Tuned In

Why the Debate Should Go On

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We’re big on transparency here at Tuned In. So when I tell you that I believe tomorrow’s televised debate should go on as planned, you are free to conclude that I am biased as an Obama supporter. Or that I am biased as a TV critic interested in having exciting TV events to critique. But for me the most persuasive evidence in favor of holding the debate was not anything either candidate said yesterday, but rather the primetime speech by Still the President Bush*:

Let’s move past Bush’s delivery, his camera presence, the structure of his speech. What did we see on TV last night? President Bush going on TV to convince Americans that drastic action was needed, quickly, to rescue America from a threat. Experts may disagree on the consequences or the blame for the threat, or the best measures to take against it, but, the President is saying, it is real and will have disastrous consequences for America and you personally if we do not take the steps he recommends. Those steps may be unpalatable and unwelcome, but they are far, far worse than the alternative that will come. And if we do not act within a very short time frame, it will already be too late. He needs you to trust him on this one.

Hm. Have we heard that somewhere before?


Now let me be clear: I am not suggesting, a la David Cay Johnston, that the credit crisis is an overblown threat as the phantom WMDs in Iraq were. I am not saying that the President is lying, that he is using scare tactics in bad faith, or that he is wrong about the dangers or about what we should be doing. I’m not a mind reader. And I can barely pick funds for my 401(k), much less adjudicate the credit controversy.

I am saying that, perception-wise and media-wise, that is neither here nor there: even if Bush is 100% right on the economics, he objectively has a credibility problem delivering exactly this kind of message. His approval rating is somewhere around 30% on a day with a good tailwind.

McCain and Obama, on the other hand, have been running approval ratings somewhere in the 50s. You may believe that John McCain was being Presidential when he asked to skip the debate. You may believe that Barack Obama was being Presidential when he said that this is precisely when Americans need to hear from the candidates. Either way, in the eyes of the voters, there’s a looking-Presidential contest, and the guy who is actually the President is coming in third.

This is a problem.

Now again, I am not an economic or political expert, but I do know that committee-wise, neither McCain nor Obama is central to the drafting of any bill that emerges. Maybe they can work with their colleagues to reach an agreement, and maybe they should; or maybe their inserting themselves in the negotiations will complicate them.

Either way, though, their greatest power right now as candidates is the power to persuade the public, still skeptical of if not hostile to any bailout. They, unlike Bush, each happen to have a good half of the country willing to entertain their arguments. And tomorrow night, they happen to have a huge, nationally promoted forum in which to do exactly that. Which is why—call me biased toward Obama if you want—it seems insane to kill that forum.

Now I can imagine the arguments against this:

* This is an emergency. Leave aside the fact that we managed to have elections during a Civil War and WWII. Who believes that the two hours the candidates spend on stage Friday night will make the difference between a deal and no deal?

* Discussing the crisis in a debate will only politicize it. There’s no reason both candidates can’t be respectful, lay out their differences, yet also make the bipartisan case for the points they agree on, of which there are apparently several. They can choose this over scoring points in the debate if they want to. It’s called responsible politics, and whether they practice it—or grandstand—is entirely in their control.

* Suspending both campaigns will take the politics out of the negotiation. Nothing, up to and including canceling the election altogether, will take the politics out of this negotiation.

* But Friday is going to be a foreign-policy debate! What use is that? Good point. Which is why Jim Lehrer decided last week that this debate would, in fact, also include questions about the economy.

Making this an either-or between talk and action is a false choice. There’s no reason candidates, and Presidents, can’t choose both. More important, in our media age, talk—persuasive talk to a mass audience—is action. If it weren’t, President Bush wouldn’t have stepped on David Blaine’s airtime last night to go on TV. And it looks like he could use some help in that department.

* I don’t mean to make a political statement by picking up the video from Talking Points Memo—it was the one full embeddable video of the speech I found on YouTube this morning.