This feisty debate may be a hard act to follow

12 April 2012

Blimey. Or as we say in America, holy s**t. Just when you thought the leaders' debates, like presidential debates in the United States, would be rubbish, along comes Britain's first-ever televised version of same, and we're blown away.

Well, maybe not blown away, but something pretty impressive happened in Manchester, and as a result the pre-election political dynamic is very different today than it was yesterday.

Why did we think otherwise? What happened is that Britain, as usual, paid too much attention to the US presidential debate model and too little to well-established British idiosyncrasies.

Anticipating 90 minutes of dumbed-down rhetoric, we all — except, to their credit, the party leaders and their inner circles — forgot that the British electorate expects more from their politicians than a heavily refereed bout of political politesse.

There were debate parties all across London and surely across the country. They were pretty raucous affairs. Why? Because the debate unfolding on TV was, if not raucous, at least brand new — rollicking in the feisty middle ground between Oxford Union Debating Society and Prime Minister's Questions (how unsatisfactory that Punch and Judy set-piece will seem from now on).

Most importantly, we mistook the American model. Today, 50 years after the first televised presidential debate in America (between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy), we ascribe a preternatural dullness to these US debates.

That's wrong, but understandable.

A little history. True, the early devastations of the political debates in America — like the brooding Nixon losing on TV to Kennedy in 1960 — threw up a natural barrier between politicians and those who organised the debates.

The governing principle became "Do No Harm". You can't expect a bar-room brawl or deep insights into a politician's psyche or policies when politicians meet in front of the TV cameras to do no harm.

But even in that context, there was more to the debates than tepidness. In 2008, over the course of three debates, Barack Obama was criticised for toning down his rhetoric and not taking on John McCain aggressively. In fact, by exuding the serenity of a natural leader, Obama grew in stature: he looked presidential. And now he's president.

It may well be that the "do no harm" vicissitudes of the American way of debates will come to Britain. But it was not in evidence last night. Not yet, anyway. But you can see it changing. Nick Clegg, the Lib-Dem leader, was the golden boy last night. Of course he was. But as the leader of a third party — somebody who has virtually no chance of becoming prime minister — he will be coming under heavy fire in the next two debates.

I've covered US presidential election campaigns since 1976, and I even vaguely remember the debate Nixon "lost" in 1960. For better or worse, the debates here in the UK, despite the experience of this week, run the risk of becoming direct descendants of the highly paid professional campaign machinery that has turned US presidential debates into a kind of political pabulum.

Fortunately, last night was a welcome exception. Let's hope it stays that way for as long as possible.

Stryker McGuire is a contributing editor at Newsweek magazine.

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