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The Atlantic: Trump Should Never Have Had This Platform ...
its whole premise was to treat a failed coup leader as a legitimate candidate for the presidency.The first question about January 6 was asked at minute 41...
Everything about the event was designed to blur the choice before Americans. Both candidates— the serving president and the convicted felon — were addressed as “President.” The questions treated an attempted coup d’état as one issue out of many. The candidates were left to police or fail to police the truth of each other’s statements; it was nobody else’s business...
We live in a political culture in which some of us think the supreme issue of our time was an attempted violent overthrow of the Constitution, while other Americans think it was Hunter Biden’s laptop. There are means and institutions to arbitrate those differences. That’s what elections do. But television debates cannot do it, because television debates don’t happen unless they get buy-in from both sides. Therefore, television debates are designed necessarily to ratify the concept of “both sides.”...
Against the threat of Trump, Americans must save themselves. The job of doing so cannot be delegated to some charismatic savior—and anyway, that charismatic savior has yet to present himself or herself. Television always wants to reduce active human beings to passive viewers. The presidential-debate format has especially served this purpose: “Do I prefer the candidate in the red tie or the blue one?”
This most recent debate has taught the danger of spectatorship. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved. Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his. Yours.
Everything about the event was designed to blur the choice before Americans. Both candidates— the serving president and the convicted felon — were addressed as “President.” The questions treated an attempted coup d’état as one issue out of many. The candidates were left to police or fail to police the truth of each other’s statements; it was nobody else’s business...
We live in a political culture in which some of us think the supreme issue of our time was an attempted violent overthrow of the Constitution, while other Americans think it was Hunter Biden’s laptop. There are means and institutions to arbitrate those differences. That’s what elections do. But television debates cannot do it, because television debates don’t happen unless they get buy-in from both sides. Therefore, television debates are designed necessarily to ratify the concept of “both sides.”...
Against the threat of Trump, Americans must save themselves. The job of doing so cannot be delegated to some charismatic savior—and anyway, that charismatic savior has yet to present himself or herself. Television always wants to reduce active human beings to passive viewers. The presidential-debate format has especially served this purpose: “Do I prefer the candidate in the red tie or the blue one?”
This most recent debate has taught the danger of spectatorship. The job of saving democracy from Trump will be done not by an old man on a gaudy stage, but by those who care that their democracy be saved. Biden’s evident frailties have aggravated that job and made it more difficult, but they have also clarified whose job it is. Not his. Yours.
non paywall https://archive.ph/9TDri
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