Political debates are dumb and useless, I have better idea.

I’ve followed politics since Jimmy Carter became President of the U.S. I was lucky enough to meet President Ronald Reagan when I was in the U.S. Marine Corps. I was also elected in my town to the Financial Board that oversaw $140 million dollar budget.

Politics is part of our nation’s fabric, it’s part of our democratic process of a representative republic which we’ve had since 1789.

The Political Party debates that are part of their primary process is a long held set of events whereby the candidates stand and discuss and debate their position focusing mainly on their strengths and their opponents weakness.

I wish that was true, because it’s not even close.

Last night in the Democratic debate, I learned nothing about any of the candidates as it relates to their positions. What I mean is that I didn’t learn anything that explains or justifies their positions. Sure, one candidate is a Democratic Socialist who wants all major functions of our lives run by the Federal government and thinks that the 540 Billionaires we have in the United States will pay for it all.

We have another candidate who feels almost the same way except that she will be just better at it than the other because she is a woman. Okay.

Then we have the moderates who are more realistic in their liberal ideals and how we are going to pay for it. Great. But they are attacking each other on things that don’t matter in the roles as President.

As I listened last night as I have in all the debates I heard nothing on specifics. I heard a lot of one-line retorts and snarky responses, none of which helped my understanding of their position. Unfortunately, many people from the Media to those who live and die on Twitter vote for their candidates based upon dumb snarky quips at other candidates and not on real content. And that is a shame.

It’s not Russia who is messing with our ability to elect a good President, but our ignorance and ego to honestly look at our candidates

Have you ever seen an political debate won through the a internet forum? I haven’t. People hate to lose, and will fight for hours calling each other names and spouting incorrect information to win their political arguments. Between their ego and ignorance (which I too have done many times in the past) nothing discussed was advanced.

We want our information packaged and delivered to us because we are lazy. We don’t want to take the time to do our own research on the candidates. We don’t want to read opposing views on our favorites because it might attack our ego. We read only those things that validate our imperfect views we hold deeply. Why?

We as voters in this great democracy need to have a way to get unvarnished understanding on where our candidates for President stand on very important issues without any filter of the media or our egos.

President Trump is very transparent. You know where he stands on issues.

Like President Trump or not, the reason he uses Twitter is because he knows that we the people get that unvarnished position or opinion of our nation’s top executive. You can say a lot about him but what you can’t say is that he doesn’t let anyone filter his ideas or in many cases his conscience. So, how do we get that same veracity from Presidential Candidates?

Getting more content, answers and ideas from Candidates

1. 25–30 questions on the main issues of the day are given to the Candidate without them knowing in advance what the questions are.
2. Written by HAND by each candidate in a isolated office by themselves. No internet, no support staff just by themselves.
3. Each question would have a section about how it will be paid for, Or how will you get support for your ideas.
4. The questions are copied and delivered to the world via social media and other means. Un-edited.
5. The Candidates each then have a town hall meeting whereby they now have to defend their answers that they wrote in their own hand writing to the world.
6. After the town hall, We then put them on the debate stage focusing on a few topics in each debate.

What would this process tell me?

This process would tell me a number of things:

1. Can they follow simple rules.
2. Can they actually answer the questions.
3. Have they actually thought about this topic with any real effort
4. It’s a documented position that they will have to defend which they can’t say it was misconstrued.
5. They will have to defend and discuss directly with the American people their responses.
6. They will then have to defend them and contrast them with their competition face to face.

I would then at this point know where they stood on important issues. How they will execute them to be successful and not full of ‘hot air’. I will be able to see if they can form cogent arguments and defend them. I would remove a lot of “noise” and “finger pointing” that is a great part of the process that isn’t helpful.

This process would provide people with a great deal of unfiltered access to where the candidates stand with specificity and comparison.

Until we have the chance to do this, we get useless debates that aren’t ever debates but uncontrolled shouting matches where people are looking for “Zingers” not policy positions.