fishtwanger
shirking duties randomly made up by people who hate us
2mo ago
It looks like the current state of the art is to avoid answering questions, and instead treat them as an opportunity for impromptu rambling on a vaguely related topic, or a canned sound-bite on a vaguely related topic. Why not, there are no negative consequences.
The dominant strategy is to come up with a couple of well-rehearsed answers and pattern match questions to them. Even someone really sharp and articulate can at best match that performance. When there's around 5 minutes per topic (all of which are obvious beforehand), there's no reason not to.
Best case is to put some traps in the mini speeches to goad your opponent into going off script; a disciplined opponent knows to ignore them.
You can do better than that in a live debate - obviously competitive debaters do. "Ignore the question and just say your piece" is Media Interviews 101 though, and politicians do a lot more interviews than debates so it is the approach they are most comfortable with.
When I was a student politician, I did the Party training course on media interviews 101, and the line was that (unless you are important enough to insist on a live interview) broadcast media will record 3-4x as much material as needed and only broadcast the gaffes, so ignoring the questions and repeating your soundbite is a necessary defensive technique against deceptive editing. "When is it safe to answer the question?" is 201-level stuff.
Looking at the incentives facing the journo, broadcast media interviews are all about inducing the gaffe (except for the hard-to-get big ticket interview like a US President or an A-lister where it is all about giving a softball interview so other big interviewees will agree to be interviewed by you). My mother has a horror story about how a BBC interviewer started interviewing her in French (which she speaks, but not well enough to do an unprepared media interview), stopped after about 1 minute and said it was actually a sound check, and then started the real interview while she was still in "desperately trying to code-switch" mode.
Both candidates launching into a scripted spiel regardless of what question was asked is something I have seen in basically every presidential debate in recent history.
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Notes -
It looks like the current state of the art is to avoid answering questions, and instead treat them as an opportunity for impromptu rambling on a vaguely related topic, or a canned sound-bite on a vaguely related topic. Why not, there are no negative consequences.
The dominant strategy is to come up with a couple of well-rehearsed answers and pattern match questions to them. Even someone really sharp and articulate can at best match that performance. When there's around 5 minutes per topic (all of which are obvious beforehand), there's no reason not to.
Best case is to put some traps in the mini speeches to goad your opponent into going off script; a disciplined opponent knows to ignore them.
You can do better than that in a live debate - obviously competitive debaters do. "Ignore the question and just say your piece" is Media Interviews 101 though, and politicians do a lot more interviews than debates so it is the approach they are most comfortable with.
When I was a student politician, I did the Party training course on media interviews 101, and the line was that (unless you are important enough to insist on a live interview) broadcast media will record 3-4x as much material as needed and only broadcast the gaffes, so ignoring the questions and repeating your soundbite is a necessary defensive technique against deceptive editing. "When is it safe to answer the question?" is 201-level stuff.
Looking at the incentives facing the journo, broadcast media interviews are all about inducing the gaffe (except for the hard-to-get big ticket interview like a US President or an A-lister where it is all about giving a softball interview so other big interviewees will agree to be interviewed by you). My mother has a horror story about how a BBC interviewer started interviewing her in French (which she speaks, but not well enough to do an unprepared media interview), stopped after about 1 minute and said it was actually a sound check, and then started the real interview while she was still in "desperately trying to code-switch" mode.
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The debates have been that way as far back as at least Clinton V. Trump, maybe father.
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Both candidates launching into a scripted spiel regardless of what question was asked is something I have seen in basically every presidential debate in recent history.
A well-respected technique!
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It seems worse, somehow. But maybe I've just forgotten.
Harris got a question, explicitly said she'd answer all the points, and then all she did was elaborate on "my values haven't changed".
I wonder if it’s more obvious since there’s no crowd to play to.
That might be it. No crowd, muted microphones, and a known time limit if one happens to be into that whole "preparation" thing.
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Its hardly state of the art. We just regularly forget it happens virtually every time.
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