Against Political Debates
On the Conservative leadership debate, and political debates as a whole.
I made the mistake of wasting two precious hours watching Wednesday’s Conservative Party leadership debate, though unlike most political debates, my disappointment stems less from the debaters and more from everything else. The debate opened with moderator, veteran journalist Tom Clark experiencing significant technical difficulties with his audio, something outside his control, but a frustrating occurrence that set the tone for the remaining time. He asked each candidate what their vision was for Canada, giving them thirty seconds to answer and then more time to respond to a follow-up question. The caveat was the answer could not name other politicians, or else Clark would cut you off with a dismissive “womp-womp” trombone sound. This was a good question for candidates to answer; the Conservative Party of Canada’s brand is in some ways more about knee-jerk opposition to Justin Trudeau rather than laying out an alternative yet positive vision for governance.
The debate then progressed into the next round, one where candidates were asked a question on a variety of political topics, but with only fifteen seconds to respond. What a wonderful way of suppressing nuance on complex issues! If debates are a mechanism to allow voters to differentiate between politicians so they can make better-informed choices at the ballot box, why would you reduce discussion to slogans? The topics during these sections were presented as being “yes-or-no” dichotomies, which in theory justifies the short length of the questions, but questions like if each candidate would implement all 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee were answered by four of the six candidates with something other than a yes-or-no. This isn’t to say the candidates who didn’t give a definitive yes-or-no answer were dodging the question, but that the issue may need more than fifteen seconds to give it due diligence.
The most bizarre part of the debate was a section that was supposed to give the candidates a chance to introduce themselves to voters, where Clark asked questions like what book candidates have been reading recently and what shows they’ve most recently binge-watched. There’s a place for humanizing politicians; politicians in a representative democracy should not just be representative of the political interests of their constituents, they should be representative of their constituents period. However, in a setting where candidates were given at most two hours for debate and where the previous discussion was limited to fifteen second soundbites, these questions are inappropriate. I’m sure Pierre Poilievre was grateful for the opportunity to mention he’s been reading Jordan Peterson’s Twelve Rules for Life – he knows his base quite well and has proven to be extremely talented at the theatrics of conservative politics – but as a music writer, what music Patrick Brown listens to when he’s made bizarrely anti-Israel statements and vowed to remove the Tamil Tigers from the list of designated terrorists is a tertiary concern.
An hour in; half of the debate now completed, and we’ve finally reached the meat of the debate, where candidates were given a topic, asked to select another candidate to debate that issue for a couple minutes, and afterwards the floor opened to everyone. The catch was that in order to participate in this free discussion, a candidate had to raise a paddle, something that they could only do five times. After using all five paddles, a candidate was barred from intervening in discussions. This meant Pierre Poilievre, currently the front-runner to lead the Conservative Party into the next federal election, was silent for several minutes of the most important part of the debate. There were entire topics he didn’t address because he didn’t have a chance to after using all five of his paddles. The upside was that the more minor candidates got a greater chance to speak, but having the man who currently has the greatest chance of becoming the leader of the official opposition silent on several pertinent issues is contrary to the whole point of debates! This isn’t inherently contradictory to giving other members a platform; give the moderator the power to cut people’s mics if they go over time or violate the rules in some other way. You can have both fair time for all candidates while still making sure everyone’s voice is heard. The debate promptly and mercifully terminated after each candidate was allowed to make one statement that they hadn’t gotten to say earlier, along with their closing statement.
That I even watched this debate seems unlikely, as I generally dislike political debates. As aforementioned, political debates exist chiefly to illustrate voters of the differences between politicians, helping them make more informed electoral choices. In reality, political debates are pageantry, rather than substance. They distract or outright detract from the discussion of real issues – they rarely serve to “convert” people into voters and instead just please the people who already plan on voting for a given candidate or party. Still, I make sure to watch all English-language federal election debates, out of some sick sense of obligation to stay informed, and partially out of the hope for another decisive moment, like Brian Mulroney telling John Turner he could have cancelled Pierre Trudeau’s patronage appointments, or Jack Layton pointing out that Michael Ignattieff had a terrible attendance record in parliament. But I didn’t have any obligation to watch the Conservative leadership debate; I’m not a member of the Conservative Party, nor a small-c conservative, so ultimately, I watched out of sheer boredom.
My boredom was rewarded with an atypical but still very frustrating debate. It’s as if the organizers have similar complaints with political debates and at least tried to do something new, yet failed and exacerbated the problems with political debates. The opening question was good, but the speed round did not justify its own existence – why needlessly reduce political topics into Tik Tok-length discussion when those could have just been topics discussed like they were during the next round? Why waste around fifteen minutes on discussing irrelevant topics when the amount of debate time was limited to two hours? Why squeeze out participation from the higher-polling candidates when you could instead empower the moderator to enforce a set and equal amount of speaking time for each candidate? Allow the moderator to cut the mic of a candidate who ignores the rules! Make sure each candidate is heard! If you have the technology to cut them off with a trombone sound effect, there was no reason not to give the moderator that power.
Ultimately, I would prefer a more conversational format to debates, especially when it comes to intraparty elections. For party elections, like the Conservative leadership debate, why not place the candidates in a kind of discussion? Eschew podiums for chairs, and give them an extra hour. Maintain (and as aforementioned, empower) a moderator to introduce questions and challenge candidates on their proposals, but is it not better for party loyalty to make it clear that these candidates share more values than not? This format, instead of being loaded and implying that all the participants are opponents, sets them more as participants all working to the betterment of Canada. They can still disagree on how to reach their goals or even what those goals are, but this disagreement would be aired out in public, informing Conservatives and non-partisan voters alike. The ideological and policy divide between different party leaders are presumably going to be much wider than the ideational gulf between people competing to lead a party they are all members of, so a debate format at least makes sense and my proposed conversational format would likely never catch on. Nevertheless, in an ideal world, I’d like to see this format implemented for all political debates.
The main advantage of political debates is that they offer insight into the temperament of candidates. I’ve emphasized policy throughout this essay, but policy is not the end-all-be-all of politics; the head of government should be well-adjusted, and debates showcase how politicians behave as individuals. As such, if anyone reading this is a member of the Conservative Party, I implore you to place Scott Aitchison at the top of your ballot. I picked on him in an article I wrote for The Gauntlet but my agreement with his opposition to extreme political polarization and his push for pan-Canadian unity is genuine and was only reinforced by watching him debate. He presented himself as not just a moderate politician, but also one of earnest character who is willing to listen and compromise. Of course, debates are not the only or even the main way to learn about the character of politicians – you didn’t need to watch any of the twelve debates during the 2016 Republican primaries and the three presidential debates to know that Trump was wholly unqualified for the presidency – but if there are people who will only tune into campaigns during debates, then they serve a purpose. I likely won’t be tuning into another party leadership debate for a whole though.