Several people have asked me what I thought of the GOP debate on Fox last night and some were a little surprised when I told them I didn't watch it. I'm not a fan of political debates because they rarely reveal anything important about a candidate. They don't tell us any more about which person on the stage would make a good president than a beauty contest tells us which woman would make a good wife. I dislike how the debates are hyped by the media and how the "winner" is whoever comes up with the best zinger, as if that has anything to do with being a good president.
Not only are the one-liners irrelevant to effective governing, so is much of what the candidates say about what their policies would be. They say what they need to say to get elected and then do what they want to do once they're in office. A much better measure of what kind of president a man or woman would be is to look at their total body of work throughout their career. What they've done and written when they weren't a candidate is more revealing than anything they say on stage.
Nevertheless, Breitbart has an interesting analysis of the debate here, although even Breitbart has succumbed to "zinger-philia," as you can see by reading their report.
