A spirited debate

I don't care much for debates in politics.  I was on the debate team in high school, and I like debating as a hobby, but I think it doesn't do much for helping voters figure out what to do during elections.

The problem is that people who are thought to have won debates do so by having stage presence, clever comments, and raw attractiveness.  These are stupid metrics by which to select a leader.  You do get some information about the parties and their plans, but that information would be better gotten from official platforms, news articles, or paying attention to previous behaviour.  What a leader says in a debate has little educational value if you watch these other media.

I am not interested in a leader that has a nice suit, good looks, and charisma.  I don't see how that is relevant.  It might help in a few niche cases in international negotiations, but most of those are actually done by underlings over the course of many months - leaders show up to shake hands and get photographed but they don't do all the real work.  Pretty people 'win' debates, but that is a trivial thing when it comes to running a country.

There is some correlation between coming up with good quips on the fly and intelligence, but it is not a strong enough correlation for me to care.  Most of that is just practice and training, and it is utterly worthless for selecting a leader or designing policy.  I get that people want to see their favourite leaders trash talk others, but it is just entertainment.

It makes me grumpy that people watch political debates as if they are a critical window into the way a party will govern, and then end up voting for the handsome person with snappy comebacks.  Without the debates they would just end up voting based on tribalism, bigotry, and family tradition though, so I suppose the debates aren't really making things any worse.

You can suss out truth in a debate.  It is possible to figure things out by contesting ideas against one another, and carefully looking at each side's best arguments. 

I just don't think that political debates actually do that.

The older I get the more I pay attention to politics, the better I understand it, and the more likely I am to vote.  I also get more and more jaded and bitter about the entire process.

I know that the best progress for humankind comes from slow, incremental change.  Tiny bits here and there that slowly, falteringly, get us to a better place.  But the more I watch the farce that is our electoral process the more inclined I am towards simply burning it all down out of spite.