Though Cowards Flinch

Why are Republicans so utterly terrible in debate? The only saving grace for any Republican over the last eight years has been that they beat the “expectations” game. The endlessly satirized “straight talk express” which McCain and Palin have been riding has evidently got lost somewhere amongst in the Rockies. Palin has been especially terrible in interview, such as when asked about Rick Davis, the Republican campaign manager whose firm lobbied in Congress for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the crash.

Interviewed by Katie Couric on CBS, her answer began, “It was my understanding…” and didn’t get any clearer thereafter. The whole thing can be watched here. Palin in the VP debate didn’t do much better, categorically failing to answer probably the single most important point of the night: Biden’s authoritative argument as to how McCain and Bush as essentially the same. As McCain’s performance in last night’s second presidential debate demonstrated, he is hardly a modern Cicero either.

A conservative writing at the Guardian’s Comment is Free has tried to explain away Republican failures as follows:

Questioner after questioner gets up to ask something of the government – a new spending programme, a policy that will provide some benefit or right some personal misfortune. The Republican candidate is left to try to patiently explain why the government can’t give what the voter is asking for, leaving the Democrat to tell the audience what it wants to hear.

I’m inclined to think the answer is simpler: Republicans are bastards. No matter what Democrat you put up against them, in their attempt at sounding folksy and one of the people, the Republican will sound like a hick. The only greater crime, perpetrated by Democrats, is to be completely soporific. The policies are irrelevant, as last night clearly demonstrated: each candidate tried desperately to enunciate clearly what they think middle America is thinking.

With Obama, it was an endless rehash of the Bush economic failures, connected very nicely to McCain via his campaign manager, who, as mentioned, had campaigned for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It can’t have helped of course that Republican Senators were denouncing the planned $700 billion bailout as ‘financial socialism’ and thereby scaring polls which not two weeks ago showed McCain-Palin straight talking to be plodding along nicely.

Obama declared, “The middle class need a rescue package and that means tax cuts for the middle class and help for homeowners so they can stay in their homes.” One wonders if either of the main candidates think a working class exists outside of trailer parks – and why they don’t need the same sort of help, bearing in mind that most companies will now be laying off people and trying to lower the wages of everyone else. Faced with the deficiencies of his own Party, McCain could barely shoot back.

Yet this is the condition in which Republicans find themselves all the time. Whether over their complete mishandling of Iraq, whether over their handling of the economy, whether over the people they’ve shafted by tight-fisted finances, Republicans are bastards. Of course their candidates are going to find it hard to justify their policies in terms understood by normal people – once you dispense with the folksy crap, such reasoning isn’t in the interest of the ‘middle class’.

As Obama showed, Democrats aren’t much better. Still, it’s a wonder Republicans win any elections at all bearing in mind the contortions they have to pull to be small-government afficionadoes, sucklers of the corporate teat and folksy “men (or women) of the people” all at the same time. Democrats have it easier – they just lie straightforwardly. This is how Obama has got away with promising tax relief to 95% of the US, something Clinton promised too, but failed to deliver.

In a game of “blame the other guy”, the US system provides endless opportunities because the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House don’t have to be in the hands of the same party at any given time. Opinions of Congress at the moment are lower than opinions of Bush’s presidency, allowing McCain and others to attack the leadership of Nancy Pelosi – although Republican extremists have recently been making that a lot harder.

Since the policies of each party are much of a muchness, this is what politics can essentially be reduced to. The only exception is when there is an opportunity to question the resumé of the other guy – and that was also in heavy evidence last night with McCain’s comments on Iran and Obama’s inexperience up for grabs. Obama ran away with the show though, categorically quelling McCain’s Obama doesn’t understand line, “I don’t understand how we invaded a country that had nothing to do with 9/11″.

Without the spectre of Soviet Communism, with terrorism fading into the background as a campaign issue and with the economy drowning out even the issues which excite the Christian Right, the Republican Party can’t indulge in any of its usual pretences. It is what it is: the party of business. It becomes the turn of the Democrats to grab the lever marked “statesmanship” to hide that they’re the party of business and a little bit the party of the union bureaucracy.

Town-hall debates don’t really change the underlying realities, of course. A few pundits regurgitate what was said, poll numbers might push people in a direction they were thinking about anyway and on the night, a few new punchy answers are heard by the two independents and one lizard watching the proceedings. It doesn’t really matter what McCain or Obama say because once they’re in office, they’re entirely free from the obligation to follow through.

TV debates could make for a fun spectator sport however. It’s just a pity we can’t suspend the candidates above the lake of gloop which they used to use for contestants in “Get Your Own Back” so that each time they say something stupid, we could pour gunge on their head. At the end, the audience could vote and the winner could be dumped into the lake. The loser could be taken out and shot. Or it could be like American Gladiators except the audience have guns.

That’s a presidential debate I would watch with relish.