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When the first televised debates were held in 1960, the world saw two young candidates, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, respectfully engage in an intelligent and elevated discussion.
We mostly remember those inaugural encounters for Nixon’s loose sweat and awkwardly applied makeup.
But in the midst of the Cold War, as the ideological battle raged between Washington and Moscow, the debates were seen as an exciting announcement of American democracy.
Speaking in the spirit of the patriotic bipartisanship that was a hallmark of American politics in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kennedy opened the first debate with an eye toward how he would be viewed by international viewers:
“In the elections of 1860, Abraham Lincoln said that the question was whether this nation could exist half slave or half free. In the elections of 1960, and with the world around us, the question is whether the world will exist half slave or half free, if it will move in the direction of freedom, in the direction of the path we are taking, or if it will move in the direction of slavery. “
Last night’s fierce encounter, more of a cage fight than Camelot, spoke of a different era and a different country: a split-screen America, a nation of insurmountable divisions, a country beset by democratic decline.
Two older men, both in their 70s, traded insults and spikes, with a sitting president once again smashing the norms of conventional behavior on primetime.
If there is such a thing as a celestial pantheon of former presidents, an Oval Office in the sky, Abe Lincoln and Jack Kennedy must have looked down like bewildered ghosts.
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For many international viewers, and also for a large portion of Americans, the debate offered a real-time interpretation of American decline.
It reminded us once again how American exceptionalism has become increasingly viewed as a negative construct – something associated with mass shootings, mass incarceration, racial division, and political chaos.
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Der Spiegel from Germany called it “A television duel like a car accident.”
“Never has American politics fallen so low,” lamented the US correspondent for La Repubblica.
Le Monde, the French newspaper that declared “nous sommes tous Américains” – “we are all Americans now” – after the September 11 attacks, called it a “terrible storm.”
But the storms pass. What the debate showed last night was America’s permanent political weather system.
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At a time when geopolitical soft power has assumed such importance, and where influence is intertwined with international image management, the 21st century has produced some searing images of American self-harm.
The Florida election debacle of 2000, when we woke up after Election Day to polling stations sealed with yellow police tape, presented an unfortunate spectacle of democracy.
At one point, when the tally became increasingly ridiculous, Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe even offered to send election observers. When the conservative Supreme Court intervened in favor of George W Bush, it looked like an electoral triumph.
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The 2000 count tore the country apart
Then there were the damaging images of the Bush administration’s war on terror: the Guantanamo watchtowers, the horrors of Abu Ghraib, and the imperial arrogance of that “Mission Accomplished” banner, the backdrop of the moment made for the television when George W. Bush prematurely claimed victory in an unfinished war that ended up bleeding so much American blood and treasure.
Historians of the future will place last night’s horror television show in that very gallery of images of national shame.
Many international viewers also understand the analytical prism through which the debate must be viewed: that Donald Trump’s base sent him to Washington precisely because of his unconventionality, and that supporters will view criticism of the president’s aggressive style as condescension. of Elite.
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Fans of his destructive energy tuned in to watch a political WrestleMania, Joe Biden’s hit. That is now widely understood.
But his inability to explicitly condemn white supremacists, and his strange words of advice to the far-right group The Proud Boys, “back off and stay out of it,” still show his ability to shock.
After the inaugural television debates in 1960, there was a 16-year hiatus before seeing them return again.
Then the first debate between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter was clouded by a technical glitch, cutting off the audio for 27 minutes, something that would have provided a nice respite last night.
Now the format and even the future of these debates has come under renewed scrutiny, and the Committee on Presidential Debates announced that “additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion.”
Over the years, presidential debates have become both entertainment and elucidation. As journalists, we promote them as the world’s heavyweight boxing matches in Las Vegas beforehand and rate them as TV critics afterward.
The highlight, inexorably, are the moments of combat and comedy. The prefabricated zingers. Single line caustics. The “knockouts”: We’ve even adopted the vocabulary of front row comments.
Since Ronald Reagan dominated the genre, debates have tended to reward star power over experience.
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Reagan was a natural for television.
Presidential debates have increasingly come down to who can deliver the witty Reagan-style phrases, the jokes, or the put-downs that reappear endlessly on the news in the days after.
Star power has come to be valued more than experience. What is supposed to be a job interview has become more of an audition for the lead role.
A long list of qualified but losing candidates has fallen into this charisma trap: Walter Mondale, Bob Dole, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore.
They were all more accomplished administrators than actors.
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Nor is it a coincidence that the only president in a term of the last 40 years, George Herbert Walker Bush, was terrible on television. Tellingly, the moment his time was deemed to be up was when he looked impatiently at his wristwatch in the middle of a televised debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.
That 1992 debate, the first to be held in town hall format, showed how Bill Clinton, a young telegenic governor, had dominated the medium.
Effortlessly answering questions from the audience, he showcased Elvis’ stagecraft and Doctor Phil’s empathy. In the Oprah era, that all-important debate lens helped him win. Like Reagan, he became another performative president who understood the theatrical requirements of the role.
So, in addition to dramatizing the electoral process, the televised debates possibly ended up brutalizing it. Last night it hit rock bottom.
The cliché that came to light later also serves as a truism: America was the loser.
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