Fixing the Primary Debate

The second Republican presidential primary debate is tonight and it is going to be terrible.  I’m comfortable making that claim even without consideration of the candidates themselves, the moderators, the questions, or the fact that Trump will be there.  My criticism is with the format itself.  It does not serve our democracy well, it does not serve the candidates well and it is always a bore.  I’d like to propose a different format that would go a long way towards fixing the primary debate process, but first lets take a look at what exactly is wrong with the status quo.

1)   It is undemocratic

The GOP has allowed the networks that are hosting the debates to determine the format and so far both the first two debates decided to cut down on the extraordinarily large field.  There are 17 legitimate and (arguably) qualified candidates running for the GOP nomination, that is, if we continue to count Rick Perry.  Yet the first debate only invited 10 candidates and the second had to (arbitrarily) change the rules to allow 11 so that Carly Fiorina could join the other 10 men onstage.  It should be noted that, even though they are doing poorly in the polls, these are legitimate candidates with bona fide resumes.  Even if we exclude the longest serving Governor of the largest red state (Rick Perry) the first GOP debate excluded the three-term former Governor of blue state New York (George Pataki), the former Governor of swing state Virginia (Jim Gilmore), the sitting Governor of Louisiana (Bobby Jindal), the senior South Carolina Senator and U.S. Air Force Colonel (Lindsey Graham), the former head of Hewlett Packard and the only women in the field (Carly Fiorina) and the former Pennsylvania Senator and man who came in second in the 2012 GOP primary (Rick Santorum).  For everyone but Carly Fiorina this has largely meant the beginning of the end for these presidential candidates.  This has, rightly, been criticized for usurping the power of the voters many months before the first primary voter has cast their first ballot.  The networks have used National poll numbers to eliminate about 1/3 of the GOP field at a time when national poll numbers mean virtually nothing.

2)   It is useless

Debates are supposed to be the chance for the public to finally get to hear the candidate’s vision for the future of America.  After months (sometimes years) of being stuck in the sound byte world, the people who want to lead the most powerful nation on earth finally have a chance to provide details about their plans for our country.  Anybody who has ever watched a primary debate knows that that is not even close to reality.  Primary debates are not a break from sound byte politics; they are relatively uninterrupted sound byte politics, live.  Let’s take a look at the first debate for the stats.  Trump led the field with 11 minutes and 14 seconds of airtime… I’m going to let that sink in.  The most anyone had to make their case for why they should be President of the United States was less than 12 minutes, that’s how long you get for group discussion the week your teacher didn’t really put a lot into lesson planning.  From there it gets worse.  Only Trump and Bush had over 7 minutes of airtime and two candidates (Walker and Paul) never had a single response that lasted even one minute.  If you are looking for substantive policy debates, don’t look to the debates.

3)   It is unhelpful

Perhaps I should take a step back.  I have been under the assumption that the debates were supposed to be for the people to see the candidates vying for president.  Maybe I am wrong, maybe it is a chance for the party to weed out bad candidates and to prepare the candidate that emerges for the general election.  At this stage in the game the party is not beholden to the general public, maybe it is not in their best interest to have their candidates going into detail about their plans, especially while trying to appeal to the GOP primary constituency.  Okay I suppose that is fair, but is this really the format you would choose.  It seems awfully risky to let network moderators ask “gotcha” questions having your candidates look uninformed out there.  Wouldn’t it be better to have the candidates go out there making prepared statements on pre-determined topics?  And if the goal is to prepare your candidates for the general election debates, doesn’t it make more sense to have them go one on one against each other, like they will against the eventual Democratic nominee?  If this is really about showcasing the GOP options and preparing them for the general election, are you sure this debate format is helpful?

4)   It is boring

Seriously, if not for Donald Trump only political junkies would watch the early primary debates.  The people who are going to tune in are the ones who are forwarding e-mails, putting up yard signs, making calls, and registering people to vote.  These debates have no appeal beyond those who are already intimately tied to politics.  If your goal is to reach new voters you need an approach that is even mildly entertaining.  Why are they boring?  For starters, they are all the same.  There are a bunch of men (and a woman) standing around a semi-circle at lecterns answering questions under (sort-of) strict time constraints.  That’s pretty much it, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen all 12.  There is also no audience participation, would American Idol have been as popular if there were just a bunch of people who got to go on stage once a week and nobody was ever kicked off and there was no voting and there were no challenges and we eventually just decided who won based on lifetime record sales?  Of course not, that would be a terrible show.  Which brings me to the final reason nobody cares about the primary debates, nobody wins or loses.  If you want to know who won the first GOP debate too bad, there is literally no way to know.  If you want people to care you have to let them crush people’s dreams, that’s the American way.

By now I hope we can all agree that the current primary debate format is terrible.  This is true for the candidates, the party, the public and our democracy.  Fortunately, there is a better way.  Because of the GOP’s uniquely large field they could, for the first time ever, host the: 2016 GOP Presidential Primary Tournament of Champions.  Think about it, nobody cares about college basketball… until March Madness.  The GOP could steal their playbook and completely change the way primary debates work, and it would be so much better.  Nobody would have to be excluded, the candidates would be given enough and equal time to lay out their plans for the future of our country, the candidates would have practice in a head to head debate format, and people who would never watch a normal primary debate would tune in to see how their bracket was holding up.  It is a win, win, win-win situation.  

            Here is how it works.  You use poll numbers (or favorability ratings) to seed the candidates one through 16 (or 17 if Perry still want to play).  Then you have them compete in Lincoln-Douglass style debates once a week.  The entire field would compete the same night and the whole process would take 4 hours each week.  The first week there would be eight 30-minute debates, the first candidate would speak for 10 minutes, the second would speak for 15 minutes and then the first would have 5 minutes of rebuttal.  Over the course of the week registered voters would have a chance to “vote” for their favorite candidates and those who received the most votes would move on to the next round.  Ideally there would be some kind of results show with telegenic host.  Each week the candidate advances would be monumental because it would add a significant amount of airtime they would receive.  The second round of debates would have half the field and so the debate times would be doubled.  Each week there could be a new topic so the candidates would need to be well versed on the economy, foreign policy, national security, etc.  The final debate would be a true Lincoln-Douglass debate with the candidates splitting 3 hours of airtime, a unique opportunity to present their case for the future of this great nation. 

Since you are still reading I’m going to assume that you think this sounds as awesome as I do, so lets get down to brass tax.  If we want to convince the GOP this is a good idea we need to start generating excitement for it.  I think the best way to do that is to start a #GOPBracket trend.  There are two different ways to the candidates for this tournament.  We could use either poll numbers or net-favorability ratings.  I think both are important predictors and have devised a means to incorporate both into my seeding mechanism.  I have used the Public Policy Polling poll released September 1^st as a guide for my seeding.  The numbers may have changed since then but the details don’t particularly matter since no one is being unfairly excluded.  To figure out the seeding I ranked the candidates from 1-17 based on poll numbers and again based on net-favorability.  I then added the numbers of the place they got in each category and seeded them based on who got the lowest number.  For example, Ben Carson came in second in the polling and first in net-favorability so he had the lowest score with three (2+1=3).  Jeb Bush came in third in the poll but 11^th in net-favorability so his combined score of 14 (11+3) earned him the number 6 seed.  Here is how the whole bracket worked out:

Here is how the candidates were seeded:

1)   Ben Carson

2)   Donald Trump

3)   Carly Fiorina

4)   Marco Rubio

5)   Ted Cruz

6)   Jeb Bush

7)   Scott Walker

8)   Mike Huckabee

9)   John Kasich

10) Rick Santorum

11) Rick Perry

12) Bobby Jindal

13)  Jim Gilmore

14)  Chris Christie

15) Rand Paul

16) George Pataki

17) Lindsey Graham

For the record, here is how I’d fill out my #GOPBracket