Today in class we began to discuss last night's presidential debate. I have one quick question regarding the debate that I actually came up with while watching.
As many of us noticed, at various times, the two presidential candidates in last night's debate did what most politicians seem to be good at: NOT answering the question asked by the moderator. One example of this was the following question: "What will be your highest priority; health care, entitlements, or energy?" Although Barack Obama stated that the number one priority is energy, John McCain simply stated that "we can do all three of these at once." As I watched this part of the debate, I thought to myself, did the question not ask what will be the HIGHEST priority? As more and more questions were not answered, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated throughout the debate, as I'm sure many of you did as well.
My question to you is the following: how is it that politicians can "get away with" such blatant ignorance of the questions being asked of them?
I understand that, during such a debate, politicians have a few major points that they plan to get across. I also know that the higher they stay on the Abstraction Ladder, the more likely it is that the audience will agree with them (as we've discussed before). However, I do not understand what drives us as members of this governmental society to allow these politicians to leave us empty-handed in terms of straight facts and direct answers to our questions. Doesn't nearly everyone become frustrated watching a debate between two candidates that introduces no new information and simply repeats the same abstract things over and over?
Clarification and thoughts are greatly appreciated. :)
(Janet Lee)
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5 comments:
Oh, and sorry that this post sort of overlaps with Mary's last post. I had not realized she had already posted by the time I had fully proofread mine. :)
(Janet Lee)
Janet this post also resembles the one I just submitted; I guess we were all unaware that we were posting at similar times! :) I apologize if any of my points seem redundant.
Anyway..
I feel that the simplest way to answer this question is to say that politicians only speak what we hope to hear. We crave hope, over-ambitiousness, and achievement. The higher levels of abstraction bring about these concepts. "I want to cut the taxes of 95% of Americans" (Barack Obama). Alright, that's just dandy! But how will you do it?
As students of Mr. Lazarow, we have an advantage over others. We are becoming more prone to uncovering the evils of semantics. Thank goodness for Hayakawa!
I'm sure that were it not for satirists such as Steven Colbert, most Americans would be unable to detect the nonsense that politicians have and continue to spoon-feed us each and every day. It is simply inescapable. (It appears inescapable.)
(Sam Maliha)
I guess I'm a bit puzzled on this too. I mean the mediator could just ask them to answer the question, but I guess that it has to do with the people. I mean, I don't think the mediator is going insist over and over again that the 'truly' answer the question asked and possibly get on the next president's bad side.
I think that it also has to do with the fact that the debate is also a program on television. It has a limited amount of time that it can use on those channels. I think that many people would rather hear the views on the candidate on many of the issues rather than just one. Although, I still think the candidates could do that, if they just answered straightforwardly in the first place...
I noticed a couple instances when both candidates would completely disregard the question asked, and instead use their allotted answer time to respond to what their opponent had said in answering(or not)the previous question. At this point the politicians are just hopping off of the abstraction ladder entirely and going off on their own new tangent.
Steve Szumski
I sincerely hope that our two presidential candidates aren't so petty that they would hold a grudge against a mediator for simply asking for a straight answer. Nevertheless, the situation didn't seem to arise during the course of the debate because the mediator never had control over the proceedings. Yes, our own expectations and demands shape their answers. Tom Brokaw, however, is also partly at fault for failing to properly reign in the candidates. Maybe I'm just projecting my annoyance over the unusually high amounts of rule-breakage (Enough to annoy you, but not enough so that the candidates provided some fervently unrestrained debate) during the debate. If I remember correctly, the CNN post-debate panelists also noted the lack of rule-adherence.
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