One Shining Moment

I don’t usually watch presidential and vice presidential debates. I usually can’t stand them. I’m generally frustrated at all participants throughout most of the debate whenever I watch one. I become frustrated with the know-it-all responses, lack of answering questions, lack of asking more challenging questions, rehashing of tired clichés and uninteresting, overly generalized assertions and declarations. I’m someone who has a deeply developed postmodern sensitivity to the idea that none of us has truth. So, questions like “What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?” do little for me, as do responses that claim to articulate truth. Additionally, as someone who celebrates nuance, a statement like “Let's try to avoid nuance” positively sends me into fits. (Though, ironically enough, that statement was said tonight in conjunction with the issue that I probably see in the most black-and-white terms: gay marriage. Unfortunately, I find neither position articulated tonight fulfilling. As far as I’m concerned this crap about “traditional definitions of marriage,” etc. is exactly that—a large, heavy, smelly pile of crap that is perpetuating oppression on the basis of sexual orientation. … Like I said, that’s one position that I have that tends to lack nuance.)

I also find that these things confirm many of my worst concerns about the voting public of the United States. Throughout the vice presidential debate tonight, CNN ran a positive/negative meter that recorded the sentiments of undecided Ohio voters who indicated as they felt positively or negatively about what was being said. After the debate, one commentator on CNN noted that the positives went up significantly when Sarah Palin used “folksy” talk, like “darn right,” “god bless,” and phrases of similar ilk, particularly in a down-homey kind of tone of voice, while the reactions of the respondents became more negative when Joe Biden discussed specific amendments and policies. Is that really something to be proud of, though? Perhaps I’m misinterpreting it (and I suppose I really hope I am), but it really sounds like these voters saying they’re quite happy being uninformed—that they want happy-go-lucky-sounding niceties and they are uninterested in knowing or caring about the details of legislation or the complexities of issues. That strikes me as a sad indictment of many U.S. citizens as stubbornly proud of ignorance.

So, I have these huge reservations about these debates, yet I watched the vice presidential debate tonight and had the very kinds of reactions that I thought I would … with the exception of one moment. CNN titles it “Biden gets emotional” and it can be seen here. Perhaps this was really good acting on Biden’s part, but it seemed pretty spontaneous to me, particularly with the way that Biden seems to steel himself quickly, almost as if he flipped a switch in his head so that he could continue his sentence. This hit me as an instance that, if only for a fleeting moment, existed outside the competition and performance of the debate. Its very characterization by CNN as “getting emotional” reflects the ways in which U.S. culture defines “emotion,” as if a stolid lack of emotional display is not itself a type of emotional response. Yet, this instance also offers the potential to deconstruct the entire form of the debate and the election process in general. In particular, it suggests the possibility of a different way of engaging in public discourse. And while my postmodern sensibility cautions me against this, I have this overwhelming tendency to want to say that that seems like a much more humane possibility than the schlock that we now have … the same schlock that generally keeps me from enjoying and usually keeps me from watching these debates … the same schlock that I think tends to keep this country from addressing significant issues more effectively.