For months, media figures — some conservative, some not — have criticized Democratic presidential candidates for balking at a scheduled debate hosted and sponsored by Fox News. The Dems’ reasoning is fairly obvious — there’s no point in legitimizing a partisan news outlet — but they’ve been blasted anyway. Some have suggested they’re cowardly, others have argued they’re pandering to the Democratic base. Several media personalities (Russert, Ailes, and others) have insisted that Dems can’t be trusted to stand up to foreign enemies if they’re unwilling to stand up to a Fox News debate panel.
It’s all been spectacularly silly, but this week, it’s taken on a new significance. At the end of Monday’s Democratic debate, co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube, Anderson Cooper told the audience, “September 17th is the Republican debate. I want to encourage everyone to submit their questions via YouTube. You can start doing that right away.”
What he didn’t realize is that most of the Republican field apparently doesn’t want to hear these questions and won’t show up for the debate.
Four days after the Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C,. more than 400 questions directed to the GOP presidential field have been uploaded on YouTube — targeted at Republicans scheduled to get their turn at videopopulism on Sept. 17.
But so far, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) have agreed to participate in the debate, co-hosted by Republican Party of Florida in St. Petersburg.
“Aside from those two candidates, we haven’t heard from anyone else,” said Sam Feist of CNN, who’s co-sponsoring the debate with the popular videosharing site.
A nationally-televised debate in arguably the nation’s biggest swing state, sponsored by the Republican Party of Florida — and most of the GOP field has decided not to bother.
Rudy Giuliani’s campaign complained that the date of the event — a full two weeks before the end of the third quarter — might interfere with fundraising. “We have scheduling issues,” said Giuliani adviser Anthony Carbonetti.
I’m not counting on it, but every blowhard who admonished Dems for daring to avoid the GOP network ought to have equally harsh things to say about the Republican field, right? Josh Marshall facetiously posed the question that we should hear from the talking heads: “[I]f they can’t face Youtube how can they defeat the terrorists?”
To be sure, the Dems’ debate, featuring questions exclusively from regular people who submitted YouTube clips, was far from perfect, but there were plenty of provocative, clever questions that candidates wouldn’t receive in traditional debates.
The question now, of course, is understanding what Republican presidential candidates, who have not missed any debate opportunities thus far, are so afraid of.
* The Bubble must be protected — Josh wondered if “the current Bush Republican party is so beholden to a worldview based on denial and suppression of evidence that exposure to unpredictable questions presents too great a danger.”
* The GOP base is scary, even to the GOP — Tim F. noted that the Dems’ debate featured questions from the liberal base, but the far-right base is much scarier. “The idea of stringing up liberals, war critics, apostate Republicans as traitors seeps into every forum. They love torture, they hate civil rights and long ago the right’s mainstream leaders declared the entire religion of Islam a free-fire zone. Better still, six years of holding government in a headlock has left these guys with a sense that they’re entitled to say all this without apology or self-consciousness.” If they’re asking the questions, maybe the candidates don’t want to be there to hear them.
* Democracy, schmocracy — Andrew Sullivan suggested that the GOP is “a party uncomfortable with the culture and uncomfortable with democracy,” so a debate with questions from regular people doesn’t suit the party’s worldview.
I’m amazed at the candidates’ cowardice, but I’m undecided on their rationale. My inclination is that these candidates — sans Paul and McCain — just lack confidence in their ability to think quickly on their feet. In townhall meetings on the campaign trail, they can pretty much count on softball questions. In traditional debates, they know media personalities will never stray too far from the political mainstream.
They could take a chance and respond to the concerns of regular people, but why bother? The risks outweigh the potential rewards.