Give Us a Real Debate

On Friday, I watched the debates. A hell of a way to destroy my usual routine of dinner at the Red Lion with my bride and friends Bob and Edith. But then I have to watch these damned things, don't I?

Now, make no mistake about it, I am a political junkie. But this was like being forced to watch a "B" movie. I realize that the imagery that comes to mind is getting a little strange as I watch yet another election campaign, but I was reminded of a sack race at the company picnic. There were mighty exertions, moments, though not many of humour, lots of huffing and puffing, great seriousness as the finish line approached, but it was scarcely much of a defining moment.

The format was crap. There is this perceived notion that people don't like blood spilled in election campaigns and want nice little boys and girls acting as though this was a high school debate. The people who say this are like the hockey fans who deplore violence but are first on their feet for a good view when it breaks out. When you see politicians who are supposed to fight for the issues that you deem important, full of sweetness and forced smiles, you're seeing an expurgated version of what political battling should be all about. It isn't necessary to have leaders shouting over each others' words, but for any debate to have meaning, there must be clashes - some passion, some raised voices, some visual and verbal sign that it matters. The format even prevented reasonable rebuttal unless your guy was lucky enough to be scheduled to speak after the other guy.

Questioning by proxy

I don't know who the hostess was, but when she spoke, it sounded like a carping old Sunday School teacher dragging her fingernails down a nearby blackboard.

So, there were 10,000 emails which allowed the journalistic soft soapers of the networks - who wouldn't know a difficult and pointed question if it poked them in the eye -- to cherry pick the questions and get someone else to ask that which they wouldn't have the guts to ask, in any pointed way, themselves.

Moreover, it's strains credulity to think that not one of the 10,000 asked about global warming, the outsourcing of jobs or funding for post secondary education. Any younger person seeking guidance on what career he should pursue to be safest from outsourcing and other job predations, or worried whether or not he and his children would have air to breathe, must have thought that more serious, and indeed helpful debates, take place at annual meetings of an "adults only" Strata Corporation.

This was a meeting of old men on old issues with the gravest mien belonging to Stephen Harper, the youngest one in the game. On gut issues like the environment, outsourcing of jobs, post secondary education or, indeed, healthcare, none of these men even have a plan to develop a plan. One last point on the format --the methodology put every question on an equal footing which dulls any impact answers to more serious questions might have had.

Rating the sack racers

But how did the sack racers, I mean leaders, actually do?

To start with, it's a disgrace that our national TV networks would allow Gilles Duceppe to be part of it. This is for national leaders and Duceppe admits what everyone knows - he only cares to advance his cause of separatism. Not only was it gutlessness, the time Duceppe consumed spoiled the chance for Canadians to get some sense of where the other leaders were really going.

If there was a prize for glib one-liners, Jack Layton was the laureate. Unable to form a government and bear the consequences, he could avoid serious answers to say, healthcare, by just pointing his finger at the audience with a stern declaration that he was going to save Medicare.

Stephen Harper won in the sense that he didn't lose and he looked better than most thought he would. He has to live with his outdated, prissy and generally unpopular position on gay rights but he handled that as best he could. At times, the man actually smiled and there was a tiny ray of humanity emerging from the oh-so-serious fundamentalist fog that envelops him and much of his party.

Paul Martin had, by far, the most good moments, especially when he was beating up Duceppe on national unity. He has, however, that cloud called "sponsorship" over his head and he handles it as best he can - rather like Harper with the gay issue - which is to say not very well.

Where was Green leader?

Jim Harris of the Green Party should have been there, if only on the ground that his party, in the last election, polled enough votes for federal election funding. One could say that he's a Johnny-one-note like Gilles Duceppe, but even if that were true, and it's not, he has some specific and doable ways to deal with the environmental disaster that is slowly but surely strangling us in our sleep.

Looking just at the "Big Two", I think Martin had the edge. How many, if any, votes that means, no one can tell. What will be interesting - and God knows these so-called debates could use some help in that department - is how the two will look in the next debate in January. My guess is that Harper will improve considerably and will be, at least, a match for the Prime Minister.

All in all, if I'd had a video of that old sack race it would have made better watching and would have been no less informative.

Rafe Mair writes a Monday column for The Tyee. His website is www.rafeonline.com.