Contact CU Independent Staff Opinion Columnist Emily McPeak at emily.mcpeak@colorado.edu.
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We are at a crucial point in the race for 2016. With just four months left before the Iowa caucus, the competition is heating up within the nation’s major political parties. Americans more or less know who they are left to choose between when it comes time to vote in the primaries. On the Republican side, the nominee will come from a field of 14 potentials, each of whom lie far to the right on issues such as taxation, immigration reform and health care.
Democrats, on the other hand, after a refusal from Vice President Joe Biden to join in on the competition, now face a showdown between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination. However, it’s somehow still unclear where any of these candidates actually stand on these issues.
Last week, in an event few students probably missed, Republicans met for the third time at CU Boulder for a debate titled “Your Money, Your Vote.” This was the perfect opportunity for the GOP candidates to clarify their positions regarding central issues on the minds of many Americans, such as taxes and student debt, yet it quickly devolved into a sensational back and forth between the candidates and the CNBC moderators.
The fact that the major takeaway of this event was that the network did a poor job moderating the discussion highlights a key failure of the current election process. Media has become so thoroughly integrated into the entirety of the presidential election that theatrics are favored over substance, leaving Americans amused and yet ignorant to the policies of the people they will soon be voting for.
Media, while arguably never absent from politics, was first injected into the election process with the advent of the radio. With this came the first nationalized presidential debates, though they did not become an expected part of the election process until after the first televised debates between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960. Since then, politics has become another show Americans can tune into — a development which is extremely evident in primary debates.
In the race for 2016, 17 debates are scheduled to take place — 11 of which would be between candidates for the GOP nomination. Three of these have already taken place, yet none of the candidates have been able to effectively communicate their policy agenda within this forum. They instead choose to make grandiose statements in order to assert their dominance in an overcrowded field. While this may bring them voter recognition, it also polarizes them to Americans who are further left than the overwhelmingly conservative presidential potentials that exist within the GOP.
Democrats, on the other hand, have only had one of six debates in the primary face of the 2016 election process. This event, while calmer than the Republican debates, was nevertheless an event where the four candidates on the stage sensationalized their positions, gaining the spotlight in exchange for providing substance.
The failure of candidates in both major political parties to communicate how they would address the issues that America faces makes it evident that this aspect of the election process may be more subversive than enlightening. While candidates have always had to present themselves as being as far left or right as possible in order to win their party’s nomination, in a country where the majority of citizens claim to be independent, it’s questionable whether or not this strategy remains justifiable.
Furthermore, in the reality TV show age, the primary debates have become more about theatrics and network ratings than about a discussion between political contenders. These factors then come together to produce the show that primary debates have become: an event where moderators choose questions to provoke controversy from and between candidates, even if they may not provide the chance to show how the candidate would run the nation.
In the modern world, if something is to remain prevalent in our social-media-filled lives, it must be sensationalized. But when politicians embrace the theatrics, Americans are left in a state of amused ignorance. In the race for 2016, voters need to look beyond the debates to know who they’re actually voting for.
