Yesterday, I was feeling a little bit down and realized that I was not looking forward to last night's "debate".  That may seem strange for a political junkie, but in fact I have despised these "debates" for years.

My objection to these debates is simple:  I think they are a really stupid way to evaluate presidential candidates.

Part of the problem is that the "moderators" usually don't ask good questions.  And they often omit entire areas that should be discussed.  For example, in the Palin-Biden debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked just two questions about taxes, these two:

IFILL:  OK, our time is up here.  We've got to move to the next question.  Sen. Biden, we want to talk about taxes, let's talk about taxes.  You proposed raising taxes on people who earn over $250,000 a year.  The question for you is, why is that not class warfare and the same question for you, Gov. Palin, is you have proposed a tax employer health benefits which some studies say would actually throw five million more people onto the roles of the uninsured.  I want to know why that isn't taking things out on the poor, starting with you, Sen. Biden.

Not very impressive questions, are they?

And Ifill did not ask a single question about the budget.  Not one.

(What questions should she have asked on taxes and the budget?  At least the obvious questions.  She should have added up their promises on lower taxes and more spending, and asked them how they were going to pay for their tax cuts and program increases.  And she should have displayed the main budget categories, and asked Biden and Palin where they thought there should be increases — and where they thought there should be cuts.)

Both candidates did mention taxes — many times — and both did mention budgets.  But their discussion was not particularly coherent, since they were not responding to the same question about taxes.  (Biden mentioned Obama's "tax cuts" so many times, that he convinced me that almost all of us will be seeing tax increases, should Obama be elected.  In fact, I began to suspect that the Obama campaign already has two task forces working on the problem, one designing the tax increases, and one planning the PR campaign to justify the increases.)

But even with better questions and better moderators, these "debates" would not tell us much about what a candidate would do as president, or vice president.  For that, the best guide is still their records — to the extent that they have records.  And there are other ways we could evaluate candidates, as I suggested somewhat fancifully in this post.  It would be fascinating, for instance, to know which of the four candidates knows the most about basic statistics.  (Probably McCain.)

Most journalists — and most talk show hosts — like the debates because they make their living with words, and tend to value words too highly.  For instance, almost all journalists, and most talk show hosts, are terribly impressed by Churchill's speeches during World War II.  And so am I.  But we should recognize that those speeches would have been useless if Churchill had not gotten the basic strategic decisions right.  Mostly.  Here's John Gooch's summary from The Oxford Guide to World War II.

His success as a war leader rests on the fact that he was enormously gifted amateur strategist — and that, ultimately, he acknowledged as much. (p. 188)

Or, to choose a more homely metaphor, we should not make a man our football coach just because he makes great half-time speeches.  If we can, we should look for a man with a winning record.  And, if we really understand football, we would want to inquire into a coach's thinking on strategy.

Enjoy the "debates" if you can, but don't take them seriously.  And don't use them to decide which candidate to vote for.

Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.

(For the record:  Both presidential candidates are making combinations of promises on taxes and spending that are impossible to keep.  But then I came to the same conclusion in 2000, and still preferred Bush's combination because it was less irresponsible than Gore's.  And for the same reason this year I prefer McCain's combination to Obama's.

Also for the record;  I did listen to a little of the debate last night, and followed some of it on line.  And I will read the transcript.  Eventually.)