What Has Debating Skills Got to Do with Being President

The news coming out of Iowa is more and more a disconnect - a disconnect from the problem at hand, which is to begin the formal process of choosing the Republican candidate to face Barak Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

For what seems like an eternity, we have been witness to debates, polls, media pundits telling us about the latest candidate error or blip in the polls, or why one or another of the GOP candidates will not or cannot be either nominated or elected.

And, with two weeks to go before the good folks of Iowa form their caucuses and select the GOP candidate they want to support in the formal nominating process that ends with the Republican Convention where each delegate casts one vote for someone - two weeks ! - we are still reading about

-         why Newt is falling in the polls and doesn’t have the time or money or staff to do anything to rise again,

-         why Romney cannot seem to get more than 25% of the polls,

-         why Santorum and Bachmann have already fallen out of contention unless a underground swell from social Christians lifts the up in the caucus decision-making,

-         why Ron Paul is dangerous in the primaries but unelectable,

-         why Huntsman has bet his candidacy on new Hampshire and it will backfire on him if somebody comes out of Iowa with a big win,

-         why Perry is mounting in the polls again but has too little time left to win in Iowa

--Why, why, why.

We are now even hearing from professionals that the GOP Convention may end up being brokered because no-one will come out of the primary season with enough votes to be nominated on the first ballot.

And while all the to-ing and fro-ing is playing out daily in the papers, over the net and on TV, we hear again and again that almost anyone can beat President Obama, who seems destined to be a one-term president.

But, we are reminded, Obama is dangerous because he is a good, maybe a great debater, and so the GOP needs to nominate a great debater to beat him.

I think Americans are being driven to a sort of collective hysteria about all this.

It doesn’t matter who is nominated, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, whose libertarian views could do real international damage if unchecked.

The people who are GOP candidates are articulate, informed about the issues, sensitive to the mood of voters, eager to stop the train wreck now plowing through Congress, and generally able to debate.

As a parenthesis, I would like to ask, humbly of course, who decided that Obama is a great debater. Hillary Clinton out-worded him often in 2008. He stumbles for words when he is not scripted, and his delivery is more that of a second-rate huckster than a President of the United States.

Back to the point - Reagan was a great debater. JFK was a great debater. There were no presidential debates before the JFK-Nixon debates, except for the Lincoln-Douglass debates. So, we’ve elected approximately 40 presidents without worrying at all about their debating skills.

If I had to vote based on debate skills, I’d go with - Perry because he’s like Reagan. Or Newt because he knows the answers cold. Or Romney because he’s cool under pressure.

There you have it. All three are solid, time and job tested, conservative Republicans whose ideas are neither scary right nor scary left.

Who will it be, then, that we send to the White House on January 20, 2013?

Maybe we ought to kick back, watch the million football bowl games now running nightly, and let the American people decide. They’ve done a pretty good job for a couple of centuries now- -maybe, just maybe, they’ll get it right this time, too.