OUR UN-PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES

The Wall Street Journal

  • OCTOBER 27, 2011, 4:37 P.M. ET

Michael Vick went to prison for staging dogfights, but for presidential debates, it’s legal.

  • 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.

    WL1027

    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.

    Michael Vick went to prison for staging dog fights. With the U.S. presidency, it’s legal and even encouraged. So we get Rick Perry accusing Mitt Romney of hiring “illegal gardeners.” Mr. Romney, you have 30 seconds to respond. And that gives me 30 more seconds with the Florida International game.

    When the moment arrives for a dollop of depth, the dazed and confused candidates revert to Linus-like security blankets of campaign boilerplate.

    These dark thoughts came forth earlier this week when a group at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page spent some 75 minutes talking to candidate Jon Huntsman. He’s the one they stick on the end of the podium.

    Say this: Jon Huntsman may or may not deserve to be the nominee, but he’s better than the back of the line.

    After starting with a horrifyingly robotic recitation of his resume (exactly as he’s said in every debate), the former Utah governor took us on an intriguing tour of his thinking on a range of issues.

    Mr. Huntsman said the U.S. likely would have to intervene militarily against Iran’s nuclear program in the next four or five years, a remarkable assertion. He said this in an Oct. 10 speech in New Hampshire, but even in our super-saturated media age, trees fall silently in an empty forest.

    He supports “regime change in Syria” through diplomatic and covert means. We should try to make Iraq a “buffer” between Iran and Syria.

    He supports the details of the Ryan Plan on entitlement reform. Like Rep. Ryan, he says this contest is “not a normal election”; if the Republicans lose, he said, the U.S. could be on course to repeat Japan’s 10 years of moribund economic growth.

    There was more, some of it impressive, some not (for ideas on economic policy, he talks to his brother, an entrepreneur). The point is that one left the meeting with a basis to think about Mr. Huntsman as president, rather than the thumbs-down vote he’s gotten from the Roman Colosseum of the TV debates.

    Michael Vick went to prison for staging dogfights, but for presidential debates, it’s legal.

    Anyone who spent an hour with Tim Pawlenty could see he was informed, prepared and articulate—ready to give Barack Obama a good debate on anything. Before any Republican cast a real vote, the early debates sank him, with little of these attributes able to break through the tight formats. He sank himself, too, bowing to what’s become conventional belief that a debate’s purpose is to “take down” your main opponent. That Mr. Pawlenty dropped out after wasting his time arguing with Michele Bachmann was a loss to the selection process.

    When Herman Cain visited the Journal in June, he described at length the National Restaurant Association’s effort to craft health-insurance plans suited to its complex work force. It was an eye-opening case study. At no point in the debates has Mr. Cain had time to discuss this.

    Newt Gingrich’s extended performance at last weekend’s little-seen Faith and Freedom Forum from Iowa by many reports was astute and impressive.

    GOP voters and contributors are famously unhappy with their choices. But this is the choice. And the fact is that some of these candidates are more interesting than they’ve been allowed to show. But how would anyone know? A paradox of the Information Age is how little useful information actually gets through.

    What to do?

    The assumption that every cat and dog must be in the debate means 90 minutes divided by seven will produce Babel. Still, that’s no excuse. With the economy the No. 1 issue, why-oh-why are we grinding endlessly through illegal immigration? Give each of them up to five minutes to talk directly at us about their economic ideas, if they can. We’re adults. We can take our candidates straight, no chaser.

    The candidates could stage their own debates. Let’s see if a Romney would duck a Gingrich invitation to go one-one-one via Skype from a rented studio. Surely other ideas abound.

    Honey, we’ve shrunk the biggest U.S. election in memory to half-minute spurts of ankle-chewing. Something’s wrong with this picture.

    Write to henninger@wsj.com

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