Never on Sunday - Nine Sundays Revisited
I was 6 years old when The Joan Shorenstein (Barone) Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (with Marvin Kalb as founding director) released a study/proposal which called for the press to take more seriously their responsibility in the presidential elections.
The proposal called for two 90-minute debates between presidential candidates, and one such debate between vice presidential candidates. It also urged five sets of 30-to40-minute interviews with Presidential candidates discussing the same issues with moderators and experts, and finally paired 15-to-30-minute addresses to the nation by the Presidential candidates on the Sunday before election day. ( Study Calls for More TV Time for ‘92 Candidates, By ADAM CLYMER,
Published: September 4, 1991 - NYT)
Called the “Nine Sundays” proposal because of the nine Sundays which run from traditional Labor Day beginning of a campaign and Election Day the author’s of the study also suggested that no commercials interrupt these broadcasts. According to the study American democracy had been trivialized by photo opportunities, advertising, polls and sound bites.
If Mr. Kalb were dead he’d be rolling over in his grave at what the press has become to presidential elections, how little the public demands, and how the candidates allow the media to define them. He isn’t dead of course, I listened to him just this afternoon on Kojo - which is where I got reacquainted with Nine Sunday’s.
In 1991 Mr Kalb wanted to insure a “a serious textured tone to overall news coverage of a Presidential campaign.” He said it would also give “voters regular, predictable access to the candidates, over a sustained period of time” and would set “a framework for constructive televised exposure to the issues.”
That was then, and this is now. A change of scenario is more critical than ever. The public is ready for it, begging for it even.
What could be better than nine days of single subject discussions in which the candidates are not asked if they married for love or money, what their favorite sports team is, and no one has to bowl, or drink beer.
Last March Newt Gingrich called Current Debates ‘Lunacy’. Last May Mr. Kalb called the candidates out in a NYT op-ed “Nine Ways to Elect a President”. Gingrich proposed the “Nine Nineties in Nine” pledge asking the presidential candidates, should they become their parties’ nominees in 2008, to take part in nine, 90-minute “dialogues” in the nine weeks running from Labor Day to the general election. Last summer Gingrich and Kalb overnighted a copy of the pledge to each presidential candidate.
Nine weeks of serious competition discussion after which each candidate is allowed ten minutes to tell the public why they should not be voted off be the next President of the United States.
Then America votes.
The media gets their reality show, voting and all.
America is a sucker for reality shows.
One more thing:
Please, not on Sundays. No one watches television on Sundays. Greek prostitutes don’t work on Sundays. Our candidates shouldn’t either.
I’ll be back around tomorrow, tough week here, end of term.
Good luck with the end of term. I loosely remember “Never on Sunday.” Now, that had context. There were issues!
I remember hearing “Never On Sunday”, so I looked it up only to find out it was an old movie about Greek prostitutes and found the song on you tube. The song is better in Greek and Italian actually.
Interesting, the study was saying how bad the debates were in the1988 elections.
You’re right; it only get worse and from here where do we go - it has become a joke.
It proves no one learns, or the media doesn’t give a damn, because the attention span of the people is so short . Long one issue discussions, where we could learn something would cost them money.
I think people would be relieved to have something like that, but maybe I’m wrong.
Right on the money, as usual.
And thanks for the tip about Greece.
dedd: Now I think that was actually a song from the sixties or fifties, and a movie of the same time frame. I’m not so sure about now. ;)
You were expecting that the media would actually go for a reasoned, uninterrupted and mud-slinging free zone???
Many People have answers to problems. Or cures for what should be the process of anything related to operation of enormously important project, like electing the most powerful person in the world. But the influencers of politics, media sloths and even some well-paid profs and pundits, don’t want to change anything that might upset the apple cart of their design. They want men (and women) they can control with puppet ease. Or have what they want in place.
Obama, to be sure, is a different candidate in many, many respects. However, he is still a Harvard-educated person.
(Elite - I couldn’t have dreamt of Harvard, no matter how high I scored or how good my grades were - and we know it for sure.) Did he overcome - or was some of it his father’s standing as an Harvard economist of some renown? (Obviously, a little of both.)
It would be difficult to see an ordinary person just run for office and win. Just someone that had modest success, not a lawyer, or a poly, but still had plenty of chops, independent education and sharpness about a wider array of things than most people can imagine. (And there are people out there - but they might be wise enough to know they could never get it off the ground.)
I want to see substance - real solutions, and description of them in $ and implementation - but rarely, never actually, is a politician going to lock down his various ideas into a box.
People can too quickly criticize, undermine their usefulness, purport outrageous things will occur, yet offer only minimal “what-if” conjectures to deride a candidate. Even if a candidate could express that, “we have a couple of options - do this, this will likely happen, do the other one - this, economically, is a response.”
But no one wants pain. I don’t - but if we describe it as sacrifice, then maybe it would get more support. (Just don’t ask a Wall Streeter to do it…they’ll scream via the media.)
9 discussions - damn, would that work? (I don’t hold my breath.)
Sorry, I got going too long.
Yes, it is a journey, just tired of it alone.
I understand what you say, but until the system is changed from the bottom up as they say this is what we have, and unless you are working locally to change it then ..what can I say.
Of course legacy matters at those institutions, it is like affirmative action for the rich and famous. At the same time I would not really be content with an uneducated president no matter how many chops he has or how smart he is.
I’d like to think if we had adopted this in previously elections we might not be where we are today.
If President Bush had engaged in 9 single topic discussions I do not believe he would have been elected the first time.
I’d like to think that as well but I am not all that confident.
This is my new favorite Cooper post–great mix of wit, politics and music
I have much faith in you to finish your first semester with books coffee computers and finesse.
Thanks, I’m almost done…almost…
Gotta love that last line about Greek prostitutes. It feels a bit like prostituting the way they are trying to sell us their souls right?
You are an astute African as well.
Despite being from West Virginia.
Maybe I should have said - undereducated - like in going to an average 4-yr. institution. (Not Harvard, Yale, Princeton - where most of the lot seemingly come from.)
Sure, you can think the bottom-up strategy can and should work. (We at the bottom have to rise to the task of making informed decisions - and taking those that lead to task - and try in earnest, to put forth a man/woman of,by and for people of all stripes.)
There is an excitement right now in this concept of getting involved in the process. But this isn’t the 1st rodeo ran in that endeavor. (It could be the 1st that works…)
And Yet, you see a concerted effort to give Hillary every op to make a case to be the nominee. WHAT will happen if, somehow, not related to scandal, Barack is NOT the nominee, even though he got more elected delegates and all the metrics?
You saw an entire state vote their race, their backward thinking
and their belief that Barack is just an extension of Mr. Right.
(I ran into a pretty decent guy - via the gas station regular that talks sports - who said this, “Barack seems like a good guy. Too bad he’s a Muslim.” (I didn’t correct him because convincing someone is often not worth the trouble from the 100s of time I’ve argued whatever point. I know…. you might feel otherwise.)
But while that may seem foolish - and that 40-something guy votes - who’s going to educate him, and to what end?
How many vote against him because he’s got a funny name? How many vote for Clinton because of that name?
How many just vote party affiliation, yet don’t even know the persons’ views express whenever they actually express one?
Some don’t take any time at all to decipher any of this. Many I know, above 35, have their issues, but don’t know what any candidate will do for them. (And they are trained to be that way.)
West Virginians shouldn’t be a benchmark for this political season, but when you look at W. Pennsylvania, S. Ohio, Kentucky and S. Indiana, that can and usually is, the viewpoints
of a large section of America. Enough to be the factor that decides whose this country leader is.
And all the educating in the world ain’t gonna bring in those voters.
Which is why I didn’t try to undermine that man’s belief system. (Because telling someone they are not correct in their assertions - and those assertions are tied to a specific reason to condemn or avoid that choice - is pretty difficult, unless they seem open to reason. This guy, and the gas attendant guy, are not.)
I guess will see in 1-3 months how it plays out.
Bottom up is the only way it works.
Who is going to educate him? In some cases no one, but the only way there is a chance is if local politics and news changes.
The truth as it is now we have little control over what will happen from here on in. We might as well take a breath and re lax.
Sounds nice. Much nicer than the nearly 3 year of us slamming our heads against the wall of inanities. ABC should have fired George and Charley for their mangled “debate”. And I’m scared to think how much worse its going to get. What’s next? Presidential debate, as moderated by Paris Hilton?
Probably.
In today’s political climate, having paris hilton moderate a debate might be step in the right direction. For hilton and the viewers.
There was a time when I liked listening to Marvin Kalb. Cannot say the same for the Newt - who is, contrary to impression, a pennsyltuckian instead of a georgian.
I’d never listened to him though I had read him.
As they say “talk is cheap”….prime network time - expensive.
I’m doubtful much will change until there is radical campaign finance reform. The media is making too much money off the current process to willingly go along with such a proposition.
exactly
6 Ways to Sunday Baby!! ;))
The Entire Elections should be Shortened to 9 Weeks with a Total Budget of 9 Dollars!! This Election BS is Insane + the Billions WASTED is Outrageous - People are Starving!!
U gotta see this Keith Olbermann telling Bush to Shut the Hell Up for saying he Gave Up GOLF to show Empathy for the American Families who have had a Family Member KILLED in his Illegal Iraq War!!
http://www.tysonwilliams.com/2008/05/shut_up.html
Beyond all Belief that Americans are letting Bush Skate Free*
I’d have a vague recollection of Nine Sundays proposition.
I’d much rather have that because I thin it would give us a better picture. I think the media would not tolerate it, financially that is.
Unfortunate - what we have become.
Until elections are solely financed by the public there will be no truth.
First, off subject: TAB doesn’t take you to the next box, instead it moves you to the top of the comments section.
An Interesting read at Esquire, from my yesterday visit to the store: http://www.esquire.com/features/barack-obama-0608 by Charles Pierce. Check it out.
Quote: “The ownership of the people over their politics — and, therefore, over their government — had been placed in quitclaim long before the towers fell, and the president told the people to be just afraid enough to let him take them to war and just afraid enough to reelect him, but not to be so afraid that they stayed out of the malls.
It had been happening, bit by bit, over nearly forty years. Ronald Reagan sold the idea that “government” was something alien. The notion of a political commonwealth fell into a desuetude so profound that even Bill Clinton said, “The era of Big Government is over” and was cheered across the political spectrum, so that when an American city drowned and the president didn’t care enough to leave a birthday party, and the disgraced former luxury-horse executive who’d been placed in charge of disaster relief behaved pretty much the way a disgraced former luxury-horse executive could be expected to behave in that situation, it could not have come as any kind of surprise to anyone honest enough to have watched the country steadily abandon self-government over the previous four decades. The catastrophe that is the administration of George W. Bush is not unprecedented. It was merely inevitable. The people of the United States have been accessorial in the murder of their country. ”
Couldn’t say it better.