This past week saw the Vice Presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan.
Predictably, the American people were again short changed and treated with massive disrespect by both the political class and their accompanying media flacks and wide-eyed sycophants.
The Vice President is literally a stopped heartbeat away from assuming the most powerful political office on the planet.
The electorate who must decided their preferences have few unfiltered options to glean whatever information they deem pertinent to that decision. In a demonstration of political cowardice that would appall the framers and the founders, the two major political parties have cowered behind a ‘Commission on Presidential Debates’ to allow them cover from answering the relevant questions of the American people. This farcical commission determines the number and format of the debates. The process is so pathetically skewed against the exchange of ideological differences that it merely descends into pitiable political theater.
The political class and the mass media have the appalling gall to review it as if it were only sport – presenting score cards to present their opinion of who won.
This nation has serious issues and must not allow a high school debate team mentality to shape the discourse.
There were no winners in the debate; the losers were the American people.
Vice President Biden had many salient points to make, but they were obscured by his need to feign so many facial gestures one would think he was performing pantomime. He also needed to defend the policies and actions of the Obama administration, but again that requirement was lost in a haze of political performance nonsense. Congressman Ryan had the opportunity to explain much of the Romney policy choices and decisions to an American electorate thirsting for leadership. He was co-opted out of that possibility by the theatrics of Biden. That point being made, Ryan also had the responsibility to push through the Vice Presidents’ diversionary machinations to present the information the nation is looking for.
The post debate spin focused not on the policies presented, but, as in the case of an intellectually bereft MSNBC, on a scorecard of who won what issues that were, in fact, not debated.
This nation has a rich history of political discourse, perhaps best exemplified by the historic Lincoln-Douglas debates. The media, needing quick sound bites to present, embrace the imbecilic formats presented by the commission, perhaps due to the fact that it does not require them to be intellectually honest about what issues are being discussed.
The American people must demand that those who wish to be hired as temps in the most significant political office in the nation have a forum wherein they can present their resumes for proper scrutiny.
All that was learned from the last debate is that Paul Ryan is respectful to his elders and that Joe Biden can smirk and smile no matter what the issue.
The next presidential debate is Tuesday. The Madison Conservative is urging the American electorate to hound their representatives in Congress with e-mails demanding clarity in the debate process; to post on their social media that they demand a true debate; and if queried as to their preferences by pollsters, to respond that they are voting for the Druid candidate.
Accepting the idea of two minute answers and thirty second responses is the act of cowards, not leaders.
We owe ourselves and our posterity no less.
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