Better debates would net better elections
Reform might even be — shock! — revealing
Having botched and abandoned electoral reform, having botched and been forced to abandon much of parliamentary reform, can the Liberals at least get reform of the leaders’ debates right?
Like the others, this was part of the Grits’ election platform in 2015: “We will establish an independent commission to organize leaders’ debates.” A parliamentary committee has begun holding hearings on the how, but the why is clear enough.
Though televised leaders’ debates have been a part of federal elections since the 1970s, and though they have on occasion proved pivotal in the result, we have never got past treating them as a kind of amusing novelty, with rules and formats improvised more or less on the fly.
Worse, these were left to negotiations amongst a cartel of the most self-interested kind. On the one hand were the parties, each with their own particular position to defend: the party leading in the polls demanding as few debates as possible, the parties behind as many. On the other hand were the traditional broadcast television networks, the so-called consortium, who one sensed would have preferred to carry no debates at all if they could get away with it.
The result, usually: one debate in each official language, with a format calculated to produce a maximum of cross-talk and interruption — in hopes of the fabled “knockout blow” — all conducted in an atmosphere of unrelenting hysteria. Given but one chance to make an impression, the leaders were trained within an inch of their lives, coached to badger and goad each other into a mistake while eliminating all chance of a spontaneous thought escaping their own lips.
This was scarcely improved by the breaking of the consortium’s grip in the past election, a product of the incumbent Conservatives’ hardball negotiating tactics — for what is a debate without the prime minister? — and the arrival, via the internet, of non-network alternatives. True, there were more debates than in the past, but the format, language, issues, participants and so on were again left to ad hoc negotiations; some were successful, some not.
This is a shame. At their best, debates can be highly revealing, offering the voting public one of the few unscripted, unfiltered opportunities they will have to scrutinize party leaders up close: to see how they react under pressure, whether they can think on their feet, whether they seem confident in themselves and can inspire confidence in others. For the leaders, likewise, it is an opportunity to explain their policies, poke holes in their opponents’ and present themselves in the best possible light to an audience that for once is paying attention.
Alas, the reality too often has fallen far short of the potential. And it will continue to do so, so long as we keep throwing them together at the last minute, out of whatever can be salvaged from the private interests of the broadcasters and the partisan interests of the parties. Four decades later, it is time to recognize the debates as a fundamental part of any modern election, to be regulated in as impartial a way as the political process will allow, the same way we do campaign finance or the drawing of riding boundaries.
Hence the value of the Liberals’ proposal. One, it would take the organization of the debates out of the hands of the vested interests, in favour of an independent public body. Two, by setting its terms of reference well in advance of any election, a further assurance of fairness would be built in: as none of the parties would know where it would be in the polls months or years hence, there would be little incentive to skew things in favour of or against the front-runner.
That’s crucial, since as critics point out, it is neither possible nor desirable to compel party leaders to take part: the prestige of the debates, like the legitimacy of the commission, would depend entirely on whether the rules were perceived as fair and the format as useful. Get them wrong, and the whole thing could collapse. But get them right, and the debates could become such a central part of any campaign that no leader could afford to give them a pass.
Indeed, if we were serious, we might well see the merits of constructing the campaigns around them. As they are, campaigns are a vast waste of time, filled with bad polls, meaningless photo ops, gaffes, gotchas, and acres and acres of horse-race coverage. But suppose the campaign were punctuated by regular weekly debates (weekly, and bilingual: the practice of segregating the debates by language is another habit of the past best discarded).
If nothing else, it would give the media something to do: between pre-debate set-ups and post-debate analysis, there would be little room for much else. Multiple debates, moreover, would offer the opportunity to specialize — why not a whole debate on the economy, another on social policy, and so on — and to diversify: maybe some of the debates could be between the ministers and shadow ministers for this or that portfolio, for example, rather than the leaders. Perhaps, too, there could be some experimenting with different formats.
Some of these decisions could be made by parliamentarians, ideally with broad cross-party consensus. The details, or particularly contentious questions — for example, which party leaders would be invited to attend, and on what basis — might be left to the commission. But the objective, and the opportunity, is clear: not just better debates, but better elections.
AT THEIR BEST, DEBATES CAN BE HIGHLY REVEALING, OFFERING THE VOTING PUBLIC ONE OF THE FEW UNSCRIPTED, UNFILTERED OPPORTUNITIES THEY WILL HAVE TO SCRUTINIZE PARTY LEADERS UP CLOSE. — COLUMNIST ANDREW COYNE