(“You forgot to select the fuel type”)

I didn’t watch the GOP Presidential candidate debate the other day and have no comment to make on it other than that the short clips I’ve seen are exactly what I expected, with soundbite shots being exchanged in a desperate effort by each candidate to simply draw attention to themselves.

And that’s not just because these early Presidential election debates have so many voices trying to compete with each other. It was the same with the 2020 Democrat debate and is almost always the case when a party does not have an incumbent President running for re-election. The one exception I can think of in modern times was 2008 when it was Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama and … Joe Biden (who typically fell off his perch early on). If there were other Democrats in the race I can’t recall them, minnows that they were.

Of course one can’t be entirely dismissive of such events. In 1992 critics referred to the Democrats in the race as “The Seven Dwarves” because the power players of the day had refused to run, thinking GHW Bush was unbeatable after the Gulf War with approval ratings in the 90’s. The “Dwarves” included a guy from some bumfuck state called Arkansas who would go on to become one of the best US politicians in years and serve two terms as President.

Another other reason I don’t watch these debates is that they’re cosmetic crap; more about “feelz” for the candidates and their policies than thought, and that’ll be true of the final Dem vs. GOP mano-a-mano debates that eventually happen when the choice is winnowed down to two people.

This will also be true of this year’s NZ election debates, which I shall also not be watching. In fact the idea of watching Luxon vs “Chippie” already makes me wince.

Politicians are functional tools; I don’t care what they look, sound or emote like and I care little about what they say, especially in the heat of an election. I care about what they do and don’t do. If they do what I want (on a scale of 1-10 say, 1 being zip and 10 being exactly what I want) then they get my vote. And sometimes even those decision points get messy: I voted for Helen Clark in 1999 because Shipley’s government was falling apart, even knowing Clark would do things that would piss me off ideologically.

But the final reason I don’t watch these debates is that these people are almost always so disconnected from the world the rest of us live in. Here’s a classic example from the other day where one of the GOPer’s on stage – Trump’s VP, Mike Pence – has an advertisement out showing what a “normal guy” he is by pretending to fuel up his truck as a way of talking about how Biden has screwed up America’s energy industry. The problem is that it becomes obvious to any ordinary person watching that Pence hasn’t fueled up his own vehicle for a long, long time.

That’s because he lives in a cosseted, protected bubble of life. You really think someone like this has a clue as to what your problems are and how to fix them?