as if the Republican Party may choose someone to run for the presidency of the United States based on who can explain the world and all its troubles in 30 seconds.
The TV debates create buzz and interest, and that’s good. But most people don’t eat seven appetizers and call it a meal. The debates are producing half-baked versions of candidates running for the presidency.
Chad Crowe
Did I say candidates? I misspoke. The U.S. has a long tradition of fringe candidates like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, but no previous system forced us to endure them once the laughing stopped. Two debates ago, I started surfing over to ESPN whenever Ron Paul talks. Yeah, let Iran have its own bomb. (more…)