Covering the debate coverage

Over at headsup: the blog, fev gives us an overview of news coverage of the debate and comes away disappointed. An excerpt:

I think the core problem is that we're making a particular kind of event into something it's not. If we're judging debates by whether the candidates came out swinging, or whether someone landed the knockout blow, we're looking for the wrong stuff. That sector of political discourse is quite thoroughly covered by advertising and by whatever the bush-league tacticians on the talk shows think they read on the NYT and Post op-ed pages. A debate (so called) is a chance to watch candidates think out loud, or to watch what they recite in lieu of thinking.

That means we need to stop thinking of these things as centerpieces or centers of visual interest. Debates don't do that. They're visually boring and should be.* They're suited to long chunks of text, unmediated by the sort of instant experts who hang around presentation desks and editorial pages. When we summarize, we're going to get this:

Candidates' clearest difference is on Iraq policy

which, to the extent it's true, was self-evident before the event, but it misses the stuff in the debate that was genuinely interesting. ZOMG! Did you know we have one candidate who has a rough idea of how the Iranian political system works and one who doesn't?** One who understands what an "existential threat" is and one who thinks Hugo Chavez is one? One camp that has some actual claim to the realist ideal and one that occupies an interesting space that's half cloudcuckooland,*** half "Nightmare on Elm Street"?

We do have a few weeks to try to get this one right, so let's. The quadrennial candidate encounters might not technically be debates, but they aren't Ginormous Monster Truck Death Wrestling Cage Showdowns, either. Stop trying to make them centerpieces. Try making them chances to watch how candidates use political language in public.

The whole thing is good. Head on over and check it out (and you can find out what the footnotes are, too!)