“The more famous the person, and the larger the stage, the lower the likelihood that you’ll hear anything of importance.”
According to my Facebook feed, nearly everyone I know, both friends and family, watched the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, and plan to watch the next two. None of them appear to have any real desire to watch the debates. The most common overarching tone seems to be “grim resignation.”
That resignation begs the question: Why are we doing this to ourselves? If you don’t want to watch the debates, don’t watch the debates. And feel free to tell anyone who tries to describe some kind of “civic obligation” to go watch two septuagenarians trade insults for an hour and a half to go climb a tree.
Why do we watch presidential debates?
Ostensibly, debates are supposed to be opportunities for each candidate to make their case to the American people, but how many of us are actually undecided? As far as I can tell, everyone I know who’s watching the debate already knows who they’re going to vote for.
But it’s not just my particular group of Facebook friends. In recent Quinnipiac and Monmouth polls, 3% of registered voters claimed to be undecided. That makes sense. Donald Trump is a highly polarizing president. If you’re a fan, you likely know that already. Conversely, if you’ve watched him preside (I just got that!) the last four years with a little bit of throw-up perpetually in the back of your throat, he probably isn’t going to change your mind on the debate stage.
But it isn’t just this election. The Economist recently wrote a lovely little piece, helpfully titled “American presidential debates rarely change election outcomes.” It’s a worthwhile read, and basically summed-up by its title. The majority of debates are opportunities for candidates to throw red meat to the voters who already agree with them, not to broaden their coalition.
The futility of these debates is enhanced by the demography of the viewing public. If you’re a politically-engaged individual—in other words, the type of person that is likely to watch a political debate—then you’ve probably made up your mind at some point in the preceding 18 months of campaign ads, news stories, op-eds, press releases, rallies, and character profiles, and that opinion isn’t likely to change.
And an undecided voter probably isn’t paying enough attention to watch a debate.
So, why do we feel obligated to watch the debates?
If the debates aren’t likely to influence our votes, the purported reason for their existence, then skipping them should feel easy. But there is a subtle social pressure that exists around debates, particularly in 2020.
If you’ve been subject to that kind of social pressure, I get it, I really do. The message that engaged citizens watch debates is everywhere on social media, it’s prevalent on tv news—which, as the entities that make money selling ad space for the pre-debate prediction shows and the post-debate analysis shows, have a mild conflict of interest—and it’s often present in our own homes, among our friends and family and social circles.
You know the reasons people cite:
- If you want to be informed, you’ll watch the debate
- If you want to hold your leaders accountable you have to watch the debate
- If you want to be an engaged citizen, you need to plop yourself down in front of your tv with a magnum of wine and sob yourself into oblivion while a debate goes on in the background
While they may seem plausible, these reasons are all bullshit. Let’s take a look.
If you want to be informed about this country, you’ll watch the debate
Nope, sorry, I don’t buy it. If you want to be informed about what happened in the debate then watch the debate. There will be no secret information transmitted to debate viewers about the health and safety of this country. Don’t let folks try to convince you that you’ll gain some striking insight into the nation and the world because you saw exactly how Trump ducked a question on the coronavirus.
Some may counter that you will learn about each candidate’s platform by watching the debate. That retort is not so much “untrue” as it is “incomplete.” You may learn something about their platforms, but I assure you, in half an hour online, you’ll easily inform yourself far more effectively than you will if you watch Don and Joe each spend 45 minutes ignoring questions and pivoting to their talking points.
If you want to hold your leaders accountable, you have to watch the debates
There are many ways citizens hold their leaders accountable. Prosecutors can bring charges against corrupt leaders, Journalists can expose malfeasance and wrongdoing, Lobbyists can walk into politicians’ offices and hand them more money to make sure they do it right next time.
Most average citizens, however, hold our leaders accountable in one very specific way. We vote. Now that isn’t the only way. Joining protests can add your voice and body to calls for reform. Locally, you can go to city council meetings, write letters, and generally agitate your officials to do more.
But at the federal level, voting is really the primary method that most of us have to hold our leaders accountable. Tuning into a presidential debate, unless it convinces you to vote, isn’t actually doing anything (more on that below).
If you want to be an engaged citizen, you need to watch the debates
Watch is a pretty passive verb (not grammatically, just practically). You are not an engaged citizen by watching the debates. You are an engaged citizen when you do something in your community. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, tutor a child, pick up trash on your street: these are all nice, tangible actions that engage you, on some level, with the people around you. If watching the debates makes you feel more motivated to do those things, then please, turn them on and stoke that fire; but don’t let people make you feel guilty by conflating “watching” with “engagement.” That just isn’t how that works.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to watch the debates
If you enjoy the experience, by all means, watch them. There doesn’t have to be a grand reason. Some people find the debates entertaining, and that’s just peachy. They aren’t my cup of tea, but I don’t judge the desire to watch them in the slightest.
What isn’t productive, or ethical, is the attempt to create a moral imperative around debate watching. If watching the presidential debate is likely to make you feel depressed, despondent, and dispirited, then it will probably make you a less engaged citizen, rather than more. No one else knows how the debates will affect you, so it is very much not their business whether you tune in for every minute, or cut your house’s power for an hour and a half to avoid the temptation.
So, if you can, ignore the noise. Let other people do what they want to do. If you don’t want to watch the debate, then please, don’t.