The Rajpal Abeynayake Column:

Debating the debates

The other day a friend of mine and I were watching the second debate between the two candidates for the US presidency, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. This was not anything like watching a T/20 final or the semi-final. Though none of us thought that anyone in particular won the debate that night, a strange phenomenon unfolded after the sparring ended.

The analyses by the pundits in that country was that the incumbent had somehow won in style which made us wonder whether the entire thing was scripted, but then things cannot be as in a T/20 match which can be 'fixed.' But anyway the entire proceedings were also less formal than any of the high school debates that we had participated in as school boys. Both candidates seemed to be in a hurry to break the rules, which made it clear that it is a bit of a myth that rules are strictly adhered to in "those countries" as opposed to "these countries."

And of course if there is laissez-faire about this type of thing at those high levels, obviously everyone over there must be much more freewheeling than we think.

They say that it is in these countries such as our celebrated island, it is difficult to get the ordinary people to stick by the rules. But the audience members at Hofstra University in New York where the debate was held were also seen breaking the rules, applauding and laughing out loud for instance when they had been sworn to keep shtoom in the duration of the entire verbal bout.

But what is clear is that if the debate was on its own going to decide the outcome of the entire contest, the media there was determined not to let that happen. The media narrative was far bigger than whatever that took place during the actual verbal sparring. In that respect this match-up was nothing like the television encounters we see between politicians here in this country which are not analyzed and dissected until kingdom come by the spinmeisters of the mainstream media.

The only thing they did not mention over there was the fact that Obama's jacket was a little ill fitting at the back, compared to Romney's. Otherwise everything was taken apart in the looks and deportment department by the regular pundits and the new fangled ones in the blogosphere.

Does the substance of the debate count for anything when at the end of the day there is an overarching media narrative which says one person has won the debate? To that extent one becomes almost fond for the less than exuberant media coverage in our country which basically leaves it for the person who watches a debate to decide on exactly which way it went.

If these things are closely watched, one cannot also help but notice how carefully these things are scripted for media consumption in the country in which the power of the ritzy glitzy media is legendary.

For instance at the end of every debate it is mandatorily written into the script that candidates' immediate family members get onto the stage and embrace their debater. This will NOT happen.

Not having your spouse to either commiserate or celebrate with you at the end of the debate is a fate worse than death - a fate certainly worse than losing the debate. In that respect these kinds of things are far less scripted in our part of the world, for that matter even in India, where the media has a far greater reach than in this country for instance and there is a Bollywood style hype that is associated with the on-screen antics of candidates and politicians in general.

Full points no doubt have to be given for the fact that presidential election debates are the staple in the US, where a specially appointed commission exists to ensure that debates are an integral part of each presidential election cycle. The debates may be sometimes greater in hype than in substance, but there is no doubt that having the debates is far better than not having them at all.

The negative aspect of all this is that the debates are also sometimes far more about style than substance which means that a candidate could win on debating points, but could lose badly if he fails the test of general deportment and good behaviour. This time around for instance, it is being said that the challenger almost invaded the personal space of the president during the course of one exchange, and spoke to him in what seemed to be an almost threatening manner.

The media totally went to town on this and the fact that the challenger Romney had also been rather dismissive of the moderator, who this time was a lady. It all meant that after the media narrative was over, what Romney in fact said during the debate almost did not count.

The cynical might even say that it would be better to go slow on things like debates or not have them at all in an organised manner as in this country, rather than have the mainstream media finally decide the outcome of the debate. On the other hand, there would be those who say that never mind what the all powerful pundits may say from their vantage points on-high, the voters would have their own way of looking at things, and eventually would mark their ballots having made their own decisions about how the debates turned out.

But this writer's personal view is that the wider the media narrative gets, the more difficult it is to set the average voter apart from the common denominators of the media narrative. Persons such as Noam Chomsky have observed this tendency of the media deciding as ultimate arbiter, on the politics of democracies such as the US.

Debates of course can be great theatre and everybody and his brother-in-law enjoys a good brawl. There is always the hope that the cause of democracy has been served despite the fact that the drama as a whole may be more heavily scripted than meets the eye.