Power and personality put to the test

If the chaoticus presidential debate on Wednesday failed to cheer you up, at least some of the commentary about it might. ‘‘That was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,’’ said unimpressed broadcaster Jake Tapper. ‘‘Like watching democracy get a lobotomy,’’ broadcaster Seth Meyers added.

Tapper had to consult a university psychiatrist to find out whatwent wrong. Whatwe saw was not a debate, he was told. Instead, it was a 90-minute display of bullying and emotional abuse, and the blame was all on one side. We saw a president constantly interrupt, denigrate and demean his opponent, defy the moderator and belittle the rules of engagement.

In the post-mortems that followed, a claim was made that if 1960 saw the birth of the televised debate, when Richard Nixonwas famously defeated by a telegenic John F Kennedy, then maybe 2020 marked the death of the televised debate. Are leaders’ debates approaching their use-by date?

Sometimes they can seem like quaint relics of an older way of doing politics, along with election signs on fences and the party political broadcasts that used to signal the official launch of campaign season. Are they fit for this faster, nastier age when attention spans are shorter and personal criticism of politicians is commonplace?

The Newshub debate on Wednesday night showed they can be both entertaining and informative, even if it also showed, as the TVNZ debate did aweek earlier, that the chief function of such events is to introduce the lesser-known candidate to awider public. That happened this year for an assertive Judith Collins, as it did for Jacinda Ardern in 2017, when she told Bill English during The Press Leaders’ Debate in Christchurch that ‘‘this stardust won’t settle’’.

While the challenger gets to make a strong impression, the incumbent has everything to lose. But then again, it is worth asking what it means to win or lose a debate. President Trump may have appeared to dominate on Wednesday, but three viewer polls reported by the New York Times had Joe Biden as the winner. The polling fell along previous polling lines. It’s hard to know if the event shifted many votes.

But here, direct questioning by Newshub’s Patrick Gower uncovered some fresh news nuggets. We learned that Ardern has smoked cannabis, but won’t budge on her decision not to tell us how she will vote in the referendum. Collins mentioned not once but twice that she is a Christian, although she didn’t vote with National’s conservative Christianmps against the legalisation of abortion.

After the first New Zealand leaders’ debate, Collins defended her view that debates are a bloodsport and that people ‘‘who can’t deal with that should go home’’. Politics is no place for the nice or the meek, according to this view, and many New Zealanders do admire displays of strength in their leaders. But there are other ways to lead, especially in ANMMP environment, where consensus and compromise are supposed to be prized above winner-takes-all politics. Leaders have to listen as well as talk, and during debates we want to see them model compassion and empathy as much as toughness and fortitude.