More candidates should skip debates

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I watched the final Michigan Senate debate this week and found it to be an absolutely excruciating experience. It was attention-deficit theater at its worst, with the candidates taking turns saying things completely unrelated to the question and/or the accusation their opponent just made about their record. Initially my frustration was directed at the candidates themselves, but upon reflection I realized that their fractious, puerile performances were merely downstream of the rules governing the debate.

• Candidates will have 60 seconds to respond to each question.
• Candidates will have 30 seconds for rebuttals.
• Candidates will have 60 seconds to make a closing statement.

This is an unbelievably stupid way to structure a conversation, especially if the purpose of the debate was, as the moderators claimed, to educate Michigan voters on the positions of the candidates.

Some back-of-the-napkin math tells me these rules would allow you to ask 15 to 20 questions, which most debate moderators take to mean 15 to 20 questions on different topics. But the economy (47%), healthcare (12.8%) and threats to democracy (11.4%) are the only three issues that more than 10% of Michiganders say are most important to them. Why not just set the candidates up with broad questions on those three topics and let a more natural conversation between the candidates unfold?

Such a debate would need actual moderators, not glorified hall monitors. The moderators would need to have a free hand to cut mics and press the candidates on lies and inconsistencies. What we have now instead is one candidate accusing the other candidate of lying and the other candidate getting 30 seconds to say "no, actually, you're the one who's lying."

I entered this debate not as an undecided voter but as a committed partisan and news junkie. Even I had a hard time making heads or tails of many of the candidates' answers. I left the debate feeling less certain of where they stood on the issues, not more certain.

It is not possible to do a good job answering complex questions in so short a period of time. So instead of doing a bad job talking about complex issues, the candidates simply decline to answer the questions. Voters don't learn about the candidates' records or their positions on the issues; they learn who has done the best job memorizing their lines and hitting their marks. That might be a good thing if voters were casting a community theater production, not potentially deciding which party controls the Senate.

Debates like this take questions like "will you be able to afford your cancer medicine?" and "will keep helping Vladimir Putin murder Ukrainians?" to "which one said the right words in the right way?" Since there is nothing of substance to discuss on the post-debate panels, everyone retreats to their partisan foxhole. As long as no one bombs so hard that they have to drop out of the race, the debate only exists so that both candidates can claim that they won it.

So it doesn't surprise me that more and more candidates are refusing to debate. Unless the candidate happens to be excellent at this one, mostly irrelevant skill, there just isn't much upside. If you want to talk to voters, there are plenty of ways to do that without risking having to explain in 30 seconds or less – or maybe not even having the opportunity to explain at all – why, contrary to what your opponent just said, you are not a member of a terrorist organization.

I often find myself listening to candidates like Abdul El-Sayed, James Talarico, and Pete Buttigieg giving detailed and thoughtful answers to difficult questions. Sometimes in legacy media interviews, sometimes on podcasts, in formats that give them room to actually answer.

It baffles me that we remain so deeply committed to making televised debates a terrible experience for everyone involved – most especially for the voters, whose interests they purportedly exist to serve.