Article content continued

So it is dismaying to see what the Liberals have actually produced. The choice of former Governor General David Johnston as the first debates commissioner is a good one — but the failure to consult the opposition parties on it is not. Likewise, while the rules governing which leaders should be eligible to participate seem reasonable enough, it is beyond absurd that these should have been dictated unilaterally by the party in power.

Worst of all, we are back to the old rule of one debate in each language — again, unilaterally decreed, and much more obviously in the self-interest of the likely front-runner in a campaign that is now (the Liberals having taken three years to deliver on a relatively easy promise) less than a year away. The opportunity to make the debates into something meaningful — and transform the campaigns in the process — would appear to have been squandered.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/CP/File

Done right, debates can make a signal contribution to the public’s ability to assess the leaders and their platforms, offering a rare opportunity to see them up close, unfiltered, and under pressure. Where debates are regular and frequent, they provide structure to a campaign and, crucially, repeated exposures to the candidates: a bad performance can be recovered from, while a flashy fraud can be seen through over time.

But where there is only one debate, it tends to be treated like a prize fight. With everything on the line, candidates are coached within an inch of their lives: either they take no chances (the front-runner) or launch a series of wild attacks (the challengers), in search of the fabled “knock-out blow.” The media focus, inevitably, is on who “won” or “lost,” as if that were the issue, rather than on what was learned.