Tweet Share Share Comment Most articles about presidential debates are well-organized summaries that distill the themes of the different candidates’ remarks and draw conclusions about how the event might affect each one’s standing, going forward, within the dynamic multinodal space of a campaign.
This is a useful—nay, a necessary—service in our democratic society. It also fails to capture the actual experience of watching debates. In real time, they are not perceivably ordered discussions, but rather a mishmash of pre-rehearsed sound bites and disembodied factoids inserted desperately into a soundscape of shouting in an effort to advance strategist-created goals and talking points in a way that is often obscure to the viewer.
Consider South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s response at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate in Miami to moderator Kristen Welker’s question about whether he would like to raise the Social Security retirement age :
Welker: Would you be open to raising the retirement age or do you rule that out?
Scott: All you have to do is go to a farm in Iowa and watch the hard work and the dedication—
Welker: Yes or no, though, Senator?
Scott: You and I are having a conversation.
Welker: Yes or no, though?
Scott: My answer is no. But going—listen to this, though, before you go on. The fact of the matter is that the more physical your labor, a year or two or three more is actually challenging to the physical body. You and I might have a different perspective, but for those farmers, they’re working night and day.
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Leave the farmers be, sir! They have farming to do! Nominally, Scott’s was a nonsensical digression; in context, though, it makes sense as the tactic of a campaign whose best chance to remain relevant going forward is to win over enough rural, evangelical voters in the Iowa caucus to keep Scott in discussion to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee.
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Some candidates are not in the race to win, but to raise their media profile. The things they say aren’t necessarily meant to appeal to a plurality of viewers, but to make them say, “Wow!” or “Wild!” or “Wow, that’s so wild and politically incorrect!” Wednesday night, for instance, long-shot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy argued that there should be a wall on the U.S.-Canada border and answered the pressing post-Dobbs Republican question of how to talk about abortion by proposing a platform of “sexual responsibility for men,” which, if we know anything about men, might be a tough sell. Ramaswamy also said that, because putting fentanyl on a Big Mac would constitute poisoning, Chinese shipments of fentanyl should be considered bioterrorism. (Indeed, imagine the nightmare scenario in which fast food became a threat to American public health.)
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Read More The best scene of the night, though, was probably the one that followed moderator Hugh Hewitt’s question about ships. Hewitt can be said to speak for the Reagan-era national security wing of the party, which is a smaller constituency than it once was but still one that non-Trump candidates, especially, need to pursue. So when Hewitt asked Nikki Haley and the other candidates an extremely Cold War-esque question about naval capabilities, the result was tough-talk one-upmanship by way of naming types and numbers of things that can make other things blow up.
Hewitt: For decades and decades, the American military, but primarily the United States Navy, has deterred an attack from China on the island state of Taiwan. But Ronald Reagan’s Navy of 600 ships is gone. Now the question to you is—and I’ll start with you, Ambassador Haley, because you were in President Trump’s Cabinet. His goal was a 355-ship Navy. That’s what he pushed for. He got to 300, it’s now at 291. Is that big enough to deter and if necessary, defeat an invasion of Taiwan?
Haley: China has the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 350 ships. They’ll have 400 ships in two years. We won’t even have 350 ships in two decades. China has built up their military. It’s not just land, air, and sea. They’re doing cyber, they’re doing artificial intelligence, they’re doing space.
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Chinese cyber, yet another threat to America’s strategic cheeseburger supply! Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was next. (I’ve edited out part of his response for concision.)
Hewitt: Gov. DeSantis, my question is specifically about the Navy. It’s at 291. It’s going to go down perhaps as low as 280. Is it enough? And what would you build if you were going to build more?
DeSantis: We’re going to get to 355 ships at the end of the first term, 385 ships at the end of the second term, but we’re going to have a path to 600 ships over the next 20 years.
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A path to 600 ships is nice, but what about a path to a billion ships? Tim Scott mentioned meeting needs “not only with our ships, but also with our planes,” but did not cite a number of either, which clearly displeased Hewitt, who turned to Ramaswamy and asked for even more specifics: “What would you build? Where would you build it? When would they be in the water? How big would the fleet get?” Ramaswamy still didn’t name a number, probably because he hadn’t anticipated boat counting being part of the debate, but Hewitt followed up by asking for “a number and a plan.” (Pinned down, Ramaswamy said that “we need to increase our naval capacity by at least 20 percent.”)
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Chris Christie, daringly, said that ships are “secondary” to him as a matter of naval warfare because he thinks subs are more important. “Our nuclear submarines are able to move stealthily, quietly, and effectively,” he explained, as if giving a book report.
Tim Scott managed to make his way back to the country later in the evening, while trying to segue from a question about TikTok into what appeared to be another attempt to pander to Iowa. “China continues to spy on our kids, but they’re also buying our farmlands,” he said. Strange view of the world that one gets in debate land!
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