Popular news media is the cheapest cut of meat

Following US election because enjoy art of politics and campaign sport. Not so much vested interest. Am enjoying outsider candidates and relevant disruptions.

Here are some questions posed to Democratic Candidates during today’s debate.

TODD: Right now, it is possible President Obama is going to be leaving the next president, perhaps President Sanders, at least 10,000 troops in Afghanistan. How long will those troops be in Afghanistan under President Sanders?

TODD: You’ve got to prioritize potential threats to the United States. Three countries, North Korea, Iran, Russia. How would you rank them in order of their threat to America’s security right now?

I’m picking the poorer of the questions but consider — the only right answer to either is something along the lines of ‘it depends’. How can anyone know what the situation in Afghanistan will call for a year for now? What does ‘security’ actually mean in this context?

Any decent answer will require a number of predicates to give an account of the candidate’s judgement. The problem is, articulating that makes for a poor soundbite.

One of the trends of new media, podcasts and Youtube videos, is the resurgence of long form interviews. I suspect that a number of challenging, unedited sit downs with political candidates — and maybe this is utopian — where they felt they could speak freely — might convey their viability (or lack thereof) much more than a sixty-second heavily prepared response.

Watching a politician answer a clear question with a rehearsed bit that does answer the question, kind of, sort of, not really, has this eerie effect of diffusing the truth. You may listen for the speaker to circle back to the point of the question, but however convincing, it still manages to answer a different question.

I would love to see people up for election in interview rooms with non-professional members of the electorate. Let them sit down for a few hours and hash it out. Stream it live.

Probably never happen. I guess the media is just giving us what we want.

Want more.

This has been the fifty-ninth publication of Dressing Gown, a daily blog from Ted Janet.