In defense of debates

David Weigel on the loathsome debate audiences:

[S]hould the crowd react? It should; after all, it’s tradition. Writing about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the ones Newt Gingrich so badly wants to re-enact with somebody, Harold Holzer pointed out that audiences treated the events like monster truck shows. There were “moments when crowds erupted into such an avalanche of noise,” he wrote, “that stenographers confessed, right in their transcripts, their inability to follow whole sentences at a time.” Presidential debates have been noisy, too. Not recently, because the Commission on Presidential Debates has decreed that audiences shall not make a racket. But the old League of Women Voters-sponsored debates were loud and proud. The crowd was on for Reagan-Mondale, and it was on when Lloyd Bentsen humiliated Dan Quayle. Those debates reflected what happens, outside of security bubbles, when politicians have to engage with real voters.

It's also true that there may have been one-too-many debates — personally, I'm getting a little sick of them. But mostly they're worth it for the entertainment value.