Whatever Happened to an Old Fashioned Debate?

Tonight marks the last of the three presidential debates. The topics for the dialogue between John McCain and Barack Obama focus upon domestic issues...but you can rest assured that heading the list will be the continued economic uncertainty. We will sit in front of our television screens for ninety minutes listening to "sound byte quality" responses to artificially formatted questions. Then for the next two or three days we will hear political pundits tell us what the two candidates really said. What an insult to my intelligence! I have just heard with my own two ears what has been said...and they are already telling me what I heard? How have they had proper time to really wrestle with the words and with the concepts that were shared? Maybe those people think more quickly than I do. But I certainly don't want their opinions to influence the opinion that I will formulate.

We call what will happen tonight a debate. Actually I am more inclined to call it a scripted dialogue. This past summer I had the privilege of being in Springfield, IL during the first weekend of the 150th anniversary of one of the greatest political dialogues ever in American history...the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Now, my friends, those were true debates. There was no artificial time-element to them. Why, they were just getting started after ninety minutes. Of course people in those days had nothing else to do, so could commit time to listen carefully to the thoughts of each man. And listen they did. From Freeport to Cairo and to places in between, Abraham Lincoln (the challenger) and Stephen Douglas (the incumbent) campaigned for the Senate seat from Illinois. When one reads portions of those debates, the reader becomes impressed with the tenacity of each candidate to the positions being held. They carved into each other's personalities. These were not responses that would garner 20 seconds on the Nightly News. No, they were published word-for-word by leading newspapers of the day.

When election day came, Lincoln lost his campaign for the United States Senate. But, he had begun to win the election for the White House two years later.

I realize that we need some type of time constraint in today's world. But I often wish we could just allow the candidates the opportunity to freely express their positions...not just those words that we want to hear. I do not even see the candidates writing many editorial position papers these days. Perhaps the candidates are motivated by this statement: If I tell the people what they want to hear, then they will vote for me; but if I tell them what they need to hear, then I will lose their vote.

Just a postscript to the Lincoln-Douglas Debate. When Lincoln was elected President in 1860 (by the way his opponent was once again Senator Douglas), Senator Douglas cast aside party animosity and became a strong supporter of Lincoln until his death during the first year of Lincoln's Presidency. So, now you know the rest of the story.

Listen with care this evening...but don't let anyone tell you what you heard. You make that decision for yourself.